Table Of ContentSILENT OPERAS
(Wusheng xi)
SILENT OPERAS
(Wusheng xi)
by
LI YU
Edited by Patrick Hanan
©
A Renditions Paperback
© The Chinese University of Hong Kong 1990
All Rights Reserved. ISBN 962-7255-07-6
Renditions Paperbacks
are published by
The Research Centre for Translation
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
General Editors
Eva Hung T.L. Tsim
Printed in Hong Kong
Contents
Introduction...........................................................................vii
An Ugly Husband Fears A Pretty Wife
But Marries A Beautiful One .................................... 1
A Handsome Youth Tries to Avoid Suspicion
But Arouses It Instead.......................................................43
The Female Chen Ping Saves Her Life
With Seven Ruses ..............................................................76
A Male Mencius’s Mother Raises Her Son Properly
By Moving House Three Tim es.......................................97
A Daughter Is Transformed Into A Son
Through The Bodhisattva’s Ingenuity.......................135
An Actress Scorns Wealth And Honour
To Preserve Her Chastity ...............................................161
Introduction
In the history of Chinese fiction, the seventeenth century is the
great age of the vernacular story. To the previous century belong
two of those meganovels (Xiyou ji, Jin Ping Mei) that are the land
marks of Chinese fiction, and to the following century belong two
more (Rulin waishi, Honglou meng), but in the seventeenth, the best
fiction writers turned their hands to writing stories. One of the most
successful was Li Yu (1610/1611-1680), who was also a noted play
wright, essayist and critic.
Li Yu’s fiction is more distinctive than that of his contemporar
ies. He obviously learned much from Ling Mengchu (1580-1644),
but no reader, even now, would be likely to confuse a Li Yu story
with anybody else’s. Li Yu never based his stories on existing
anecdotes, as his contemporaries did. His themes were more social
ly daring than theirs — in some cases, they were even shocking. He
set out to overturn the conventional moral themes, especially those
celebrated in literature. The first story translated here turns the
traditional romance — in which the brilliant and beautiful couple
viii Silent Operas
find and marry each other — on its head. The second story boldly
asserts that the most dangerous kind of official is the incorruptible
one. The third shows us an illiterate peasant woman outwitting her
captors with Odyssean guile. The fourth transfers the traditional
moral themes of chaste widowhood and selfless child-raising to a
homosexual context. The fifth is a mocking treatment — mocking
because it takes its subject to extremes — of the practice of praying
for blessings. And the sixth is a romance between two members of
the same acting troupe who can express their true feelings only
through their make-believe medium. The essential ingredient of a
Li Yu story is the inversion of a social or literary theme.
His inversions, to say nothing of his other surprises, are all in
the service of comedy. He may reasonably be described as the comic
specialist of Chinese literature — in fiction, drama, and the essay.
More often than not, his unrelenting comedy is concerned with the
breaking of social taboos, especially those relating to sex. He loves
to shock his readers, as he skirts, usually successfully, the edge of
vulgarity. It is not surprising that in his famous treatise on drama
he includes an essay on the tasteful treatment of risque material.
Such material must be used, he advises the novice playwright,
because of its inherent interest, but it has to be used subtly and with
indirection.
The most distinctive part of any Li Yu story is its narrator’s voice.
Li Yu personalizes the traditional narrator of Chinese fiction, to the
extent— especially in the prologues to his stories — of making him
sound like a vernacular version of Li Yu the essayist. Like the
essayist’s voice, the narrator’s is sly, mocking, ingenious, self-con
gratulatory — and even self-contradictory.
Silent Operas (Wusheng xi) was the first of Li Yu’s ventures in
vernacular fiction. Its twelve stories were written in 1655 or 1656 in
Hangzhou, where Li Yu was making his living as a playwright. They
were published in a fine edition, with woodcut illustrations, upper-
margin notes, and “critiques” (i.e., comments placed after the story
Introduction ix
itself). A copy of the first edition is preserved in the Sonkeikaku
library in Japan.1 The preface, which is undated, is by an unidenti
fied friend who signs himself Master of Studio Spurious (Weizhai
zhuren). On the first page of the first story, the authorship is
attributed to The Romancer Who Awakens The World (Jue shi
baiguan), a pseudonym of Li Yu’s, and the commentary to The
Libationer of Slumberland (Shuixiang jijiu), the pseudonym of the
poet Du Jun.
Silent Operas was quickly followed by Silent Operas, Second Collec
tion (Wushengxi erji), which evidently contained six longish stories.
The Second Collection no longer exists, but its stories survive in a
combined edition entitled Priceless Jade (Liancheng bi quanji), of
which the Saeki Municipal Library in Japan holds a copy.
The Second Collection was succeeded by Li Yu’s only novel, a
sexual comedy entitled The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rouputuan), of which
one handcopy, that in the Institute of Oriental Culture of Tokyo
University, has a preface dated 1657. The following year Li Yu
completed his third collection of stories, entitled Famous Words To
Awaken The World (Jue shi mingy an) or, alternatively, Twelve Lou
(Shier lou). A lou is a broad term that embraces various kinds of
*A facsimile edition is included in Helmut Martin, ed., Li Yu quanji (Taibei:,
Chengwen chubanshe, 1970), vols. 12 and 13. It was also published separately by
the Guting shuwu in 1969.
2A facsimile editi.on. i.s i ncluded in Saeki bunko s_okan, First Series, Kyuko shoin,
1988. There is also a typeset edition published by the Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1988.
On the dating and editions of the various collections and anthologies of the Silent
Operas stories, see the work of Itoh Sohei, especially an essay published with the
facsimile edition and also his article “Ri Gyo no shosetsu no hampon to sono ryuden
— Museigeki wo chushin to shite,” Chugokugaku kaiKo 36 (1984), pp. 191-206. There
is a possibility that the lieutenant-governor of Zhejiang province, Zhangjinyan, may
have been involved in some way in the publication of the Second Collection. On Li
Yu’s writing in general, see Patrick Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu (Harvard University
Press, 1988).
Silent Operas
X
structures — upper-storey rooms, bowers, pavilions, towers, etc. —
and each of the stories is named after a lou that figures prominently
in it.
After Twelve Lou, to the best of our knowledge, Li Yu wrote no
more vernacular fiction. His one novel and thirty stories were the
product of a three-year period in the middle of a long and prolific
career.
The term “silent operas” was based on “silent poetry”, a name
applied to painting. But for Li Yu, “silent operas” was more than
just an eye-catching title. In his table of contents, there are notes
beside three of the story titles advertising plays on the same subject
matter. One of these plays, based on the story “An Ugly Husband”,
actually survives, entitled You Can’t Do Anything About Fate (Naihe
tian). It was advertised as due to appear soon, and perhaps Li Yu
had already written it by the time of Silent Operas publication. The
other two plays, one of them based on “A Handsome Youth”, were
to follow in due course; they do not exist, and perhaps Li Yu never
got around to writing them. In addition, two stories published in
the Second Collection were made into plays by Li Yu; one was “An
Actress Scorns Wealth And Honour”, which was made into Sole
Mates (Bimuyu). One other story in Silent Operas, “The Female Chen
Ping”, was used to some degree in Li Yu’s play Ingenious Finale (Qiao
tuanyuan), which is primarily based on a Twelve Lou story. Li Yu was
the one Chinese writer who turned his own vernacular stories into
plays.
The stories, however, are far more than mere scenarios. They
follow the imperatives and exploit the opportunities of their own
genre, and Li Yu made vast changes in adapting them for the stage.
For example, the hero of “An Ugly Husband” is metamorphosed
into a handsome man at the end of You Can’t Do Anything About Fate
and the obscure fisherman of “An Actress Scorns Wealth And
Honour” becomes an important official in Sole Mates. In a general
sense, of course, there are certain broad features that unite Li Yu’s
