WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures

Committee on Comparative Literature

Dissertation Examination Committee: Beata Grant, Chair

Lingchei Letty Chen Robert E. Hegel Pauline C. Lee Steven B. Miles Linda Nicholson

BEYOND THE BOUDOIR:

WOMEN'S POETRY ON TRAVEL IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA

by

Yanning Wang

A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 2009

Saint Louis, Missouri

UMI Number: 3365185

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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Beyond the Boudoir:

Women's Poetry on Travel in Late Imperial China

by

Yanning Wang

Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese and Comparative Literature

Washington University in St. Louis, 2009

Professor Beata Grant, Chairperson

The topic of this dissertation is poetry on travel by women writers of late imperial

China, especially from the mid-sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. During this

period, not only was there an extraordinary florescence of women's writing, but their

mobility was also greatly expanded compared to previous dynasties. As a consequence,

travel, whether in the form of an actual journey or an imagined one, became a central

topic in many women's poems. Despite the conventional assumption that pre-modern

Chinese women were passive and confined, the travel poems discussed in this study point

to a wide variety of travel experiences or, at the very least, a growing desire for physical

mobility on the part of educated women of Ming-Qing China.

The subject of travel provided a larger literary space for women poets, especially

elite women, to challenge the notion that their proper place was the boudoir and to

question the seemingly fixed boundary between the inner and outer spheres. I study the

topic of women's poetry and travel in its broader literary, social and historical contexts,

and approach the topic from multiple perspectives, including the versatility of women's

ii

journeys, which were closely related to their personal circumstances and the changing

social reality; women's re-inscription of "recumbent travel," a popular notion in male

literati culture that symbolized artistic fashion and taste; the gendered reinvention of a

traditional poetic genre roaming as a transcendent, and a case study on the excursions of

a single Manchu woman poet Gu Taiqing (1799-1877), who was influenced by both Han

and non-Han cultures.

In contrast to male literati's travel which was widely encouraged as a necessity of

self-cultivation, women's travels were largely curtailed by gender norms. In other words,

when travel was not a free choice, women had to negotiate their spaces beyond the

boudoir strategically, and poems provided just such a space for enhancing and enriching

their self-expression and gender consciousness as a poet and a woman. The proactive

and innovative interactions with literary minds in their daily life enabled women poets to

reach a wider world beyond the boudoir.

in

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to my primary advisor Professor Beata Grant who has

nourished my interest in women's writing since the beginning of my Ph.D. studies at

Washington University in St. Louis. My dissertation project grew out of a paper written

for her seminar, and eventually took shape after numerous discussions with her. Her

scholarship and sensitivity to language will benefit me forever. I must also thank

Professor Grant for inviting me to participate in some of her own scholarly projects,

which has given me invaluable research experience.

I thank all the committee members who have devoted both their time and their

interest to helping me first with my graduate studies and then finally, with my

dissertation project. Professor Robert E. Hegel read my dissertation carefully, providing

insightful comments and meticulous editing. His model as a teacher-scholar has been

truly inspiring to me. Working as a teaching assistant for his literature class has

enhanced my understanding of how good scholarship and effective teaching can benefit

each other. Professor Steven B. Miles' questions and suggestions provoked me to

explore some historical details important to my dissertation. Professor Lingchei Letty

Chen not only commented on my dissertation writing, but also provided timely and

practical guidance about how to prepare for a future career as a teacher and scholar.

Professor Pauline C. Lee brought my attention to a number of useful sources for my

dissertation and generously shared her academic experience. Professor Linda Nicholson

taught me so much about Western critical thought on women, and the importance of

writing clearly.

iv

I must also thank Professor Paul F. Rouzer of the University of Minnesota, Twin

Cities, for commenting on part of Chapter Four, and Professor Paul W. Kroll of the

University of Colorado, Boulder for his scholarly advice during the early years of my

graduate studies.

My thanks also go to Mr. Tony H. Chang and Ms. Wai-man Suen and many other

librarians for their help to my research; to the faculty and staff members of the

Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, and of the Committee

on Comparative Literature for their advice and assistance; to all my friends for their

inspiration and support, both academic and personal; to Washington University and the

Mellon Foundation for the financial aid that made it possible for me to dedicate myself to

my studies.

Last but not least, I am very grateful to my family: my parents have strongly

supported me throughout my life; my sister and her family, and my husband and his

family have both offered me endless practical help and moral encouragement. My

husband Robert has been growing with me and filling my life with laughter and love.

v

Note on Romanization

All the names and the terms in quoted material have been converted to Hanyu

pinyin for clarity and consistency.

VI

Note on Translation

All translations are mine unless noted otherwise.

Contents

Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Note on Romanization vi Note on Translation vii

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Poetry on Travel in the Male Literati Tradition 12

Chapter Two: Women's Poetry on Travel: Major Types and

Major Issues 60

Chapter Three: Recumbent Travel: Women's Re-inscription

of a Male Literati Tradition 122

Chapter Four: Women's Poetry on Roaming as a Female

Transcendent 162

Chapter Five: Gu Taiqing's Poetry on Excursions 207

Conclusion 267

Bibliography 275

VIII

Introduction

The topic of this study is Chinese women's poetry on travel from the late imperial

period (1368-1911), especially from the mid-sixteenth century to the nineteenth century.

Late imperial China witnessed tremendous economic, social and cultural transformations,

all of which led to an increase in physical mobility and intellectual exchange. This period

also saw an unprecedented explosion of women's writings with more than three thousand

authors and more than two thousand extant anthologies or individual collections. ! I

explore how women poets of this period, commonly perceived as "passive and confined,"

wrote about travel either as an actual journey or just imagined, or "recumbent" (woyou EJA.

M), travel, and in so doing, succeeded in poetically re-inscribing in interesting and

sometimes innovative ways what had traditionally been an almost exclusively male-

dominated practice. Many of the poems included in this study are translated into English

and discussed for the first time. Therefore, the first purpose of this study is to introduce a

significant amount of new material that sheds light on both women's increasing mobility

in society as well as the literature produced by women themselves. The second purpose

of this dissertation is to explore the theme of travel in pre-modern Chinese poems by

women, in order to position them in broader literary and social contexts. To fulfill this

goal, I not only provide a detailed study of the poems on travel, but also place these

poems both in the context of the male literati tradition as well as the contribution of

women writers from earlier periods, hoping to shed light on not only late imperial

Chinese women's poems, but also the cultural traditions of travel in China.

1 Hu Wenkai i$] j t$ t , Lidaifunu zhuzuo kao MiXMizMW^s (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985).

1

Most Western studies on travel literature and women focus on narratives that

record the authors' actual experience of going to a place, especially abroad. Much of this

scholarship addresses the issue of viewing the colonial Other during the journey. In the

field of China studies, Maureen Robertson points out that late imperial Chinese women

invented many new ways of expression that expanded the traditional repertoire of

women's writings, and that their increasing mobility made travel one of their most

popular literary subjects. Thus the topic of travel and women is a significant

perspective for studying the new development of women's literature and culture in late

imperial China.

Several scholars have already touched upon the importance of women's travel in

literature. Dorothy Ko briefly discusses women who traveled outside their homes during

the seventeenth century.4 For example, the courtesan Wang Wei 3LW (ca. 1600-ca. 1647)

was widely traveled, and this greatly expanded her poetic vision. Elite women such as

Huang Yuanjie MtSiliY (mid-17th-c.) traveled and sold paintings and poems to make a

living. Elsewhere, Zhong Huiling H i t J argues that the sigui shi SJUfft (Poems on

hoping to return to home) represented the painful experience some women faced when

leaving their natal families to travel to a new husband's home. Unable to return regularly

Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism (London: New York: Routledge, 1991); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).

3 Robertson, "Voicing the Feminine: Constructions of the Gendered Subject in Lyric Poetry by Women of Medieval and Late Imperial China," Late Imperial China 13, no. 1 (1992): 63-110. See pp.87-88.

4 Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 285-90.

2

and take care of their own parents, women strongly felt their gender limitations. Susan

Mann provides a detailed study of Zhang Wanying's tJditftil (b. 1800) account of her

journey, and shows how although travel was difficult, it could also serve as a way to

exemplify the womanly virtue of fulfilling family responsibilities.6 During the late Qing,

China became more involved with the rest of the world, and travel for women became

more and more common. Their journeys not only crossed the threshold of the home, but

of nations as well. The example of Lii Bicheng S U M (1883-1943), who traveled

widely around the world and wrote poems in the classical style to record her trips, is a

case in point. 7 In fact, Hu Ying argues that "late Qing women travelers are distinguished

not so much by their mobility as by their increasing visibility on the national and

international scene."8 Such was the case with Qian Shan Shili H^P-drl! (1856-1943), a

diplomat's wife who traveled abroad with her husband. She expanded her concept of

home to include places outside of China and wrote travelogues that targeted women,

encouraging them to travel.9 Grace S. Fong's most recent book, Herself an Author:

Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China, includes a chapter on women and

5 Zhong, "Niizi youxing, yuan fiimu xiongdi: Qingdai niizuojia siguishi de tantao" i c T W f f > M 5 i # ^ , l&: Vmi'itizWM^lSfiWftfaWM, in Zhongguo niixingshuxie: Guojixueshuyantaohui lunwenji ^ H i d j i ; WM: Sf^W4JW(M1kW$~3CM (Taiwan: Xuesheng shuju, 1999), 127-69.

6 Mann, "The Virtue of Travel for Women in the Late Empire," in Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 55-74.

7 See Grace S. Fong, "Alternative Modernities, Or a Classical Woman of Modern China: The Challenging Trajectory of Lii Bicheng's (1883-1943) Life and Song Lyrics," Nan Nil: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China 6, no.l (2004): 12-59.

8 Hu, "Reconfiguring Nei/Wai: Writing the Woman Traveler in the Late Qing," Late Imperial China 18, no. 1 (1997): 74.

9 Ibid., 72-99. Also see Ellen Widmer's study on Shan Shili's travel journal, "Foreign Travel through a Woman's Eyes: Shan Shili's Guimao liixingji in Local and Global Perspective," Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 4 (2006): 763-91.

3

travel entitled "Authoring Journeys: Women on the Road." In this chapter, she uses the

notion of agency to explore how women constructed travel experiences in their poems

and travel journals. 10

The abovementioned studies represent the existing scholarly interest in studying

the subject of travel in women's works in order to examine their lives beyond the inner

quarters. However, the variety of women's travel and the importance of travel as a topic

of poetry demand a full-length study. My study will, I hope, help fill this scholarly gap.

Before starting my discussion of women's poetry on travel, it is a challenging yet

necessary step to define what I mean by the deceptively simple term "travel." The first

issue in establishing the definition is the hybrid nature of the act of traveling and travel

writing. The type of travel can vary, ranging from a long journey of many weeks or

months to a day excursion, from an actual physical journey to an imaginary one. The

question arises: does a single genre called "travel writing" exist? In the West, travel

writing, as a genre, is loosely defined. It is hard to give a uniform definition to this genre

if it exists, because just as the experience itself, the genre taps a "fluid" style taken from

various other styles and genres. l This fluidity makes it difficult to construct a single

perfect definition, yet on the other hand, such an "open-ended and versatile form"12 also

demonstrates the multiple possibilities that travel writing is capable of. Contrary to the

fact that many scholars take travel writing as a genre, Jan Borm argues against this: "it

[travel writing] is not a genre, but a collective term for a variety of texts both

Fong, Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), 85-120.

Tim Youngs and Glenn Hooper, Perspectives on Travel Writing (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 2-4.

12 Ibid., 3.

4

predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose theme is travel."13 Borm proposes the

terms "the literature of travel" or "travel literature" in order to stress the literary nature of

travel writing.14 Borm's use of the term travel literature is one I find particularly useful in

describing my research project, classical Chinese poems with travel as a theme composed

by women. The poets focus on the theme of travel, and combine various writing styles,

including lyrical and narrative strategies and genres, such asjiyou f&M (recording a

journey) and youxian i$Mli] (poetry of roaming as a transcendent), into the poems they

compose. So fundamentally these poems are a hybrid body of genres but are unified

under a common theme of travel. In short, my definition of poetry on travel refers very

generally to poems that take a variety of travel, either actual physical journeys or

imaginary travels, as their topic.

The second issue of defining travel concerns translation and cross-cultural

experience. The English term "travel" is only an approximate, not an equivalent to the

Chinese counterpart. Julian Ward argues that in Chinese context, liixing Wtff refers to "a

purposeful journey" and is often "marked by fear and awe." You M, which is frequently

used in the great Chinese traveler Xu Xiake's f l l (1587-1641) travel diaries, implies

a purposeless journey of freedom.15 You "is not only cognate with the verb you meaning

'to swim, float,' but can apply both to mountain excursions and shaman-like aerial

13 Borm, "Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology," in Youngs and Hooper, Perspectives on Travel Writing, 13.

15 You can also involve a strong purpose, as shown in Xiyouji HifiSS (The journey to the West). See Anthony C. Yu, trans, and ed., The Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng'en ^j;#clS (ca. 1500-1582) (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1977-1983).

5

journeys, that is to both real and spiritual journeys." Having encountered the

difficulties in translating the terms concerning travel between Chinese and English, in his

book Ltixing: Kua wenhua xiangxiang M.fx: f JCifcM^. (Travel: cross-cultural

imagination), Guo Shaotang f l ^ ^ ' s study of travel terminology in Chinese tradition

reveals a rich picture of travel in the cross-cultural context. 17 Guo further creates his

own divisions of travel styles, including liiyou WM. (leisurely travel), xingyou jfM

(purposeful travel), and shenyou ffiM. (imaginary travel). In brief, scholars have agreed

that travel in the Chinese context has rich meanings embodying cultural multiplicity and

uniqueness, and cannot be translated into English with a single term.

According to the above-mentioned scholarly studies, travel is complex because of

its extensive meanings and philosophical allusions, and yet it is necessary to narrow

down the scope of travel in order to facilitate any discussions on the topic. In English,

one basic meaning of "travel" is "to make a journey; to go from one place to another." 18

I use this term to emphasize the "movement" between places with additional

clarifications in particular cases mentioned in my writing. For women, what is at stake is

being able to move at all: the destination is not the most important thing. Travel is

essentially "an estrangement from the protective environment of the familiar in order to

discover the newness of oneself and of things." 19 In contrast to men, who were

16 Ward, Xu Xiake (1587-1641): The Art of Travel Writing (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001), 98.

17 Guo, Ltixing: kua wenhua xiangxiang (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005), 34-45.

18 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, preparers, The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., vol. xviii (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 444.

19 Jean-Charles Seigneuret, ed., Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 1293.

6

encouraged to travel for personal cultivation and identity formation, it was not considered

either necessary or natural for women, especially elite women, to travel in the wider

world beyond the boudoir (their familiar and familial space), and such travel had to be

justified first. I further divide this bigger category of travel into three subdivisions: actual

journeys, recumbent travel, and roaming as a transcendent. Actual journeys focus on

women's personal experience of leaving the inner chambers to see the world; the latter

two kinds can be grouped into the category of imaginary journeys, which allowed elite

women to more fully exercise their poetic imagination, despite their limited physical

mobility. 20

Travel is about movement between spaces, and for women this meant questioning

the domestic space and moving outward, or crossing gender borders. Focusing on the

Chinese context, Dorothy Ko defines the nei fa and wai fy\- or inner and outer spheres to

mark the gender spaces and consequently gender roles assigned to women in late imperial

China. Refusing to take the inner/outer as an absolute division for women and men, Ko

emphasizes the "shifting contexts and perspectives." 21 Ko's insistence of the fluidity of

the gender spaces echoes Judith Butler's view that gender is not a given state, but rather

is realized by performing certain acts repeatedly, which means that gender is in constant

state of construction.

The notion of inner/outer spheres reflects the gender roles of both women and

men projected by the dominant power in a given society. This regulates the scope of

20 Imagination about travel also takes place on an actual journey.

21 Ko, Teachers, 12-14.

22 Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990).

7

physical and social mobility ideologically, but does not necessarily always reflect actual

practice. However, the general expectation was that men would focus on the outer, and

women on the inner. Focusing on the outer required the formation of communities

beyond the family unit since men were supposed to give their opinions in public. In the

case of women in late imperial China, not only were they prohibited from participating in

politics and public affairs, but also were greatly curtailed by gender norms from leaving

the inner chambers to see the wider world. These prohibitions greatly restricted the scope

of their literary voices. Also, women were not encouraged to establish non-family-based

communities, as these were regarded as conducive to improper behavior. Therefore, to

Chinese female literati, the issue of travel was not only about their physical mobility, but

also concerned the legitimacy of the circulation of their literary voices and community

building.

Kang-i Sun Chang argues that in late imperial China, women writers tried to live

and write more and more like male literati, leading to a kind of "cultural androgyny." 23

The British woman writer Virginia Woolf made a major contribution to the concept of

androgyny. In her long essay "A Room of One's Own" (1929), she argues that every

human being will be more complete by having both male and female characteristics. 24

However, some feminist critics, such as Andrienne Rich, point out the limitation of

androgyny in that the concept accepts the "fixed" cultural constructions imposed on men

and women and puts them in a hierarchical structure with male (andros) over the female

Chang, "Ming-Qing Women Poets and Cultural Androgyny," Tamkang Review: A Quarterly of Comparative Studies of China and Foreign Literatures xxx, no.2 (1999): 11-25.

24 Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1929).

8

(gyne), and ignores female uniqueness. Indeed, by imitating male literati, women

writers struggled to break out of their gendered marginality in the literary circle, and

sometimes even the social sphere. However, often we find a unique female

consciousness of gender in their poems on travel, which points to a tension between their

femaleness and femininity and their desires to cross and even transgress gender borders.

Toril Moi defines feminism as a political position from the Western women's movement

emerging in the late 1960s; female as a matter of biology; and feminine as a set of

cultural constructions assigned to women. 26 Late imperial Chinese women were not

influenced by Western feminist movements, yet bending the restrictions on engaging in a

male dominated practicewriting poetry, high literature in pre-modern Chinain groups

can be seen as a rather "systematic" protest against the "fixed roles" for women. This

movement did not enter the "public sphere,"27 nor did it aspire to political change, and

only remained within literary circles; however it often exhibited what might be called

proto-feminist characteristics. Chinese literary women frequently had to justify their

writing, and when they did write, they often felt constrained to adhere to characteristic

"feminine" themes and language. Ironically when their writing was subtle and suggestive,

showing some "feminine" features, it would often be rated as mediocre. In this

dissertation, I will show how women constantly struggled at various social boundaries,

25 Rich, "The Kingdom of Fathers," Partisan Review 43, no.l (1976):30.

26 Moi, "Feminist, Female, Feminine," in The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism, ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (Cambridge, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989), 117-32.

27 Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).

9

and yet worked out ways to express their desire for movements (mobility, changes)

physically, intellectually and spiritually.

There are five chapters in this dissertation. The first two chapters provide the

background and context, while the last three chapters each focus on a particular theme

related to women's poetry of travel. Chapter One provides a general overview of the

male literati tradition of travel poetry in order to show what it was women writers were

reading, absorbing, imitating and at times, reinscribing for their own purposes. I discuss

the early poetic traditions on travel, male literati poetry that records actual journeys,

poetry on imaginary journeys, and poetry on roaming as a transcendent. Chapter Two is

a survey of women's poetry on travel in pre-modern China, focusing on women's works

from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In this part, I introduce the major

types of travel represented in poems and the major issues reflected in these

representations.

In Chapter Three, I explore the notion of woyou (recumbent travel, or armchair

travel). Because of gender norms, and despite the increasing physical mobility of the

times, most women still remained within the inner quarters and rarely engaged in travel.

However, this does not mean that they did not think about traveling and its poetic and

intellectual benefits. In fact, by adopting and sometimes challenging the male literati

tradition of recumbent travel, women were able to poetically engage in travel themselves.

Chapter Four examines the specific poetic genre of youxian shi iSflljIf (poetry of

roaming as a transcendent). Just as in almost all the poetic genres in Chinese literary

history, this genre was first used by male poets to express their desire, whether literal or

psychological, to transcend the dusty world and enjoy the freedom (and long life) of the

10

immortals. However, in the Qing dynasty, by adding nil ^(female) into the title and re-

inscribing the old genre creatively, women poets created a new subgenre nil youxian izW:

{llj (roaming as a female transcendent). They combined themselves and women

transcendents into this newly-created subgenre and therefore wrote themselves into the

genre history.

In Chapter Five, I focus my discussion on a single woman poet, Gu Taiqing JS;fc

n (1799-1877), who alhough of Manchu rather than Han background, shared the

aspiration of many gentry women to engage in travel, an aspiration she fulfilled not by

engaging in extended journeys, but by taking frequent excursions with family and friends,

many of which she recorded and memorialized in verse. However, the small steps of Gu

Taiqing symbolize the movement of Chinese elite women out of the boudoir and into the

wider world beyond.

11

Chapter One Poetry on Travel in the Male Literati Tradition

The theme of travel has been ubiquitous in classical Chinese poetry since pre-Qin

periods, but late imperial China especially witnessed an explosion of such poems. A case

in point is yinglian HI (couplets written on pillars left by literati at various scenic spots)

which first appeared in the Northern Song dynasty, but became popular in the Ming, and

flourished in the Qing.28 The concept of travel similar to today's tourism did not rise

until the Ming-Qing period (1368-1911), and the meaning of travel underwent a series of

transformations through time. The poems on travel provide a window for us to

understand how the literary and cultural significances of travel were transformed and

enriched in pre-modern China.

Any discussion on travel poetry must start from the first poetry collection Shijing

MM. (Book of songs) which contains 305 poems, mostly by anonymous authors, dated

from the eleventh century to the sixth century BC. According to the travel poems

included in this anthology, travel mostly refers to xingyi %f$t (traveling to battle). The

poems on going off to war usually focus on the image of zhengren ?EA, soldiers who

travel far to battlefields. In the poem "Zhi Hu"SlIi (Climb the wooded hill), a soldier

climbs the heights and has an imaginary conversation with his family, complaining about

the difficult life forced upon him. 29 The poem "Po f u " l 5 ^ (Broken axes) elaborates on a

28"Introduction," in Gudai liiyou wenxue zuopin xuandu iftMM.^C^i'ErmMWi, ed. Feng Naikang MJb M, 2nd ed. (Beijing: Liiyou jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 45-46. Also see the appendix "Mingsheng guji duilianjieshao" %M-$til

soldier's excitement after unexpectedly surviving a battle. The well-known poem "Cai

w e i " ^ t ^ (Plucking bracken) is about a heartbroken soldier's journey back home.31

These poems and many others center on criticizing the wars through soldiers'

painful journeys, yet not all of the poems are politically oriented. Although uncommon,

the pleasure of trips appears occasionally. Fang Yurun ~Jj3iM points out that the poem

"The Zhen and Wei" is a unique poem on travel, as it depicts a spring outing of boys and

girls, who appreciate the scenery while flirting around:33

When the Zhen and Wei

Are running in full flood Is the time for knights and ladies To fill their arms with scented herbs. The lady says, "Have you looked?" The knight says, "Yes, I have finished looking; Shall we go and look a little more? Beyond the Wei It is very open and pleasant." That knight and lady, Merrily they sport. Then she gives him a peony.

a. "-.aaiBM mzft, ftfjjj*. mmiz, &mm, mz&^m* 34

of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, foreword, by Stephen Owen, postface, by Joseph Allen (New York: Grove Press, 1996), 86-87.

30"Shijing, Guofeng, Binfeng, Po fu"f tM'HJl , ' f t J I ' : f i^ , in Fei, Shijing, 373; Waley, Book of Songs, 126.

31 Fei, Shijing, 381; Waley, Book of Songs, 141.

32 Of course the political interpretation is largely based on the commentaries in many cases. See Haun Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).

33 Fang Runyu 3"vfl|3i, Shijingyuanshi f#ijJi#n, quoted in Feng, Gudai liiyou, 3.

34 "Shijing, Zhengfeng, Zhen Wti"WM.-MM,'Mffi, in Zhou Zhenfu fflMlfi, annotator, Shijingyizhu |#M l i l t (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2002), 131-33; Waley, Book of Songs, 76.

13

After the Book of Songs, the second most important poetry collection was Chuci

MSf (Poetry of the Chu, or the Songs of the South), and the major contributor to this

collection was Qu Yuan JSJii (ca. 340-278BC), the first great Chinese poet and an ardent

traveler in action and spirit. Liu Xie !]$& (ca. 465-522) argues that"... the reason Qu

Yuan was able to fully examine the mood (qing) of the Book of Songs and Li Sao was, I

am sure, the assistance of those rivers and mountains" #SJBtiiK#f iUtb^Jm. ((JO ((H))

Qu Yuan was a loyal statesman who was misunderstood and eventually banished

by the King of Chu, and the vicissitudes of his life are well reflected in his poems

centering on spiritual journeys. His most famous work "Lisao" iHH (Encountering

sorrow) is about the lyrical speaker's symbolic journey of escaping from mundane

frustration and seeking ideals. Paul Fussell points out that by its nature, any travel is an

escape: "The escape is also from the traveler's domestic identity, and among strangers a

new sense of selfhood can be tried on, like a costume."36 Fussell's argument is especially

appropriate when examining Qu Yuan's case. The lyrical speaker is often interpreted as

Qu Yuan himself. When his domestic identity as a minister failed, he put on a wild and

strange costume as the wanderer in the poem, going on an imaginary journey that is full

of fresh images such as plants, animals, and immortals beyond this world. It is precisely

35 See the section of "Wuse" $9fi (The sensuous colors of physical things), in Stephen Own, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, MA and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992), 285; also see Siu-kit Wong, Allan Chung-hang Lo, and Kwong-tai Lam, trans., The Book of Literary Design (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1999), 171. See Yang Mingzhao ^HfJ M, annotator and supplementer, Wenxin diaolongjiaozhu 3 t ' h ! t t i t x ! i (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), 295.

36 Paul Fussell, ed., The Norton Book of Travel (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 13.

14

this supernatural journey that provides "a new sense of selfhood" for Qu Yuan to escape

and explore: "Long, long had been my road and far, far was the journey:/1 would go up

and down to seek my heart's desire" $&W.W>Mi&M^, ^ M T W ^ H . 3 7 For Qu Yuan,

travel goes beyond the physical movement, and serves as a powerful vehicle for poetic

self-expression, especially for venting political frustration, adding a strong sense of self

into the history of Chinese poetry on travel.

In Wenxuan ~3cM (Selections of refined literature),38 another important early

anthology, compiled by the crown prince Xiao Tong M^i (501-531) of the Liang dynasty,

the poems are arranged according to various categories, including those on traveling:

"Jixing"^fi;ff (Recording journeys), MW "Youlan"(Sightseeing), Midi "Youxian"

(Roaming as a transcendent), and "XinghT'fi1 if? (Long-distance traveling). Such a

categorization symbolizes a clear recognition of poetry on travel as a representative type

of poetry in Chinese literature.

Modern scholar Li Boqi's ^{6^ f monograph Zhongguo gudaijiyou wenxueshi

41 Ml^iX%^M'3C^$. (A literary history of pre-modern Chinese literature on travel) is a

detailed history on travel writing in pre-modern China.39 In this book, Li Boqi excludes

those writings which are on travel, but not about an actual journey taken, such as those

37 Qu, "Lisao," in Zhu Xi iM (1130-1200), annotator, Chucijizhu g i f Msf., comp. Li Qingjia $ J f fP (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1979), 1-27. For the English translation, see David Hawkes, Ch 'u Tz'u (The Songs of the South): An Ancient Chinese Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 28. Also see You Guo'en J S I U S et al., Chucijishi S l f MW (Hong Kong: Xianggang wenyuan shuwu, 1962).

38 For an English translation, see David R. Knechtges, trans., Wenxuan or Selections of Refined Literature, vols. 2 and 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, 1996).

39 Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou wenxueshi (Jinan: Shandong youyi shushe, 1989). Li's book is mainly on male literati's works.

15

imagined journeys through an armchair. This kind of imagined journey however, is very

important to women poets whose mobility was largely limited by gender norms under my

discussions in the later chapters. Furthermore, it is hard to have a clear-cut division

between what is imagined and what is not, since with the interaction between qing ff?

(affections) and^'mg M (scene), literary imagination is always present. In the Wenxin

diaolong jfcJL>|ff f t (Elaborations on the literary mind), Liu Xie comments on such an

interaction between affections and scene:

When poets were stirred by physical things, the categorical associations were endless. They remained drifting through all the images (xiang) or the world, even to their limit, and brooded thoughtfully on each small realm of what they saw and heard. They sketched qi and delineated outward appearance, as they themselves were rolled round and round in the course of things; they applied coloration (cai) and matched sounds, lingering on about things with their minds..

Generally speaking, poems on travel constantly combine a poet's observation of

the journey and his mental responses. For the above-mentioned reasons, I will divide the

poems under discussion into three categories that reflect this general characteristic as well

as the individuality of each category: poetry on a journey actually taken, poetry of using

the notion of woyou, and poetry of roaming as a transcendent. I will focus on shi poems

(classical poems), but also include some ci poems (song-lyrics) and the works in fu form

(rhapsody), when necessary, in order to show the multiplicity of the poetic forms for

representing travel.

Yang, Wenxin diaolong, 294. For the English translation, see Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 279. Also see Wong, Lo and Lam, Book of Literary Design, 169.

16

Poetry on a Journey Actually Taken

This category includes the majority of the poems on travel, and I will briefly

discuss the fu,41 shi or ci poems in this section. With its prosaic characteristics, the Han

rhapsody excels at displaying scenery and elaborating on a situation. Liu Xin's %\\W\

(ca.53-23BC) "Suichu fu"Ji^JK (Rhapsody on hermitage), Ban Biao's S ^ (3-54)

"Beizheng fu":jt;flEK (Rhapsody on a journey to the North), Ban Zhao's Jfi0(ca.48-

ca.l 18) "Dongzheng fvC'MMM, (Rhapsody on a journey to the East), and Cai Yong's H

H (132-192) "Shuxing fu"*ffffi (Rhapsody on a journey) are important ^M works of

this kind.42 Ban Biao's "Rhapsody on a Journey to the North," for instance, is about his

own exile from the capital Chang'an around 25 AD43 when the Red Eyebrow rebels

invaded the area. With a detailed itinerary observation of the scenery on the road the

rhapsody ultimately aims at a deeper concern: "This traveler mourns for his old home; /

My heart, sad and sorrowful, is pained with longing" M^M^^lM* 'LVttltWll 1$.44

As Paul Fussell points out, "it is not enough for landscape to be interesting in itself.

According to the genre division in the Selections of Refined Literature, fu belongs to neither prose nor poetry because fu is a semi-prosaic and semi-metric form. In Zhongguo wenxue shi tonglan ^^'SC^^fcM. W (A complete history of Chinese literature), ed. Zhou Yang M1i% et al. (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2005), fu is considered an independent category and juxtaposed with poetry and prose. In Zhongguo fenti wenxueshi c t , H ^ f r 3 t ^ r i (A history of Chinese literature arranged in genres), comp. Zhao Yishan ffilt ill and Li Xiusheng ^ { | j ^ i (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2001),/ is included in the volume of prose (sanwen juan ffcjt^l) as it has a strong tendency for exposition, while Western scholars, such as David R. Knechtges, Stephen Owen and Wilt L. Idema consider fu part of poetry. See Knechtges, Wenxuan; Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996); Idema and Lloyd Haft, A Guide to Chinese Literature (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1997). Although the forms of fu changed with the times, if we trace it back to its origin, we find that it had a tight connection with poetry, and as Ban Gu $ [ 5 | (32-92) put it, "The rhapsody is a genre of the ancient Songs" ls#, "Slf ;.jjjfc-tJl. See, Knechtges, Wenxuan, vol. 1, 93. Therefore, I include fu in my brief history of poetry on travel.

See Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 36-39.

43 See the note on the historical background of Ban's journey in Knechtges, Wenxuan, vol. 2,165-66.

44 Knechtges, Wenxuan, vol. 2, 171.

17

Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest." Ban Biao constantly wove his

story and history together: "I extol Zhao of Qin for punishing the bandits: Flushed with

anger, / northward he marched" B^tinZMM, i l ^ T ^ t U b f f i . 4 6 Here Ban Biao

compares himself to a heroic king, signifying his own exile to the north as a minor

official by linking it to a powerful king's heroic expedition, which raises an exile up to

the level of a brave fight against the miserable reality in which he was powerless.

There is a large body of s hi poems on the theme of travel, among which many are

inspired by nature, including shanshui shi lll/Kif (landscape poetry) and tianyuan shi H.

HI Wf (pastoral poetry). J. D. Frodsham challenges the traditional division between these

two types of poetry, and calls both "nature poetry," referring to "the genre which uses the

landscape, whether majestically rugged or charmingly rustic, as a means of conveying

ethical principles."47 Frodsham's suggestion is useful here for discussing the poems that

focus on reflecting nature during travels.

The Wei-Jin period was an age of literary awakening 48 during which the "self of

the poets was being strengthened. In this period, Cao CaoWM (155-220) could be

considered a representative poet. His "Guan Canghai"|i^V$ (Looking at the vast blue

Fussell, Norton Book of Travel, 16-17.

46 Knechtges, Wenxuan, vol. 2, 171. For the story of Zhao of Qin (r. 306-251 BC), see note for L21-23, Knechtges, 166.

47 Frodsham, The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yun MW.M(385-433), Duke ofK'ang-Lo, vol.l(Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), 88.

48 Lu Xun #ff l , "Cao Pi's age is an age of literary self-awareness." W3i6

sea) is considered "the first relatively mature shi poem on travel in Chinese literary

history:"49

In the East from the top of Rock Jie, (I) look at the vast blue sea. How the water is heaving, heaving! Mountain islands stand aloft. Trees grow densely, The hundred herbs are luxuriant and flourishing; The autumn wind is howling, Mighty waves swell and rise. The orbit of Sun and Moon Seems to come out of their midst, The bright brilliance of the Star-River Seems to come out of their interior. A blessing of the uttermost! A song to express the will.

50

In 207, in order to eradicate Yuan Shao's 3jst$8 (d. 202) army, Cao Cao led an army to the

north. Standing on the top of the Jieshi Mountain51 next to the sea, he composed this

Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 43.

Cao Cao is the first Chinese poet who describes the sea and expresses his political ambition through such a description. The "Looking at the Vast Blue Sea" is one section of the poem with the old title from yuefu poetry "Buchu xiamen xing'^LBftf lf i1 . See the entire poem and commentary in Chen Qingyuan ^ J U T U , San Cao shixuanping H W I ^ S f F (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2002), 16-21. The translation is from Diether von den Steinen, trans, and annotator, "Poems of Ts'ao Ts'ao," Monumenta Serica (Journal of Oriental Studies of the Catholic University of Peking) IV (1939-1940): 125-81. Also see Wai-lim Yip, ed. and trans., Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 132-33.

51 Located in Licheng flj$, (modern Southwest to Leting M^ county, Hebei M4fc province). See note 2, in Yu Guanying ^ 7 3 3 1 and Wei Fengjuan # H # i , eds., Gushi jingxuan "Slf IfJS (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1992), 139.

19

poem to express his ambition of reuniting China. In such poems, nature is mainly a

carrier of qing (emotions) or zhi (true intentions). For instance, during the chaotic time

at the end of the Eastern Han, many poets expressed their desperation or criticism

through the descriptions of the nature ravaged in human disasters as shown in Wang

Can's i l l (177-217) "Seven Laments"("Qi ai shi"-fcj^) and Lu Ji's WM (261-303)

"Written on the Way to Luoyang" ("Fu Luo daozhong zuo" fttfaM^W).53

This poetic tradition of exploring social chaos through journeys continued in the

later dynasties, especially during times of dynastic collapse. The Song-Yuan and Ming-

Qing transitions (losing power to non-Han conquerors of Mongol and Manchu) were

typical of this kind. At the end of the Song, poems such as General Wen Tianxiang's 3t

JsM- (1236-1282) "Guo Lingding yang" i i # T # (Sailing on Lonely Ocean) merged

his pain over the dynastic fall into his trip of crossing the sea.54 The Lonely Sea is part of

the Southern Sea, particularly the areas at the foot of the Lingding Island near modern

Zhongshan 41 dl, Guangdong JMW. province. The other site, Perilous Beach, is located in

present-day Wan'an Jjix. County, Jiangxi EHJ province. In Wen Tianxiang's poem, the

two places separated by a great distance from each other become a metaphor for the

miserable situation he and his dynasty were facing: lonely and full of fear. The two

52 Shiyan zhi I f llfJcJ and shiyuan qing iiref^fif are two major theories in Chinese literary tradition. Such theories focus on the poet as the center of writing, and the work is considered a reflection of the poet's mind. Wang Jimin I $ | K , comp., Zhongguo gudai wenlun chenshu 45III"El5"f^;fcll$ti (Wuhan: Huazhong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2002), 8-14.

Yu and Wei, Gushijingxuan, 152-55, 204-06; J. D. Frodsham, trans and annotator, with the collaboration of Ch'eng Hsi, An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 26-27, 89-90.

Xu Yuanzhong, trans, and versifier, Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, bilingual ed. (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), 272,456.

20

journeys, Wen Tianxiang's trip of crossing the Sea (1279) and his journey of life, link

damaged nature to a life without dignity.

During the Ming-Qing transition, Ming loyalists were a major force in creating

travel poems to fight against the Manchu conquerors intellectually. Chen Zilong St-pf!

(1608-1647), a Ming loyalist and poet, described himself as a tragic hero in front of his

broken homeland in "Various Feelings on an Autumn Day"("Qiuri zagan"#C 0 H ^ ) :

"Mountains and Rivers fill my vision; grief as far as I can see./.../1 wail at the Xin

Pavilion as I raise my cup" M i \k)\\WM%L , M^M^~IMF.55 Kang-i Sun

Chang argues that as a tragic hero, Chen Zilong's strong will after numerous failures and

his tragic outcry at the fall of the Ming represent actions typical of a Ming loyalist.56 The

mountains and rivers, the stimulus and reflection of the poet's patriotism, became highly

symbolic to the degree that whether they themselves are accurately represented does not

matter at all. The landscape stops being merely objective, and the poets themselves often

stop being mere bystanders but part of the tragic landscape that bears national

significance.

The symbolic meaning of the mountains and rivers not only comes from the

poets' deliberate poetic construction, but also has something to do with the traveler's

actual perspective. For instance, standing on the top of a mountain or any high place, the

perspective of observing the view from the upper to the lower offers a broader and clearer

vision. The speaker can envision a bigger goal which arouses his ambition as shown in

Cao Cao's "Looking at the Vast Blue Sea," or feels the smallness or limitation of human

55 Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late-Ming Poet Ch 'en Tzu-lung: Crises of Love and Loyalism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 103.

56 Chapter Seven, "Tragic Heroism in Shih Poetry," in Chang, Late-Ming Poet, 102-08.

21

beings, which provokes sadness as exemplified in Du Fu's tt "^5(712-770) poem

"Denggao" Sif t (Climbing the heights).57 Thus a subgenre of travel poetry "Climbing

the Heights" came into being. In fact, the literati's connections to this subgenre were not

only political or emotional, but of moral and cultural significance. Already during the

Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC), Confucius considered writing on this theme as

a necessary quality for ajunzi H " ? (gentleman): "Whenever a gentleman climbs the

heights, he will definitely describe it in words" f | - f SiftilftK.58 In history, many

recluses inspired by Buddhism or Daoism hid in the mountains and thought of "the spirits

of great men when ascending heights.. ."59 Indeed, climbing the heights not only

physically raises a person's perspective to a higher point, but uplifts his spirit. In this

sense, traveling is a purifying process of learning from the wise. Yet people in the

traveler's thoughts are not only sages or recluses, but common characters, family and

friends. The ninth day of the ninth month in Chinese lunar calendar, the traditional

Chongyang J L P Festival (also known as Double Ninth Festival), has customarily been

57 Quart Tangshi ^ i S I $ , comp. Zhonghua shuju bianjibu ^^HFJlj i i i t iBP, vol. 4 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 227.2468. William Hung, Tu Fu: China's Greatest Poet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 249.

58 Han Ying $f K (fl. 150BC), Han shi wai zhuan ff f t h # , in Wenyuange siku quanshu 'SCffM M ^ f t jingbu feSP, shilei f $ H , 7.14b. Also see Zhai Minggang IIHJWJ, "Shilun Zhongguo wenxue zhong de denggao z h u t i " | $ t | 4 ' H 3 t * ( : r 1 W S R S , Xibei minzu xueyuan xuebao WikRM^L^%L 4 (1996):171-75.

59 Susan Bush, "Tsung Ping's Essay on Painting Landscape and the 'Landscape Buddhism' of Mount Lu," in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 138.

22

the day of climbing the heights, and composing poems for this occasion has become a

poetic tradition. 60

Contrary to the political or other serious meanings literati have given to poetry

on travel, some poets focus on its pleasurable and aesthetic aspects. In the fourth century,

the rise of Xie Lingyun H t S i S (385-433) marked the popularity of the poems on

mountains and rivers. About a hundred of Xie Lingyun's poems survive today, most of

which are on travel.61 Xie's prosperous family in Shining # p ^ , Kuaiji #"ff (present-day

Shangyu JllH, Zhejiang 3f ZL province) well prepared him for an official career, yet he

soon grew tired of it. Different from the Wei-Jin writers mentioned above, Xie Lingyun

retreated from the political circle of the time and focused on the landscape itself. Instead

of weighty social concerns, his poems reflect the spirit of a hermit enjoying himself in

nature: "Inclining my ear I listen to the surging billows/And raising my eyes behold the

craggy p e a k s " f l i ^ # ^ p , | l @ I P I J ^ . 6 2 However, the hermit's stance can often be

considered the result of political frustration and perceived as self-cultivation. Even

though he often focused on the beauties of nature, some of his poems still inherited the

Shijing-Chuci tradition of using poetry to express political gain and loss:

Early spring has replaced the drawn-out winds, The new sun changes the old shadows. The pond is growing springtime plants, Garden willows have turned to singing birds.

60 See Tao Yuanming and Wang Wei's poems on "climbing the heights." See the state of the field on the denggao poetry in Liu Huairong SlJM^ et al., Er shi shiji yilai Xian Qin zhi Tangdai shigeyanjiu ZZ.+ttt &filil*5fcilMJf fttt;^ (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2006), 236-47.

61 Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 67.

62Xie, "Deng chishang lou" WtklM. See Yu and Wei, Gushijingxuan, 267-70; Francis Westbrook's translation in Liu Wu-chi and Irving Yucheng Lo, eds., Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1975), 62.

23

"Droves."I am pierced by the Song of Bin, "Lush and green"moved by the tune of Chu. Living apart can easily last forever; It's hard to quit the flock with a tranquil mind. Holding to principle is not only a thing of old; That I am without regret is proven today.

63

Travel and poetry have an interesting connection partly because as the geographic

map expands, the scope of poetic topic and form progress as well. The development of

travel poetry reached its golden age in the Tang when the economic, political and cultural

conditions became better for traveling literati. Du Fu vividly described Tang prosperity

during the Kaiyuan ffljt period (713-741):

I remember that in the glorious decades, a quarter of a century ago, Even a small district might contain ten thousand households, And the glutinous rice was fat and the ordinary rice white, And how they filled up the granaries both public and private! No panthers or tigers paced the roads of the Empire; Distant travelers never worried whether the day was lucky or not. The fine fabrics of Qi and Lu could be seen on long lines of merchant's carts; Men plowed the fields; women tended the silkworms; all were happy at work.

64

63 Ibid.

24

During this period, travelers had better security and financial support. The literati's

passion for travel greatly expanded their vision for the world and poetry writing. Du Fu,

the poet historian, who was famous for his poems of witnessing history, even wrote a

poem entitled "Zhuangyou" ^till65 (Traveling boldly), giving a rich account of his

journeys in life. Li Bai ^ E=l (701-762), the poet immortal, who strove for Daoist

immortality and roamed widely took travel as his life-long passion: "Of the long trips to

sacred mountains I make light;/All my life I have loved to visit famous height."iE|ft#/flIl

W i t , -%.MA%\hm.66

During the Tang, literati were not only fascinated with long-distance journeys, but

also shorter excursions. Two places that were frequently visited were private estates and

temples. The prosperous economy promoted the construction of many private villas in a

grand scale at great expense, and "estate poetry" about traveling to these estates, rose.67

Wang Wei's ZEffi (701-761) twenty poems 68 about his private estate Wangchuan $P1JI|

were representative works. Visiting a nearby estate was not about covering a distance,

but positioning oneself in a private space for self enjoyment and deeper contemplation, a

way of "self-fashioning:"

64 Du, "Yi xi '^tS^, in Quan Tangshi, vol.4, 222.2363-64. The translation is from Hung, Tu Fu, 203.

65 Quan Tangshi, vol. 4, 220.2328-29.

66 Li, "Lushan yaoji Lu Shiyu Xuzhou" AiksS^AfeMAft. Quan Tang shi, vol. 3, 173.1778. See the translation in Xu, Song of the Immortals, 75.

67 Stephen Owen, "The Formation of the Tang Estate Poem," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55, no. 1 (1995): 39-59.

68 Quan Tang shi, vol. 2, 128.1300-01. For the English translation and commentary, see Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei: New Translations and Commentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). This set of poems is often interpreted as examples to show Wang Wei's Buddhist association.

25

Bamboo Lodge

Alone I sit amid the dark bamboo, Play the zither and whistle loud again. In the deep wood men do not know The bright moon comes to shine on me.

ttSff!

W^AT^U, m^mm* 69

Lakeside Pavilion

A light bark greets the honored guest, Far and distant, coming across the lake. On the porch, each with goblets of wine: On all four sides lotuses bloom.

%&mmm, mmmmm.70

Wang Wei's poems in sets represent the trend of writing travel poems in sets that

has lasted throughout the ages. Some other such poems include Liu Changqing's f'JIIUBP

(709-786?) "My Journeys in the Middle Part of Hunan"#f45lfi1" (ten poems), Pi

Rixiu's j 0 # (ca. 834-883) "Poems on Taihu"^cS8^p (twenty poems with a preface)

and Fan Chengda's ^f&A (1126-1193) "Miscellaneous Poems on the Fields and

Gardens in Four Seasons"|Z3B# EB H i t JU" (sixty poems with a preface).71

Quart Tangshi, vol. 2, 128.1301. The English translation is from Yu, Poetry ofWang Wei, 204.

Quan Tangshi, vol.2, 128.1300. The English translation is from Yu, Poetry of Wang Wei, 202.

71 Quan Tang shi,vo\3,148.1517-18; vol.9, 610.7089-97; Fan Chengda, Shihujushi shiji fifflMMM, in Fan Shihuji f[ffi$9Sl (Shanghai:Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 27.372-77.

26

During the Tang, it was popular to visit and write about the temples as both

Buddhism and Daoism reached their prosperity during this period. 72 If a poet took the

effort to visit and write about them, he was probably somewhat interested in religious

beliefs. In this case, Wang Wei can also serve as a perfect example. He is called shifo W

ffi (Buddha of Poetry) in literary history because of his profound attachment with Chan

Buddhism. One of his well-known poems on visiting temples was "Guo Xiangjisi"iii#

lMTp(Visiting the temple of gathered fragrance):

I do not know the Temple of Gathered Fragrance, For several miles, entering cloudy peaks. Ancient trees, paths without people; Deep in the mountains, where is the bell? Noise from the spring swallows up lofty rocks; The color of the sun chills green pines. Toward dusk by the curve of an empty pond, Peaceful meditation controls poison dragons.

The focus of the poem is not the temple itself, but using the idea of the place to construct

a peaceful religious atmosphere. In the last line, Wang Wei uses two Buddhist terms

anchan (peaceful meditation) and dulong (poisonous dragons, evil thoughts).74 The

72 Visiting and writing about temples was not a new phenomenon. For example, in the Northern and Southern dynasties, temples were frequently built. The Tang poet | f t (803-852) wrote about this in his poem entitled "Jiangnan chun" HlSf# : "The Southern Dynasties' temples, / four hundred and eighty in all, / are how many high halls and terraces / in the misty rain"SHIfflW A T F , ^ ^ I l i l B i l l + The English translation is from Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 504-05.

73 Quan Tangshi, vol.2, 126.1274. The English translation is from Yu, Poetry of Wang Wei, 164.

74 The term dulong comes from a story about the Buddha in the Da zhi du lun ^ ; | ? S f # . In the story, the Buddha once appeared in the shape of a powerful poisonous dragon capable of hurting people. As the story goes, he eventually accepted the Buddhist restrictions and was caught by the hunter who peeled his skin off and left thousands of little bugs gnawing on his body. Eventually his body was taken apart completely, and

27

Buddhist elements strengthen the quietness created by the poetic descriptions of the

natural environment around the temple, and add a sense of spiritual purification. Temples

are often purposefully built in a beautiful natural environment, partially for attracting

visitors who desire religious pursuit and a retreat from normal life. 75 Therefore poems

on the temples are usually about both the spiritual enlightenment and visual pleasure at

the same time.

Even the poets who were not interested in religions, or were even against them,

also touched upon the topic, for a temple is not only for religious worship, but an

important site for social and cultural activities. Part of Han Yu's $$M (768-824)

reputation comes from his well-known essay to the emperor "Jian Ying Fogu Biao" aitiQl

ft#^ (Memorial discussing the Buddha's bone). 76 In the essay, for which he almost

lost his life, Han Yu criticized blind worship of the Buddha. Despite his doubts about

Buddhism, Buddhist culture, nevertheless, is part of his poetic creation. Although his

interest in Buddhist temples was certainly different from Wang Wei who was a Buddhist

layman, the characters in the temples, ghosts, gods and the hell in the murals, and even

at that time he became the Buddha. See Nagarjuna, Da zhi du lun, trans. KumarajTva, vol. 2 (Taibei: Zhen shan mei chubanshe, 1967), 14.49-60, especially 49.

75 Li Fangmin ^5f K, "Tangdai fojiao siyuan wenhuayu shige chuangzuo"jf f^ t^K3tf t , J^t I fc ; t ! j W, Wen shi zhe X$.*S 5 (2005): 97.

76 See Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 598-601.

28

the monks serving at the temples inspired Han Yu's poems with a playful or sarcastic

Besides the murals and monks who were directly related to Buddhism, there were

also non-religious activities taking place in the temples such as flower appreciation and

no

poem composition in the temples individually or in groups. The natural and cultural

landscapes provoked rich poetic images for the Tang poets, and the models they

established certainly inspired later poets.

During the Song period, the literati travels continued to increase and spread in

both the rural and the growing urban environments. An important new social class, the

scholar-officials, rose after the full implementation of the civil service examination

system at the beginning of the Song; as a result, their careers were even more tightly 7Q

connected to travel. The scholar-officials not only had to travel to enhance their

learning and to take exams, but also had to constantly relocate under the restrictions of

"rules of avoidance" to avoid taking positions in their hometown or surrounding areas, as

77 Chen Yunji M.ft^n, "Lun Tangdai simiao bihua dui Han Yu shige de yingxiang" BmJS j^^J l i l l J iSf f l MSfcWiKlP, Fudan xuebao ftS.^M. (Tffi&) 1 (1983): 72-80. Han Yu also has poems mocking the monks entitled "Mocking the Snoring"tl#T!f, in Quan Tang shi, vol. 5, 345.3878-79. Han Yu's playful usage of the temple scenes became well known to later poets, such as the Qing poet Yuan Mei MML (1716-1797). See his Suiyuan shihua HtBlif 15, 14.9b, in Suiyuan quanji BUS^ili, vol. 5 (Shanghai: Wenming shuju, 1918).

78Li Fangmin offers a detailed study of the interaction between Tang literati and Buddhist temples, see his "Tangdai fojiao," 97. Also, among the numerous poems on this topic, Bai Juyi's poem "You Wuzhensi shi yibai sanshi yun"3StH^|#WH+li was the longest poem on travel in the Tang dynasty. See Quan Tang shi, vol. 7,429.4744-46. See Ge Xiaoyin 3|iJ|ii=f, "Shiwen zhi bian he yi wen wei shijian xi Han Yu, Bai Juyi, Su Shi de sanshoujiyou shi" If & # W J S ^ - i t t / r f f i t , &JSB, H M W H t t C MmS, in her Han Tang wenxue de shanbian jftlS J t ^ WM88 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1990), 305-14.

79 Peter Bol, "The Culture of Ours: " Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992): 32-33.

29

well as following the "three-year tenure rule" to prevent serving in one post more than

three years.80 Poets such as Su Shi &$ (1037-1101), Lu You BM (1125-1210), and

Fan Chengda wrote many poems on the journeys for their official relocations.81

The rise of urban culture and ci poetry were two outstanding characteristics of this

period, and such social and literary developments led to the re-invention of travel poetry.

Liu Yong $P?K (ca. 971-1053) 82was a major ci poet of the wanyue $&&*J (restrained)

school. Because of his failure in the civil examinations, he spent most of his life in the

entertainment quarters in cities such as Bianjing \-~M (the capital), Suzhou W')'\'\ and

Hangzhou $i'}\'\. One of his unique literary contributions was his poetic descriptions of

the people wandering in the cities:

The bamboo pipes strike the Vernal Note, The harmonious spirit of yang begins to fill

the Imperial city, And gentle warmth returns to the sunny scene. Let us celebrate the festival Of the First Full Moon! Florid Lanterns are displayed Over thousands and myriads of doors. All over the nine avenues The wind lightly wafts the perfume from silk dresses. The "red trees" are lit up for miles, The Turtle Hill stands high, And the sky resounds with flutes and drums.

Gradually, the sky becomes like water, As the white moon reaches its zenith.

80 Cong Zhang, "The Culture of Travel in Song China (960-1276)," Ph.D. diss. (University of Washington, 2003), 57.

1 These three poets all had experience of official relocations, including political banishment, and many of their travel poems were written during their exile.

82 See Benjamin B. Ridgway, "Imagined Travel: Displacement, Landscape, and Literati Identity in the Song Lyrics of Su Shi (1037-1101)," Ph.D. diss. (University of Michigan, 2005).

83 Modern Kaifeng Htj M, Henan M S province.

30

On the fragrant paths, Countless hat strings are broken and fruit thrown. As night wears on, in the candles' shades and flowers'

shadows, A young man often Has an unexpected adventure. In this time of peace, The court and the country are full of joys; the people, Happy and prosperous, Gather together in contentment. Facing such a scene, how Could I bear to go home sober alone?

mmm^w, ^mm^ m%mm. MU> E I . nmm^

ftftwso x^m. mmm&m#o mfr&w* mfo%, &ummm * . 8 4

O f

Song poetry has a close relationship with its Tang predecessors. For example,

one of the characteristics of Song shi poetry is that it tends to be full of allusions,

comments and rare vocabulary, having its origin in the Tang poets such as Han Yu

mentioned above. These characteristics also influenced some travel poems, such as

Wang Anshi's "In Reply to Pingfu on Scanning Mount Jiuhua from a Boat" ("He Pingfu

zhouzhong wang J i u h u a ' ^ n ^ ^ ^ - ^ M A ^ ) . 86

For both Chinese original and English translation, see James J. Y. Liu, Major Lyricists of the Northern SungA.D. 960-1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 75-80. Of course, there were also many poems on traveling to the countryside. Li Boqi argues that the number and the quality of the poems on the countryside in the Song were unprecedented. See Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 225.

A previously popular periodization considers the Tang as the golden and the last age of shi poetry. Therefore the Song, the first dynasty after the Tang, represented the beginning of the fall of shi poetry. However, in his book An Introduction to Sung Poetry, Yoshikawa Kojiro argues that Song poetry has its own merits in that it is not a mere imitation of Tang poetry, but in fact has its own distinguishable characteristics. Kojiro, An Introduction to Sung Poetry, trans. Burton Watson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 24.

86 Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 207.

31

The Ming dynasty, especially the late Ming period (mid-16 century to 1644),

witnessed a burst in publication of travel writings. There are various reasons for this

development: first, as commercial travel services became more accessible and affordable,

travel became more popular. Professional explorers, such as Xu Xiake widely travelled

through popular and out-of-way areas. Second, in addition to the obligated travels for

official assignments, literati's "travel-for-pleasure" became an obsession which

DO

distinguished them from other travelers, and writings about their journeys certainly

contributed to their self-fashioning. Third, the development of publication stimulated the

readership of travel writings. The spread of printing even encouraged specialized

collections of poetry on travel, and this trend became outstanding in the Qing dynasty.89

Fourth, several famous literary groups such as the Gong'an -:&; school and Jingling %

W. school considered poems on travel as an important part of their works. The two

schools both emphasized the importance of expressing the author's original and authentic

feelings. The representative of the Gong'an school, Yuan Hongdao iefMvi. (1568-1610),

pointed out the importance of travel for poetry writing in commenting the experience of

another Gong'an poet, his brother Yuan Zhongdao's ^ ^ i H (1570-1623):

He took a boat to the Xiling Gorge and rode a horse to the border area, exhausting the views of Yan, Zhao, Qi, Lu, Wu and Yue. His footprints reached almost half the world. For this reason, his poems and essays greatly improved. His works mostly expressed his unique feelings, not confined to conventions. If it was not flowing out of his heart, he would refuse to set his brush to it. Sometimes his poems perfectly matched the views, and within a short moment, he could work out a thousand words which caught readers' souls.

Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 174-79.

88 Ibid, 182.

89 Li, Zhongguo gudai jiyou, 404, 421-22.

32

ft, ^ # T * , W^p1fH^#, tM J f-W, 2nzK3lC, ^Am^o 90

Zhong Xing H I S (1574-1624) of the Jingling school was also known for his

travel poetry. He was fascinated with Mount Tai and would even risk his life in order to

see the extraordinary view at the top of the mountain: "If not because my life also

belongs to the emperor and the country, /1 would risk my life for the dangerous view on

the Terrace of Giving up Life [on Mount Tai]" JfM.fo&WifflG, MMM.&MM n

During the Qing dynasty, as interest in travel continued to increase among the

literati, some poets became famous for writing about a certain place. For instance, Li E

M i l (1692-1752) was famous for his poems on Hangzhou $L')M; Wu Zhaoqian ^ j ^ H

(1631-1684) focused on the border views and the northeast area; Hong Liangji $k^~n

(1746-1809) traveled in the Xinjiang fH area; and Yang Kui |gf (1760-1804) set his

steps on the Qinghai-Tibetan "WW, plateau.92 This development not only reflected the

consistent popularity of certain scenic spots, such as West Lake in Hangzhou, but also the

geographical expansion of the Qing dynasty to the border areas.

The spirit of self-expression that started in the late Ming continued to be

developed by the Qing poets, such as Yuan Mei MM. (1716-1797), one of the most

90 Yuan Hongdao, "Xu Xiaoxiu sWliMM^sf M, in Yuan Zhonglangquanji M^BR^kM, comp. Yang Jialuo WiM%& (Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1964), 5.

Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 360.

92 Li, Zhongguo gudaijiyou, 451, 472-89.

33

influential poets in the eighteenth century. As the leader of the Xingling '1411 School,93

he advocated spiritual freedom and a strong sense of "self." Traveling that bore such

characteristics naturally became one of his many hobbies: "I am fond of good food,

beautiful women, renovating cottages, traveling, friends, bamboo, flowers, spring and

stones" fcpljfc, Pfe, MMM, MM, M , ttfft&M^94 Yuan Mei accepted many

female disciples who learned writing poetry from him. He even met one of his favorite

disciples Jin Yi j&& (1770-1794) during his 1792 trip to Tiger Hill in Suzhou W'M95

However, a male literatus having female disciples was considered crossing the gender

border and for this he was severely criticized by his contemporaries:

Yuan Jianzhai [Yuan Mei] from Qiantang compiled six juan of the Poetry Collection of the Female Disciples from the Garden of Leisure which includes twenty-eight members, and this collection is included in his Poetry Criticism from the Garden of Leisure. His action, however, was not tolerated by his contemporaries. Liu Wenqing (zi Gongyong) who was from Zhucheng [in modern Shandong] and the District Magistrate of Jiangning at the time, planned to arrest and punish Yuan Mei. Although later Yuan Mei asked to be exempt from punishment, he dared not live in Jiangning for long. For a long time after, he traveled away in the name of visiting mountains to avoid other people's criticism,...

mmM.nM*m&m itm-k^m Am, H-+AA, MA mmm

ft, um&tiLA&M, 96

93 Wang Yingzhi ZE^ /S , Yuan Mei jiXinglingpai shizhuan MM.MHS.MMM (Changchun: Jilin renmin chubanshe, 2000).

94 Yuan, "Suo hao xuanjV'Bxtff-ftd^Xiaocangshanfangxu wenji 'bfelkfeMJCM, 29.1a, in Xiaocangshanfang shiwen ji ^ ^ l l l ^ f j f 3cM., vol. 4 (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1965).

95 Wang Yingzhi, Suiyuan xingling ffiH'|4S (Nanjing: Dongnan daxue chubanshe, 2004), 59-60.

96 Liu Shengmu f [JvK "Er nu dizi shi," in Changchu Zhai suibi K /S jHMi l , sibi H ^ (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 9.857.

34

Interestingly enough, when Yuan Mei was under heavy criticism for having female

disciples, travel helped him to escape censure.

In fact, travel was essential for Yuan Mei's poetics and poetry writing. He often

collected good poems and sought talented poets while he was traveling:

I have traveled for a long time. Whenever I obtained someone's good poems, I would definitely copy them by hand. When I passed Anqing [in Anhui province], I saw the Head Prison Guardian Xu Jian'an's own poem on his fan: "I just used my small salary to finance a tall building, /1 love my relaxing job position which gives me the leisure to plant flowers." When I arrived at Huanggong's tavern in the Plum Blossom Village, I saw Prefect Chen Xingzhai's poem: "Even today, the Huanggong wine is produced, / Still, the flowers described in Du Mu's poem continue to blossom."97At the Kaixian Temple at Mount Lu [Jiangxi province], I saw Cheng Jushan's couplet: "Inside the trees, the moonlight just revealed its shadow, / the mist in the mountain did not show its layers." At the Mount Xiaogu, there is Yu Chushan's couplet: "After entering the temple, I vaguely felt it was raining, / For the whole night I only felt cold."

&mtiK, nx&ft, f e o m&m, %nmtmm)mnm^: mic wmjii&m, gfrMffiffi. umn&m&]ffi, M>m%%x^M*:

P -Was "98

Travel not only provoked the poet's creativity, but also promoted literary contact between

poets. For such contacts, the poets did not necessarily have to meet in person, but

communicated through poetic works delivered by media such as fans or the walls of a

building during one's travel.

97 There was a tavern owned by a person named Huang in Chizhou Jtkj'H, Anhui province. The late-Tang poet Du Mu wrote a poem entitled "Qingming"V# Bj (The day of mourning for the dead) at the Plum Blossom Village that made the place known. See the Chinese original and the English translation in Xu, Song of the Immortals, 138, 376. Mount Xiaogu is located in modern Susong f i j ^ , Anhui province.

Yuan, Suiyuan shihua, 12.13b, in Suiyuan quanji, vol. 5.

35

Woyou: A Matter of Choice and Taste

When literati men were unable to leave home to travel, woyou became a handy

alternative. The term woyou $hM. was coined by a famous painter Zong Bing ^M (375-

443):

He [Zong Bing] loved mountains and waterways, and delighted in excursions to faraway places. In the west he made his halting place Mount Lu in Jingzhou and on the south he climbed up Mount Heng. There he made himself a hut in the hope of following the example of the hermit [Shang] Ziping; but instead fell ill and had to return to Jiangling. He said with a sigh: "I am old and ailing: I fear that I can no longer wander among famous mountains. Now I can purify my heart by contemplating the Tao, and do my roaming from my bed." All that he had visited he depicted in his chamber.

MM, gMo w^mm, m&mm, ^ifoj, M ^ f t s . WM ft ir'SIIzLTp'ilo I0

Due to illness in his late years, Zong Bing was only able to travel through his own

paintings based on his actual journeys in youth. Woyou was the alternative for him since

he could no longer physically go on a long journey. In Zong Bing's well-known

theoretical essay on landscape paintings, the earliest theoretical statement in Chinese on

landscape painting,101 he elaborated on the importance of purifying the heart to change

the landscape in a painting into a real journey in nature: "Thus I live at leisure, regulating

my vital breath brandishing the wine cup, and sounding the lute. As I unscroll paintings

There are various English translations for the term woyou: Dorothy Ko translated it as vicarious or armchair travel, see her Teachers; Richard E. Strassberg translated it as recumbent travel, see Strassberg, trans, and annotator, Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 27. In my dissertation, I will mostly keep the pinyin "woyou" as this term conveys unique Chinese literary tradition. However, I will use these existing English translations alternatively when applicable.

100 Shen Yue ?f$J (441-513), Songshu * H (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 93.1517-18. See Alexander Soper's English translation quoted in Bush, "Tsung Ping's Essay," 137.

101 Zong, "Hua shanshui xu"!l ill 7Kff, in Zhongguo meixue zhongyao wenben tiyao 41 SI i t ^ J L H ^ C ^ S I g , ed. Wang Zhenfu 3LM@L, vol. 1 (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 2003), 215-18.

36

and face them in solitude, while seated I plumb the ends of the earth...." S ^ ^ M S S

*, mmm^, mmmm, mmm, ^f^^mzm, nmM\zm m T 0 purify one's heart is to ultimately free one's spirit inspired by Confucian, Daoist and

Buddhist perspectives. 103 The tight connection between mind and woyou determines its

heavy reliance on imagination which can best function with a free spirit. With

imagination, literati could also enjoy mythical places only described in books and

pictures right at home as Tao Qian $$M (365-427) vividly described in his poem "Du

Shanghaijing"W(]M'M$t (Reading the Classic of Mountains and Seas):

I browse in the record of the King of Zhou; I glance over the pictures of Hills and Seas. In a single look I exhaust the universe; If here I were not happy, what should I do?

Woyou shortens the distance, reduces the danger, and establishes a purified self-identity

and an intellectual community with great minds, which inspire generations of literati.

As an enthusiastic traveler to off the beaten paths,105 the Song poet Fan Chengda

wrote:

Entering E'mei Mountain for the First Time

102 Bush, "Tsung Ping's Essay,"145.

103 Ibid., 134.

104 From Tao Yuanming's poem entitled "Du Shanhai jing"fj[ll|#|M, in Yang Yong ^J, annotator, Tao Yuanmingjijiaojian PSj^PJftfiil l (Hong Kong: Wuxing ji shuju, 1971), 4. 233. The English translation is from A. R. Davis, T'ao Yiian-ming (AD 365-427): His Works and Their Meaning (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 154.

105 See Cong Zhang, "The Culture of Travel."

37

My "bad" habit of indulging in mountains and rivers does not need to be cured, On this journey, I am not sure how far I will travel. I climbed to Shangqing Temple and faced Damian Mountain, Then following Li Bai, I visited E'mei Mountain. Today I become familiar with the predestined affinity of the mountains, Since ancient times, people have been fascinated with fame. I would draw a painting to hang on my wall after returning home, Some other year, I will want to travel again while lying at home.

Fan Chengda was widely traveled, and in 1170, representing the Southern Song court, he

went to the enemy country Jin ^ as an ambassador. After this long journey, he wrote the

well-known sets of jueju M'RJ (quartrains) poems about this trip. 107 However, he was

criticized by another minister for this mission and was forced to leave the central court,

traveling to different posts all over the country. The abovementioned poem was written

when he visited E'mei ttlli Mountain, a Daoist sacred mountain, in Sichuan 0 ) \ \

province. In this poem, Fan Chengda uses the notion of woyou to express his love for

mountain views and, more importantly, the pure spirit in the mountains. For him

recumbent travel was a good strategy for re-purifying his mind while struggling in

complicated politics.

* 106 In Fan, Shihu Jushi.lS. 256-57. Shangqing refers to the Shangqing Temple at the top of Qingcheng WM Mountain, a Daoist sacred mountain, in Sichuan province. Damian refers to Damian Mountain nearby. See Fan Chengda's travel diary "Wuchuan l u " ^ ) | p l $ , in James M. Hargett, Riding the River Home: A Complete and Annotated Translation of Fan Chengda's (1120-1193) Diary of a Boat Trip to Wu (Wuchuan lu) (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2008). Also see Hargett, On the Road in Twelfth Century China: The Travel Diaries of Fan Chengda (1126-1193) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden Gmbh, 1989).

107 See the seventy-two quatrains in Fan, Shihu Jushi, 12.145-58.

38

Not long before his death, Fan Chengda's contemporary Lii Zuqian Sfflai

(1137-1181), a learned scholar in historiography, classics, philosophy and literature, and

a strong proponentof resisting the Jin, compiled previous literati's travel writings into a

book entitled the Woyou EjAJHii(Records of woyou) which includes forty-one literati's

travel stories from previous dynasties.108 In Wang Shenyuan's 3LMM (fl. 13l -cen.)

preface, he claimed that the significance of the book was not just to record celebrities'

travels for travel lovers to enjoy, but to show Lii Zuqian's deep emotion for the fallen

Southern Song dynasty:

...Recently I recorded newly-offered official titles. Sallow or prosperous, his nature suddenly jumped in front of my eyes. If he can be alive for another ten years, Chongfu at Mount Song, Taiji in Yanzhou and Yuntai at Mount Hua will be available for recumbent travels. Considering this, Master Lii's concerns for the declining dynasty never left his mind even for one day, and accompanying this feeling, his intention for woyou appears even more profound.

&mmm,mMMMt)tm&B

Confucian-style clothes and became a hermit in the mountains, devoting himself to

writing and compiling. He was extremely fond of travel and compiling travel literature

was his hobby.111 In fact, in the minds of Ming-Qing literati (before the reign of Emperor

Qianlong, r. 1736-1795), Chen Jiru was considered a respectable mingshi ^idr (famous

gentleman). The concept of mingshi originally comes from Liu Yiqing's SlJitJI (403-

444) Shishuo xinyu ttf$t)f f (A new account of tales of the world):

A famous gentleman {mingshi) doesn't necessarily have to possess remarkable talent. Merely let a man be perpetually idle and a heavy drinker, and whoever has read the poem, "Encountering Sorrow" (Lisao), can then be called a "famous gentleman."

. m

Since the Song dynasty, the concept of mingshi has been defined more specifically; a

mingshi was not only known for his knowledge, but his savoir vivre. 113 As Craig Clunas

points out, the late Ming witnessed a passionate interest in pleasure.] 14 The

recompilation of the Records ofWoyou reflected Chen Jim's playful taste in literature,

scholarship and traveling.

yanzhong de Chen Meigong"H|VH A B S ' t S t l l ^ i l ' ^ , Shoujie Mingdai wenxue guoji yantaohui lunwenji If SmttlC^m^MM^MiXM, ed. He Yongkang ^7%M and Chen Shulu K i t (Nanjing: Nanjing shifan daxue chubanshe, 2004), 368-80.

' "Wu and Li, "Ming-Qing ren,"368-380. Zhang Dejian ' H S H , "Moshi de mingshi fengduChen Jiru chuy i "*1f l : f t j J l f iMM^WS. , Zhongzhou xuekan tWWfl J 1 (2006): 224-27.

112 "Rendan" ft IS, in Liu Yiqing, Shishuo xinyu jiaojian tttf&if 151x11, comp. Xu Zhen'e # H i (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984), 410. The English translation is from Richard B. Mather, trans., Shih-shuo Hsin-yii: A New Account of Tales of the World, 2" ed. (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002), 421.

113 Wu and Li, "Ming Qing ren," 369.

114 Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press), 2004.

40

In the development of literati's use of woyou, the term also expanded from the

personal to the community level: cultivating friendship.

Painting for Zixin

My friend Zhang Zixin loves traveling but often falls ill. He loves friends but has few. Having been ill for several years, he never steps out. Since he has no interaction with people, he takes woyou as his only pleasure. For this reason, he is particularly fond of me and my paintings. Every two days, I will surely send someone to ask about his health, and every five or ten days, I will visit him in person. Each time when I visit, Zixin will always prepare some paper, white silk, brush and an ink stone for me to paint. My scrolls have filled his baskets and cases, but he still continues to ask for more. Once one