Prostitutes and courtesans in the confucian moral universe of Late Ming China (1550-1644)

International Review of Social History

Volumn 56, Issue SPEC. ISSUE 19, 2011, Pages 197-216

  Zurndorfer, Harriet T ^a  

^a LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 82155166413     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: 1469512X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020859011000411     Document Type: Review

References (107)

1. Hsieh Bao Hua, "The Market in Concubines in Jiangnan during Ming-Qing China", Journal of Family History, 33 (2008), pp. 262-290, 272.
2. Jonathan Spence, Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man (New York, 2007), p. 33.
3. Spence's translation here is a synopsis based on other sources, including David Pollard, The Chinese Essay (London, 2000), pp. 90-92;
4. Victor Mair (ed.), The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York, 1994), pp. 597-598;
5. Philip A. Kafalas, "Nostalgia and the Reading of the Late Ming Essay" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, CA, 1995), pp. 137-138;
6. Idem, In Limpid Dream: Nostalgia and Zhang Dai's Reminiscences of the Ming (Norwalk, CT, 2007), p. 95.
7. Xie Zhaozhe, Wu za zu [Five Miscellanies], p. 196
8. Cited by Antonia Finnane in, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850 (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 215-216.
9. Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley, CA, 1998), p. 162.
10. Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth Century China (Stanford, CA, 1994), p. 261. For more information about Yangzhou, in particular during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
11. See the essays in Lucie Olivová and Vibeke Børdahl (eds), Lifestyle and Entertainment in Yangzhou (Copenhagen, 2009).
12. Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou, p. 214.
13. Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure;
14. Harriet T. Zurndorfer, "Old and New Visions of Ming Society and Culture", T'oung Pao, 88 (2002), pp. 151-169. On the role of the publishing industry in the Ming era
15. See Kai-wing Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China (Stanford, CA, 2004).
16. For an overview of Ming urban development, see Fei Si-yen, "Introduction: A New Approach to Chinese Urbanism", in idem, Negotiating Urban Space: Urbanization and Late Ming Nanjing (Cambridge, MA, 2009), pp. 1-27.
17. Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Cambridge, MA, 2004), p. 348.
18. See Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, pp. 251-293.
19. Anders Hansson, Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China (Leiden, 1996), pp. 1-2.
20. The Ming legal code was explicit about this matter. See The Great Ming Code: DaMing lü, transl. by Jiang Yonglin (Seattle, WA, 2005), p. 87, Art. 119, "Marrying Musicians as Wives or Concubines", where is written: "In all cases where officials or functionaries marry musicians as wives or concubines, they shall be punished by 60 strokes of beating with the heavy stick".
21. See also p. 217, Art. 397, "Honorable and Mean Persons Committing Fornication"; Art. 398, "Officials and Functionaries Sleeping with Entertainers";
22. Art. 399, "Purchasing Honorable Persons to be Entertainers". Given the evidence, however, it would seem scholar-officials for the most part ignored these laws.
23. Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, CA, 1997), pp. 352-355;
24. Harriet Zurndorfer, "Concubinage", in Fedwa Malti-Douglas (ed.), Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, 4 vols (Farmington Hills, MI, 2007), I, pp. 328-331. While the sons of concubines were equal to those of the wife in matters of inheritance, the status of their mothers remained "mean". Moreover, a concubine was expected to obey her master's wife.
25. For a study of how a young peasant girl, sold by her parents to work in a high-class brothel (during the early nineteenth century), was educated to become a courtesan and then "married off" by her "madame" to one of her most important clients, see Li Xiaorong, "Woman Writing aboutWomen: Li Shuyi's (1817-?) Project on 'One Hundred Beauties"', Nan Nü: Men,Women and Gender in China, 13 (2011), pp. 52-110.
26. Within upper-class homes, it was also not unknown for maid servants to learn to read and even compose poetry, thanks to mentoring by their female employers. See Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, p. 205.
27. See Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, pp. 253-255;
28. Paul Ropp, "Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China", in Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang (eds), Writing Women in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA, 1997), pp. 17-45, 18;
29. Jean Wetzel, "Hidden Connections: Courtesans in the ArtWorld of the Ming Dynasty", Women's Studies, 31 (2002), pp. 645-669, 648;
30. Judith Zeitlin, "'Notes of Flesh' and the Courtesan's Song in Seventeenth-Century China", in Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (eds), The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Oxford, 2006), pp. 75-99, 75-78.
31. On the rise of courtesans' status in late Ming literati society, see Xu Sufeng, "Lotus Flowers Rising from the Dark Mud: Late Ming Courtesans and Their Poetry" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2007).
32. Victoria Cass, Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming (Lanham, MD, 1999), p. 26.
33. Alison Hardie, "Washing the Wutong Tree: Garden Culture as an Expression of Women's Gentility in the Late Ming", in Daria Berg and Chloë Starr (eds), The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations beyond Gender and Class (London, 2007), pp. 45-57, 52-54.
34. Sarah Dauncey, "Illusions of Grandeur: Perceptions of Status and Wealth in Late-Ming Clothing and Ornamentation", East Asian History, 25/26 (2003), pp. 43-68, 67.
35. Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou, p. 216.
36. Willard Peterson, Bitter Gourd: Fang I-chih and the Impetus for Intellectual Change (New Haven, CT, 1979), p. 143
37. Citing Xie's Wu za zu. Seven wen was the equivalent of 0.007 tael of silver. We may compare the prostitute's earnings here with those of other labourers. According to Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power, p. 53, the daily wage of a silk worker in the period was 0.04 tael. If the prostitute entertained 6 clients per day (at 7 wen each), then her remuneration would not have been all that different from that of the silk worker.
38. Wang Shunu, Zhongguo changji shi [History of Chinese Sing-Song Girls] (Shanghai, 1988), p. 262;
39. Cass, Dangerous Women, p. 25.
40. For an analysis of the legal and illegal conditions of wife-selling during the Ming era and later, see Kishimoto Mio, "Qi ke mai fou? Ming Qing shidai de maiqi dianqi xisu" [Wives for Sale? On the Customs of Wife-Selling and Wife Pawning during the Ming Qing Era], in Chen Qiukun and Hong Liwan (eds), Qiyue wenshu yu shehui shenghuo, 1600-1900 [Contractual Behaviour and Social Life, 1600-1900] (Taipei, 2001), pp. 225-264.
41. See also The Great Ming Code, pp. 164-165, Art. 298, "Kidnapping Persons or Kidnapping and Selling People";
42. p. 200, Art. 360, (section 5);
43. p. 214, Art. 390, "Committing Fornication" (section 6);
44. p. 217, Art. 399, "Purchasing Honorable Persons to Be Entertainers".
45. Hsieh, "The Market in Concubines", p. 276.
46. This same encyclopedia offered instructions for increasing sexual pleasure both in the home and in the brothel. See Wang Ermin, Ming Qing shidai shumin wenhua shenghuo [Common People's Cultural Life during the Ming and Qing Eras] (Taipei, 1999).
47. Another Ming-era daily encyclopedia, Santai wanyang zhengzong [Santai's Orthodox Instructions for Myriad Uses] by Yu Xiangdou (15?-1609), contained specific instructions for merchants visiting the entertainment quarters, from etiquette to guidance about the dangers of financial exploitation. On the use of "daily encyclopedias" during the late Ming
48. See Harriet Zurndorfer, "The Passion to Collect, Select, and Protect: Fifteen Hundred Years of the Chinese Encyclopedia", in Jason König (ed.), Encyclopedias before the Enlightenment (Cambridge, forthcoming).
49. One should not underestimate the monetary value of this kind of exchange. According to Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, p. 342, n. 18, a preliminary investigation of Ming novels shows that selling a daughter as a maid generated more cash than a shop assistant earned in six months. With the money from the daughter's sale, a family could buy enough rice for a year.
50. Huang Miantang Ming shi guanjian [Observations on Ming History] (Jinan, 1985), pp. 346-372.
51. See Hsieh, "The Market in Concubines", p. 273, for estimates of the costs of buying a maid or concubine in the eighteenth century.
52. On late Ming economic and social change, see Brook, Confusions of Pleasure, pp. 153-237.
53. Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, CA, 2009).
54. Ropp, "Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture", p. 43.
55. Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, pp. 353, 355.
56. Ropp, "Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture", p. 43.
57. Beverly Bossler, "Shifting Identities: Courtesans and Literati in Song China", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 62 (2002), pp. 5-37, 32.
58. Peter Bol, "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (Stanford, CA, 1992), p. 3.
59. Howard Levy, A Feast of Mist and Flowers: The Gay Quarters of Nanking at the End of the Ming (Yokohama, 1966), p. 19.
60. Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, p. 349.
61. Mencius, Chapter Jin Xin I ("Exhausting the Heart"), p. 15, as translated by James Legge.
62. See the Chinese Text Project website, maintained by Donald Sturgeon, http://chinese.dsturgeon.net/text.pl?node51791&if5en, last accessed 29 November 2010.
63. Lu Weijing, True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA, 2008), p. 37.
64. Maram Epstein, Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp. 62-74;
65. Halvor Eifring, "Introduction: Emotions and Conceptual History of 'Qing"', in idem (ed.), Love and Emotions in Traditional Chinese Literature (Leiden, 2004), pp. 1-36, 11-13.
66. Hsü Pi-ching, "Courtesans and Scholars in the Writings of Feng Menglong: Transcending Status and Gender", Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China, 2 (2000), pp. 40-77, 51-52.
67. Cf. Kidder Smith, Jr, et al. (eds), Uses of the I Ching (Princeton, NJ, 1990).
68. Hsü , "Courtesans and Scholars", p. 52.
69. Wilt Idema, "'Blasé Literati': Lü T'ien-ch'eng and the Lifestyle of the Chiangnan Elite in the Final Decades of the Wan-li Period", in R.H. van Gulik (ed.), Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period (Leiden, 2004), pp. xxxi-lix; xxxix.
70. For more information on the historical foundations and literary implications of qing in Ming and Qing literature, see Martin Huang, "Sentiments of Desire: Thoughts on the Cult of Qing in Ming-Qing Literature", Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 20 (1998), pp. 153-184.
71. Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story (Cambridge, MA, 1981), pp. 79, 96-97.
72. Li Waiyee, "The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Cultural Ideal", in Widmer and Sun Chang, Writing Women in Late Imperial China, pp. 46-73, 72.
73. Allan Barr, "The Wanli Context of the Du Shiniang Story", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 57 (1997), pp. 107-141.
74. Hsü , "Courtesans and Scholars", p. 44.
75. Hua-yuan Li Mowry, Chinese Love Stories from the "Ch'ing-shih" (Hamden, CT, 1983), pp. 38-39.
76. Hsü , "Courtesans and Scholars", p. 76.
77. Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, pp. 50-51.
78. Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, pp. 500-504.
79. On this couple, see the important study by Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late-Ming Poet Ch'en Tzu-lung: Crises of Love and Loyalism (New Haven, CT, 1991).
80. On Gu Mei, see Victoria Cass, "Gu Mei, the Courtesan Ideal", in Georges Vigarello (ed.), 100,000 Years of Beauty: Classical Age/Confrontations (Paris, 2009), pp. 100-102.
81. Richard Hessney, "Beyond Beauty and Talent: The Moral and Chivalric Self", in Robert Hegel and Richard Hessney (eds), Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature (New York, 1985), pp. 214-250, 239.
82. In contrast, those particular qualities in an upper-class woman's character that were most valued were purity, devotion to service, diligence, frugality, and resourcefulness. See Susan Mann and Cheng Yu-yin (eds), Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (Berkeley, CA, 2001). During the late Ming some men also became obsessed with the relationship between beauty and moral deportment.
83. On this theme, see H. Zurndorfer, "Willowy as a Willow", in Vigarello, 100,000 Years of Beauty, pp. 113-115.
84. Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, p. 259.
85. On Xue Susu, see Daria Berg, "Cultural Discourse on Xue Susu, A Courtesan in Late Ming China", International Journal of Asian Studies, 6 (2009), pp. 171-200.
86. On relations between upper-class wives and courtesans, see idem, "Female Self-Fashioning in Late Imperial China: How the Gentlewoman and the Courtesan Edited Her Story and Rewrote Hi/story", in idem (ed.), Reading China: Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse: Essays in Honor of Professor Glen Dudbridge (Leiden, 2007), pp. 238-289.
87. A pioneering study of these anthologies is Kang-i Sun Chang, "A Guide to Ming-Ch'ing Anthologies of Female Poetry and Their Selection Strategies", The Gest Library Journal, 5 (1992), pp. 119-160;
88. See also idem, "Ming and Qing Anthologies of Women's Poetry and Their Selection Strategies", inWidmer and Sun Chang, Writing Women in Late Imperial China, pp. 147-170;
89. Clara Wing-chung Ho, "Encouragement from the Opposite Gender: Male Scholars' Interests in Women's Publications in Ch'ing China", in H. Zurndorfer (ed.), Chinese Women in the Imperial Past (Leiden, 1999), pp. 308-353.
90. Modern scholars are still very much in the process of recovering the thousands (emphasis added) of writings and collections authored and edited by women since earliest times. Recent work has focused not only on locating the texts written by women, but also on determining patterns of writing and publication. New discoveries are becoming accessible through databases and websites.
91. See, for example, the Ming Qing Women's Writings website http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/mingqing, which makes available works in Canada's McGill University collection and Harvard University's Harvard- Yenching Library.
92. Sun Chang, The Late-Ming Poet Ch'en Tzu-lung, p. 17.
93. Dorothy Ko, "The Written Word and the Bound Foot: A History of the Courtesan's Aura", in Widmer and Sun Chang, Writing Women in Late Imperial China, pp. 74-100, 86.
94. Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, p. 281.
95. Frederic Wakeman, "Romantics, Stoics, and Martyrs in Seventeenth Century China", Journal of Asian Studies, 43 (1984), pp. 631-665.
96. Ropp, "Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture", p. 19.
97. Chow Kai-wing, The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse (Stanford, CA, 1994).
98. Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, p. 357.
99. Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA, 1997), pp. 127-128;
100. Yan Ming, Zhongguo mingji yishu shi [A History of the Courtesan's Art in China] (Taipei, 1992), pp. 130-134.
101. Mann, Precious Records, pp. 127-128.
102. Ko, "The Written Word and the Bound Foot", p. 75.
103. A new phase in the history of prostitution begins in the mid-nineteenth century with the development of Shanghai into a metropolis. See Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Berkeley, CA, 1997);
104. Christian Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai (Cambridge, 2001);
105. Catherine Vance Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850-1910 (Seattle, WA, 2006);
106. H. Zurndorfer, "Review of Catherine Yeh, Shanghai Love", China Review International, 15 (2008), pp. 438-441.
107. For a general historiographical discussion of prostitution in modern history, see Timothy Gilfoyle, "Review Essay: Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to Metaphors of Modernity", American Historical Review, 104 (1999), pp. 117-141.