NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Lu Yitian (jinshi 1836), Lenglu yihua, 286. Wang Qiongling (Qingdai de sida caixue xiaoshuo, 421) cites the same story, “Prescriptions for Injuries from Scalds and Burns.”

2. Lu Yitian’s Medical Discourses from Cold Hut is still in print today.

3. For the relation between the late-Ming novel Plum in the Golden Vase and the daily-use encyclopedia, see Shang Wei, “Making of the Everyday World.”

4. At least, the same prescription appears there. See chapter 3, this volume.

5. See, e.g., Wang Qiongling, Qingdai de sida caixue xiaoshuo, 365ff.

6. For more on the early modernity of this period, see Struve, Qing Formation in World-Historical Time; and Hay, Sensuous Surfaces, 13–14.

7. Widmer, “Huanduzhai,” 77ff.

8. When discussing dramatic works, this study focuses on texts rather than performance history.

9. Flueckiger, In Amma’s Healing Room, 2–4.

10. Barnes and Hinrichs, Chinese Medicine and Healing, 1.

11. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 73.

12. See Xu Zeng, quoted in Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing (which catalogues the manuscripts in the Berlin collection and gives a description of each), 78. See also Zhao Xuemin, “Fanli” (Statement of general principles), in Chuanya quanshu, 7. Some of the Berlin manuscripts show that itinerant healers could display a great deal of familiarity with medical theory (Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 88).

13. The 1593 text is juan 4 of Wang Wenmo’s Scattered Gold Recipes to Help Mankind (Jishi suijin fang), titled “Extraordinary recipes of all sorts based on secretly transmitted skills of immortals” (Michuan shenxian qiaoshu gese qifang).

14. Zhao Xuemin, “Fanli,” in Chuanya quanshu, 7.

15. See Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 77–106.

16. “Book on Selling Plasters” (Mai gaoyao shu), SBB Slg. Unschuld 8011. I refer to the Berlin manuscripts by title (if there is one) and shelf number, since most do not have an identifiable author, compiler, or copyist.

17. See Sima Qian’s biography of Bian Que. Sima Qian, Shiji, 2793 (Mair, Hawai‘i Reader, 177).

18. See chapter 1, this volume; and Leung, “Yuan and Ming Periods,” 129–60. The Qing did have an imperial academy of medicine, but it trained doctors who would be employed in the palace.

19. Chao, “Ideal Physician.” Hymes, “Not Quite Gentlemen?,” 51ff.

20. On the emergence of ruyi between the Song and Yuan periods, and on their distinctive styles of praxis, see Hymes, “Not Quite Gentlemen?”; Scheid, Currents of Tradition; Chen Yuanpeng, “Liang Song de ‘shang yi shiren’”; Leung, “Medical Learning”; Furth, “Producing Medical Knowledge” and “Physician as Philosopher”; and Chu Pingyi, “Song, Ming zhi ji de yishi yu ruyi.”

21. See Hinrichs, “Pragmatism.”

22. Hymes’s term; see his “Not Quite Gentlemen?.”

23. Wu Qian et al., Yizong jinjian, preface, 16. I follow Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women, 41.

24. Wu Yi-Li, Reproducing Women, 55. Many scholars have argued convincingly that medicine was becoming increasingly professionalized in the Ming and Qing. In these periods, it was not sociolegal institutions but expert practice and cultural norms that defined professional identity. See Unschuld, Medical Ethics; Chao, “Ideal Physician”; Furth, “Producing Medical Knowledge”; and Hsiung, “Facts in the Tale.”

25. Flowers in the Mirror was known to contain “simple prescriptions” (danfang) for easy dissemination, and Lu Yitian refers to the okra salve as such. Even though women were excluded from the elite medical training that relied on transmission from master to disciple, they sometimes received training as doctors within clans or lineages so that they could care for young or female family members. Some were even summoned to the palace to treat female members of the imperial household. By the late Ming, highly educated women doctors from elite families began authoring medical writings in the learned tradition (Cass, Dangerous Women, 52–57; Furth, Flourishing Yin, 285–98; Leung, Leprosy, 126–27).

26. Elite status was also claimed by doctors who situated themselves within a lineage of medical practitioners.

27. For a detailed discussion of these schools, see Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics; and Scheid, Currents of Tradition.

28. Many “vernacular” medical texts (and fictional ones, too) were composed in a simple classical Chinese that would have been equally as accessible to the marginally literate as a complicated vernacular.

29. Unschuld, History of Ideas, 7, 50; Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 1–58.

30. In some cases, “figurative logic” might be a better descriptor of the nature of a correspondence but is subsumed by the more general category “literary logic.”

31. These hand-copied medical manuscripts, in a collection at in the Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), have been catalogued by Paul Unschuld and Zheng Jinsheng in Chinese Traditional Healing. Their book summarizes the contents of each manuscript. The manuscripts themselves have not been published, although at the time of this writing most of the manuscripts in the collection have been made available on the library’s website at http://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ (accessed May 27, 2015).

1. BEGINNING TO READ

1. Furth, Flourishing Yin, 23.

2. E.g., ibid.

3. The line between elite and vernacular medicine was not always clear or even static. These are only the causes listed by Systematic Materia Medica, 3.51, 51.25 (in citations of this text, the first number refers to the juan, and the second to the entry within that juan).

4. Unschuld and Tessenow, Huang Di nei jing su wen, 180–83.

5. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 10.

6. E.g., the Systematic Materia Medica cites poetry over 300 times.

7. E.g., the Systematic Materia Medica entry on danggui, 14.01.

8. E.g., zhanghui xiaoshuo was used for traditional novels, to indicate their particular chapter structure, and changpian xiaoshuo for the modern novel, to indicate its comparative length.

9. Some of this poetry is “mimetic” (composed, written, recited, or read by characters in the narrative, as opposed to being quoted by the narrator). Also, some of the poetry is doggerel.

10. “Poetry” here also includes parallel prose, the set-piece descriptions of which were often attacked by commentators.

11. See Plaks, Four Masterworks, chapter 6.

12. There are many kinds of Chinese novel, including what Wilt Idema calls “chapbooks,” which, based on their simple language (often simple classical Chinese), were likely for the moderately literate. Their literary value (and how clearly to draw a distinction between chapbook and novel) is a matter of scholarly debate, but their popularity, as judged by sheer number published, is not.

13. An example of the “anonymous author” issue is the veritable slew of novels attributed to Luo Guanzhong (ca. 1330–ca. 1400), the putative author of The Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi yanyi, 1522). This attribution problem speaks to the demand for authors on the part of readers. Commentary editions went out of their way to present authorial figures for their novels, such as Jin Shengtan attributing Outlaws of the Marsh (aka The Water Margin [Shuihu zhuan]) to Shi Nai’an and the Wang Xiangxu commentary edition attributing Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) to Qiu Changchun. Some commentators created a nameless figure for the author, as did Zhang Zhupo for Plum in the Golden Vase (aka The Golden Lotus [Jinping mei]. Of the six “great novels,” however, none was published under a pseudonym. The closest is Plum in the Golden Vase, whose Xinxinzi (“Master of Delights”) preface claimed the author was “the Scoffing Scholar.”

14. Meir Shahar argues that vernacular novels became a major vehicle through which knowledge of the Daoist and Buddhist pantheons and local cults were propagated. See Shahar, “Vernacular Fiction,” 184–211. Precious scrolls (baojuan), long narrative texts of Buddhist content divided into chapters and written in prose and ci verse, were another vehicle for such transmission, since many were written precisely to propagate a particular sect.

15. The entire idea of defining “literati” to describe the shi involves a circular rhetoric. The term “literati” was originally used by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1620), as borrowed from Matteo Ricci’s Latin term to describe the shi in China, a group for which there was no close equivalent (such as gentry) in Europe. Nonetheless, Hucker defines shi as “a broad generic reference to the group dominant in government which also was the paramount group in society; originally a warrior caste, it was gradually transformed into a non-hereditary, ill-defined class of bureaucrats among whom litterateurs were most highly esteemed” (Dictionary of Official Titles, 421). Fang Yizhi (1611–1671), for instance, defined the shi “as a group that lie between the various officials and the ordinary people” (Fushan wenji qianbian, 3.8a). Fang thought that the majority of customs and values of the ordinary people came to them from the literati. He also felt that literati practices were both crucial and in decline, and wrote that there were increasingly many who regarded the acquisition of literary skills as a “means of tricking the world and achieving success” (3.8b).

16. Zhang Xinzhi makes these later kinds of comments as well in his commentary on The Story of the Stone (e.g., chapter 51). See Feng Qiyong, Bajia pingpi.

17. See Zeitlin, “Literary Fashioning of Medical Authority.”

18. After the fall of the Ming, sequels (xushu) became common, and they clearly served the purpose of commentary in correcting or emphasizing certain aspects, subjects, narrative schema, or “errors” of the original work. See Huang, Snakes’ Legs. Medical texts too, produced sequels to augment, explain, or correct previous editions.

19. The “fiction” category here includes dramatic works. See Chia, Printing for Profit, chapter 5; Brokaw, Commerce in Culture, 514–23; and Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction, 148–50.

20. Chia, Printing for Profit, 186.

21. Brokaw, Commerce in Culture, Appendix G. See also Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction, 143–44, 149.

22. Widmer, “Huanduzhai,” 81–100; Unschuld, History of Pharmaceutics, 170.

23. Widmer, “Huanduzhai,” 80; Chia, Printing for Profit, 230–34.

24. See, e.g., the biographies of Doctor Xiong Zongli (1409–1482) and of his great-grandson Xiong Damu (active mid-sixteenth century) in Chia, Printing for Profit, 226.

25. For a detailed study of the Jianyang printing business, see Chia, Printing for Profit.

26. For instance, characters in The Story of the Stone use almanacs on 1.15, 42.562, 48.642, 62.851, 77.1080, 86.1213, 97.1336, 99.1359, 100.1375, 102.1397, 114.1528, 116.1550, and 120.1600.

27. Smith, Chinese Almanacs, 28.

28. Ibid., 22–23.

29. BSS Slg. Unschuld 8649 “Records in a Jade Casket” (Yuxia ji). Alternately, it is possible that this title means that the information in the manuscript came from the almanac Records from a Jade Casket (Yuxia ji).

30. Such as BSS Slg. Unschuld 8157, 8467, 8670, and 48011.

31. E.g., BSS Slg. Unschuld 8480 “Casual Notes on Medicine and Pharmaceutics” (Yiyao biji) and 8823 “Miscellaneous Records of Good Recipes” (Liangfang zalu).

32. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 787. One manuscript from the 1930s (BSS Slg. Unschuld 8145 “A Complete Book with Guidelines Published in Chinese News Media” [Zhongguo xinwen zhidao quanshu]) is composed almost exclusively of prescriptions and medical information copied from newspapers and their advertisements. Many of these prescriptions, like the one for cholera, were influenced by Western medicine.

33. BSS Slg. Unschuld 8145 (Zhongguo xinwen zhidao quanshu) is particularly concerned with the dangers of sexual intercourse and contains a hybrid of Chinese traditional theories and Western physiological knowledge in a section titled “A Way toward Longevity by Curbing Desires” (Jieyu changshou fa). Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1090.

34. BSS Slg. Unschuld 8033 (“A Collection of Wondrously Effective Remedies” [Souji shenxiaofang]), dating from 1932–45, includes a clipping from a newspaper discussing the treatment of cholera pasted next to a prescription for cholera in the manuscript. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 48.

35. The category of printed dramas was also increasingly popular in this period, and can under traditional rubrics be included with novels under the umbrella term xiaoshuo. For a number of reasons, these contained a narrower range of intertexts than did full-length chapter novels.

36. Shang Wei, “Making of the Everyday World,” 63–92.

37. Hanan, “Sources,” 60ff.

38. Shang Wei, “Making of the Everyday World,” 63–92.

39. Just as often, intentional changes were made when passages were copied into novels.

40. For instances of both, see chapter 3, this volume.

41. See Wang, Cheng-hua, “Art in Daily Life,” 6–10; Oki Yasushi, “Bunka no kenkyu,” 103–7; Shen Jin, “Tushu zhi liutong yu jiage,” 101–18; Yu Yaohua, Zhongguo jiageshi, 766–830; Brokaw, Commerce in Culture, 550; Chia, Printing for Profit, 252.

42. “This Dr. Yang was a well-known quack who was a steady customer for four-ingredient soup, which he gave for toothache, and three-yellows powder, which he gave for stomach problems. His behavior was not very exemplary, and his character even worse. He was a pushy man who insinuated himself into people’s homes and then carried tales about other men’s wives all over town, so most people kept a distance from him, but Chao Yuan felt an affinity for him and always called him when a doctor was needed.” Xizhousheng, Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, 2.9a–b.

43. Xizhousheng, Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, 2.11a. Seeking No Help was a generic term for these encyclopedias, in addition to the individual titles they might have had.

44. It very well may have been that the simple classical language found in some encyclopedias was easier for the marginally literate to read than the dense vernacular of novels.

45. Bréard, “Knowledge and Practice,” 305–29.

46. Chen Yuanpeng, “Liang Song ‘shang yi shiren’ yu ruyi,’” chapter 4; Hymes, “Not Quite Gentlemen?,” 16–20.

47. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 18.

48. Ibid., 4. For the Yizong jinjian, see Wu Qian et al.

49. This section is indebted to a number of observations made by Idema in “Diseases and Doctors, Drugs and Cures.”

50. Ibid., 39.

51. An epidemic is featured at the beginning of Outlaws of the Marsh (Shuihu zhuan), but little direct description is involved, and the problem is not handled “medically.”

52. As when Wei Jing helps Qin Qiong in The Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties (Suitang yanyi, 1695).

53. E.g., Qin Hui in The Life of Yue Fei (Shuoyue quanzhuan, 1684).

54. E.g., Marriage Destinies to Awaken the World; The Unofficial History of a Female Immortal (Nüxian waishi, 1711); Humble Words of an Old Rustic; The Illustrious Heroes (Yinglie zhuan, 1643); and Fairy Traces in a Mundane World (Lüye xianzong, 1771?).

55. Qing, sentiment, has been discussed in great detail by Huang (Desire), Yu (Rereading the Stone), Li (Enchantment and Disenchantment), and others.

56. Zheng En, in Tale of the Flying Dragon (Feilong zhuan), for instance, is warned not to overindulge in sexual intercourse even after he is married.

57. The most famous example is Ximen Qing in Plum in the Golden Vase, who dies from ceaseless ejaculation. There are many other examples, such as The Lord of Perfect Satisfaction and Coarse Stories from Zhulin (Zhulin yeshi, mid-seventeenth century?); The Carnal Prayer-mat (Rou putuan, 1657); The Unofficial History of a Female Immortal; Three Women Named Lin, Lan, and Xiang (Linlan xiang, mid-eighteenth century?); Humble Words of an Old Rustic; and The Precious Mirror for Ranking Flowers (Pinhua baojian, 1849).

58. E.g., The Sobering Stone (Zuixing shi, ca. 1650) and Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor (Doupeng xian hua, late 1660s).

59. See Zeitlin, Historian, 61–97.

60. Sivin describes the medical practice in “Emotional Counter-Therapy.” Fiction abounds with characters that die from excessive anger or laughter, and novels such as Story of the Stone and Humble Words of an Old Rustic feature characters that treat those dangerous conditions by provoking corresponding emotions.

61. The two most famous doctors in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi), Hua Tuo and Yu Ji, treat poisoned wounds almost exclusively. It is curious that the type of doctor they represent is not treated explicitly, as is another famous historical doctor, Cheng Ying of Orphan of Zhao (his status as “doctor” changes in different versions of the story).

62. The novels Marriage Destinies, Humble Words of an Old Rustic, and Three Women Named Lin, Lan, and Xiang describe this practice.

63. Li, Bencao gangmu, 26.06.

64. Ibid., 35.23.

65. On the “reintegration” of apotropaic medicine into the more elite practice based on systematic correspondences, see Unschuld, History of Ideas, 189–228; and Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, “Introductory Essay.”

66. Sutton, “Shamanism,” 222–23.

67. Unschuld, History of Pharmaceutics, 25.

68. “There is a beast here whose form resembles a wildcat with a mane. It is called the Lei and is both male and female. Eating it will cure jealousy.” See Yuan Ke, Nanshan jing chapter, entry 6.

69. Unschuld, History of Ideas, 194–212; Peterson, Cambridge History of China, 9:444.

70. Unschuld, History of Ideas, 216.

71. See Nappi, Monkey and the Inkpot, 81; Murray and Cahill, “Recent Advances,” 1–8.

72. Li, Bencao gangmu, 8.16.

73. Cao Xueqin, Honglou meng, 120.

74. Story of the Stone 3.56.87.

75. Story of the Stone 4.98.372. There were both refined and coarse versions of each kind of soul. In Ding Yaokang’s Sequel to the Plum in the Golden Vase (Xu Jinping mei, 1660), for instance, two different spiritual souls of the same dead person get into a fight.

76. In 1768, when Story of the Stone was being written, there was a pandemic of soul stealing. See Kuhn, Soulstealers, 1–29.

77. Though it is also true that a person who merely fainted was often said to have “died” (si).

78. “Calling the soul” refers both to a sorcerer calling a soul away from the body, and calling a soul back to the body, as a devoted parent might do when a child’s soul has been frightened away.

79. There are different versions of the Qin Zhong story, with more or less emphasis on demons. A “Red Inkstone” (Zhiyan zhai) comment claims that the inclusion of demons that are coming to take him to King Yama of the underworld are not to be taken at face value (as, he implies, they might be in ordinary or popular fiction).

80. “An Easy View on Medical Formulas” (Yifang bianlan), SBB Slg. Unschuld 8453. Quoted in Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1815.

81. Wang Ji’s Stone Mountain Medical Case Records (Shishan yian), Jiang Guan’s Cases from Famous Doctors, Arranged by Category (Mingyi lei’an), and the case histories of Zhou Zhigan and Sun Yikui were all published in the sixteenth century. See also Grant, Chinese Physician, 53.

82. The case histories of many renowned physicians reappear in the Berlin manuscripts. Ye Tianshi’s Compass Guide for Clinical Situations: Medical Case Histories (Linzheng zhinan yi’an) seems to have been particularly popular.

83. Zeitlin, “Literary Fashioning of Medical Authority,” 169ff.

84. Xu Dachun, Huixi Yian, 19a–b. The case is the followed by an addendum, presumably by Xu Dachun, of the prescription for regrowing the penis in fifty days.

85. Li, Bencao gangmu, 14.21.

86. The practice of medicine was generally unregulated by the state, with the exception of notes in the (at least Ming and Qing) legal codes providing for the prosecution of intentional or unintentional malpractice leading to death. Unofficial regulation and market competition is discussed in chapter 3, this volume.

87. Chloranthus spicatus (Thub.).

88. Unschuld and Zheng, 1817.

89. BSS Slg. Unschuld 8071, “Complete Book on Drugs” (Quan yaoshu); Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 905.

90. Most manuscripts with tonic formulas originated in larger cities. In rural regions, people who wrote medical manuscripts for their own practice tended not to record tonics, since they were called upon exclusively to treat existing ailments.

91. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1818.

92. Zhao Xuemin is most famous for his Addendum to Systematic Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu shiyi), in which he added 716 new items that Li Shizhen had not included. Strings of Refined [Therapies] (Chuanya) was a long list of empirical methods and prescriptions from a personal friend, Zhao Boyun, who was an itinerant physician. Published in 1759, it created a tremendous stir among the ranks of regular scholar-physicians and revealed the parallel world of secretly transmitted medical knowledge. Portions of its text are frequently copied into the Berlin medical manuscripts.

93. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1818.

94. “Excerpts Copied from Various Medical Books” (Yixue zachao), SBB Slg. Unschuld 8484.

95. In some of the tales of the strange, it seems likely that what appears fantastic to us (e.g., the habits of ghosts) was presented as practical information.

96. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1817–18.

97. Li, Bencao gangmu, 40.10.

98. Ibid., 50.6. My translations follows, with slight variations, Nappi, Monkey and Inkpot, 116.

99. Ibid., 52.37.

2. READING MEDICALLY

1. The title is a reference to the Han-dynasty historian Sima Qian and his willingness to believe fantastic stories.

2. Yue Jun, “Chi nüzi,” in Yisu, 347.

3. In his preface to Fodder for the Ears, Yue Jun writes that he has simply recorded what he has heard during his wanderings, “wild words not worth attending to. I do not believe in them at all; others do.” Like the eleventh-century poet Su Shi (from whom he borrows the terms “listening wildly” and “talking wildly”), Yue Jun seems to be more interested in their appeal than their veracity. Ibid., 1.

4. Jiang Shiquan’s (1725–1785) play Dreams of Linchuan (Linchuan meng, 1774?) tells the story of a woman so taken with The Peony Pavilion that she becomes lovesick for its author, Tang Xianzu, and dies.

5. Yue Jun, Fodder for the Ears, 347.

6. Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 129. Xiaoqing’s biographers and the “Xiaoqing lore” they created (Dorothy Ko’s term, Teachers of the Inner Chambers), generally framed Xiaoqing as a devotee of Peony Pavilion, who styled herself after the heroine Du Liniang, who dies of lovesickness. Xiaoqing also appears in about seventeen late-Ming and Qing dynasty plays. Pan Guangdan both took exception to and perpetuated the Xiaoqing myth well into the modern period. See Lee, Romantic Generation, 190–99. For Xiaoqing and reading, see Berg, Women and the Literary World, 129–68.

7. On Miss Yu of Loujiang see Xu Fuming, Mudan ting yanjiu ziliao kaoshi. Miss Yu also is a featured character in Jiang Shiquan’s Dreams of Linchuan, a play about Tang Xianzu, his readers, and literary history. On the parallel to Shen Yixiu’s daughter, Ye Xiaowan, see Ko, Teachers, 196–97. See also Idema and Grant, Red Brush, 497–542. Lisa See wrote a novel based on the “three wives” titled Peony in Love (New York: Random House, 2007).

8. Wang Yongjian, quoted in Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 128.

9. Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 128.

10. Usually only the most famous scenes were performed. There are no clear records of a complete performance before 1999 at Lincoln Center. See Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage, 1–29.

11. But one actress is said to have died in the midst of acting a scene from the play. Lam, “Matriarch’s Private Ear,” 382.

12. Tang in his preface mentions three “sources” for his play (at the same time that he does not mention the proximate source, which was preserved in miscellanies in both huaben and chuanqi form). In the play itself, he mobilizes the emperor to vouch for Liniang’s story when Du Bao resists. See Lu, Persons, Roles, and Minds, 97–144.

13. Some, of course, insisted that the “three wives” commentary was written by Wu Wushan. Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 175–79.

14. Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 130.

15. Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 130. Widmer writes that early stories of Xiaoqing (e.g., the Zhi Ruzheng text that was in existence by 1626) state that her reading of Peony Pavilion was a factor in her early death, although the exact way in which it harmed her is unclear (“Xiaoqing,” 115).

16. Men died from reading fiction too, but those deaths are usually described as being caused not by excessive emotion, but by overindulging—the literary equivalent of a medical issue common to men who frequented brothels.

17. Many prefaces to collections of women’s poetry speak of the dangers faced by a woman who was both beautiful and talented. See, e.g., Wang Qi, Chidu xinyu chubian, 2.

18. Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 143. Widmer writes, “Judging from contemporary comments on historical female readers, once a woman was no longer young and charming, the dangers from reading seem to disappear” (“Xiaoqing,” 127–28).

19. Furth, “Blood, Body, Gender,” 48.

20. Accounts in fiction of death from strong emotions were not new in the Qing; examples include death from anger in chapter 4 of The Sobering Stone (Zuixing shi); in A Tower for the Summer Heat (Shi’er lou) a young wife dies of lovesickness during the absence of her husband (juan 9); in Silent Operas (Wusheng xi), a father dies of rage over his son’s bad behavior (juan 8); in chapter 2 of Tower of Myriad Flowers (Wanhua lou), Di Qing’s grandmother dies after she is told her daughter has committed suicide, and in chapter 61 Chen Pin laughs himself to death when his archrival is executed.

21. Sivin, “Emotional Counter-Therapy,” 19; Chen Hsiu-fen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 63–65; Unschuld, History of Ideas, 215–23; Scheid, Currents of Tradition, 164.

22. Grant, Chinese Physician, 137.

23. Gong Xin quoted in Hsiu-fen Chen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 55.

24. Kuriyama, “Epidemics, Weather, and Contagion,” 4.

25. On the “cult of qing,” see Ko, Teachers, 68–112; and Santangelo, Sentimental Education, 186–206.

26. Joy, anger, grief, pondering/thinking/brooding/obsessing, sorrow, fear, fright. These are sometimes confused with the seven emotions often discussed in Confucian texts: joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and desire.

27. Xu, Huixi yi’an, 90. Trans. in Unschuld, Forgotten Traditions, 12. The six excesses refer to the following environmental factors that turn harmful if they enter the human organism in excessive, or unbalanced, amounts: wind, cold, heat, dampness, dryness, and fire.

28. For a history of this notion, see Kuhn, Soulstealers, 96–118.

29. In one Systematic Materia Medica formulation, “Excessive grief diminishes the Vital Energy … Overexertion consumes the Vital Energy … Excessive anxiety makes the Vital Energy stagnate … Excessive Heat causes the Vital Energy to leak.” Physical factors can also cause emotions; Bencao gangmu, 14.09 records the excessive anger of a woman due to adverse ascending of malignant blood stasis. Eating hot food may cause pent-up excessive anger, as in Bencao gangmu, 26.01.

30. Grant, Chinese Physician, 3–19.

31. Quoted in Hanson, “Depleted Men,” 298. These perceived differences between men and women in medical literature were seen as differences of kind (women’s bodies are more complicated, susceptible to different maladies) and also degree (women are more prone to excessive emotions and less able to prevent them from resulting in illness).

32. Ko, Teachers, 99–103.

33. I use the term “consumption” to translate a variety of depletion disorders that generally have the same symptom sets of premodern, European consumption: frailty, weakness, weight loss, sleeplessness, expectoration of blood, feverishness, flushed cheeks, etc. Since it is often the result of excessive emotion or passion that consumes bodily resources, the translated term captures some of the illness mechanism. The emotion “sorrow” was linked to the pulmonary system as early as the first century BC.

34. Hawkes, Story of the Stone, 16. Dore Levy and Chi-hung Yim have both written in detail about Daiyu’s illness, Levy from a metaphorical perspective, and Yim from the standpoint of medical theory and foreshadowing. See also Schonebaum, “Medicine in The Story of the Stone,” 172–79.

35. In chapter 42, the traditional, dutiful Xue Baochai lectures Daiyu about the ethical dangers of reading fiction and drama.

36. Lin Daiyu did not die from reading fiction, but it contributed to and symbolized her overemotionality. She shows that she is a sophisticated reader of many kinds of literature, but fiction and drama raise her expectations with regard to her future and her marriage above what is likely, and provide a kind of code that she shares with Baoyu, leading to episodes of intimacy and painful misunderstanding.

37. Tang Xianzu, “Ku Loujiang nüzi,” 654–56; Zeitlin, “Shared Dreams,” 129.

38. A prime example of such a complaint is Zhang Xuecheng’s comment on Romance of the Three Kingdoms being dangerous because it mixed history and fiction. Another way this problem was spoken of was using the phrase “speaking of dreams to the foolish” (chiren shuomeng), since they take dream for truth.

39. A clear reflection of the effect of the novel was that brigands adopted the nicknames of figures from Outlaws of the Marsh. This novel was banned at the end of the Ming precisely because of this.

40. Quoted in Brokaw, Ledgers, 164.

41. This is one of the main complaints in Liang Qichao’s famous 1902 essay “On the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People” (Lun xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhi guanxi).

42. Written by Wu Bing (?–ca. 1647), this play is about the orphan Xiaoqing, who at sixteen becomes the concubine of a much older man. The man’s wife is jealous. Xiaoqing is abused by the wife, who locks her in the inner courtyard, where she is completely alone. She reads Peony Pavilion in solitude every night, becomes sick, and dies. She then returns to life. The scene from this play that has remained in the performance repertoire is the one in which she enacts reading Peony Pavilion and comments on the play.

43. Chen Yong, “Chusanxuan congtan,” 349–50.

44. Quoted in Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction, 170.

45. Ibid.

46. The Story of the Stone is quite a long novel, almost 2,500 pages in English translation.

Thus, reading it seven times in a month would require a significant effort.

47. Jia Rui misunderstanding of how to properly use the mirror (mentioned in chapter 1, this volume).

48. Story of the Stone, 1.12.251.

49. Those in the mirror are referred to simply as “people,” but I use “demon” to be consistent with the many ghosts and demons in Story of the Stone who are drawn to, or metonymic of, excessive passion, such as those who try to drag Baoyu into the Ford of Error in his dream in chapter 5.

50. Keith McMahon summarizes traditional literary thought (more precisely the “pornoerotic tradition”) on male/female differences with regard to sex by saying that the male was exhaustible and the female inexhaustible, a belief Chinese medical thought did not promote (Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists, 195). The binary in both medical traditions that finds men overspending bodily resources and women internalizing emotion was likely (in part, at least) a reflection of the circulation of men outside of the house, with the women cloistered within it.

51. Honglou meng, 7.

52. To some, both Plum in the Golden Vase and Story of the Stone use a seductive surface to draw readers in so that they can be delivered a message, but for other readers (such as Jia Rui) this does not work (they never wake up).

53. Baochai makes this point explicitly in chapter 42 of Story of the Stone when she reprimands Dai-yu for reading fiction:

Even boys, if they gain no understanding from their reading, would do better not to read at all; and if that is true of boys, it certainly holds good for girls like you and me.… A boy’s proper business is to read books in order to gain an understanding of things, so that when he grows up he can play his part in governing the country.… Not that one hears of that happening much nowadays. Nowadays their reading seems to make them even worse than they were to start with. And unfortunately it isn’t merely a case of their being led astray by what they read. The books, too, are spoiled, by the false interpretations they put upon them. They would do better to leave books alone and take up business or agriculture. At least they wouldn’t do so much damage.

Zhang Zhupo makes similar remarks in his “How to Read Jinping mei” (dufa) essay.

54. In some editions it is the mirror itself that speaks the reproof.

55. Grandmother Jia, in Story of the Stone, seems to think too much reading, regardless of content, is bad for someone such as Baoyu.

56. This recipe occurs in a number of the Berlin medical manuscripts, but it is clearly copied from a printed text. One records the source as the “Subtle Discourse on the Preservation of Life” (Yuan [Yi] sheng weilun), written by the Ming author Li Shicai. See Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1401, 2191.

57. Thanks to Volker Shied for this reference.

58. Complete Works of Ding Yaokang 2:2.

59. Ibid.

60. Hu Hsiao-chen, “In the Name of Correctness,” 78.

61. The postulation that Wang Shizhen was the author grew out of a suggestion by Shen Defu (1578–1642) in his Random Gatherings from the Wanli Era (Wanli ye huo bian, 1606), 222. This notion is also mentioned in the prefatory Xie Yi essay in Plum in the Golden Vase, as it is in many chapter-ending comments. This is the same Wang Shizhen who wrote a preface to Systematic Materia Medica, recommending it to the emperor.

62. For instance, the legend was well known to Lu Xun, who taught it (as legend) in his lectures at Beijing University and records it in the 1934 printed edition of his lectures. Lu Xun, Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilue, 221–22.

63. Zhou Zuoren writes in 1937, “It is popularly believed that illness can be cured by magic. People write ‘evil wind for sale’ [choufeng chumai] on a piece of paper, wrap it round a coin, and leave it by the roadside.… I have personally met with such things” (“Tan guolai,” 94). Other accounts of this practice record that “selling sickness money” would be collected from each member of a family on New Year’s Eve and thrown out of the front gate, which then remained locked until dawn on New Year. Whoever picked up the scattered money would get the illness that had been destined for the family (Esherick, Ancestral Leaves, 134).

64. Some accounts refer to the essence of this worm as the gu.

65. For more on gu poison and its prominent role in medical and demonological literature, see Unschuld, History of Ideas, 46–50.

66. Li Shizhen discusses gu poisoning at length in Systematic Materia Medica, and medical manuscripts offer remedies for it as late as late Qing and early Republican era. BSS Slg. 8799 (“Text on Nourishing Life” [Yangsheng shu]) and BSS Slg. 8217 (“Extraordinary recipes for convenient use” [Jianbian qifang]), respectively.

67. Both Ming and Qing legal codes explicitly recorded punishments for those who engaged in gu poisoning.

68. The majority of the characters in the first twenty (of one hundred) chapters of Plum in the Golden Vase come from the Outlaws of the Marsh (Shuihu zhuan), as does most of the overall plot, but Plum in the Golden Vase is nonetheless an original work by a single author.

69. Analects, 3.20. Jinping mei cihua, preface (xu) 1a–2b. Plum in the Golden Vase, 3.

70. Zhu Xi, preface to Zhongyong in Sishu Jizhu, 4a.4. The Unofficial History of the Scholars chapter comments employ the same or similar language as Zhang Zhupo’s commentary: “From the prologue in the first chapter one can see how the arteries and veins of the entire book are finely interconnected” (chap. 1, n. 1); “The writing really has tendons and sinews that articulate its entire body” (repeated twice; chapter 6, note 7, and chapter 47, note 4). “Chapter Comments” in Rolston, How to Read, 252–90.

71. A similar phrase relating the threads of the plot to the circulatory system was used by Li Kaixian (1501–1568) to describe Outlaws of the Marsh. See Plum in the Golden Vase, 1:456n5.

72. Following Zhang, the Woxian Caotang commentator on The Unofficial History of the Scholars (Rulin waishi) employs the terms “channels and veins” (mailuo) and “tendons and sinews that articulate the entire body” (tongshen jinjie). The Zhang Xinzhi (fl. 1828–1850) commentary on The Story of the Stone (1881) similarly employs the term “channels and arteries” (laimai) in describing the reader’s role as “distinguishing clearly the important channels and arteries” in order to “obtain results.” Discussion of “channels” (mai) also appears in geomancy, and this usage, literally “hundreds of miles of concealed channels,” might refer to geomancy (the body of the earth) rather than to the human body.

73. “Zhupo Dufa,” section 52, in Zhang Zhupo piping diyi qishu, 20b. Roy, Plum in the Golden Vase, 232. Likely unbeknownst to Zhang, he was commenting on the Chongzhen (Xiuxiang) edition of Jinping mei, whose first chapter differs radically from that of the Jinping mei cihua edition.

74. Part of the motivation to make the reader concentrate on rhetoric (wen) over actual content (shi) in Zhang Zhupo (and in Jin Shengtan before him) has to do with the perceived problematic nature of the content of the novel(s).

75. Most likely, Zhu Xi, along with other leading thinkers of the twelfth century, believed this circulatory system to consist of twelve vessels that transported blood, qi, and possibly other substances from the chest and head to the extremities and organs, and vice versa. By the time the notion of circulation was applied to fiction, both the popular form of literature and the medical terms used to describe it were more complex. See Unschuld, History of Ideas, 189–228.

76. Wu Jingzi, 13.1b. The early seventeenth-century short story collection A Needle for Embroidering Mandarin Ducks (Yuanyang zhen) employs similar language (Story of the Stone, 108–11).

77. Manuals on such arts as chess and garden landscaping also contributed technical vocabulary and illuminating anecdotes to criticism of Chinese fiction. See Rolston, How to Read, 14.

78. Zhang Yanhua, Transforming Emotions, 63. This story does not seem to appear in historical accounts. In Zhou’s biography in the History of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi, comp 285–97), for instance, it just says that he died of illness.

79. Wu Jingzi, Unofficial History of the Scholars, chapter 3. Overjoy is treated with fright when his fearsome butcher father-in-law slaps Fan Jin in the face and he regains his senses.

80. Sivin discusses this text in “Emotional Counter-Therapy,” 5–6. Earlier texts remark on “curing emotions with emotions.” The Scholar Serving His Kin (Rumin shiqin, compiled 1217–21) contains some such cases, and its compiler, the physician Zhang Congzheng (1156–1228), was well known to employ this healing method. See Zhang Yanhua, Transforming Emotions, 72–74.

81. From Sivin, “Emotional Counter-Therapy,” 2.6.

82. See Zhu Zhenheng, Danxi xinfa, 5:483. This medical case is also recorded in Wu Kun, Yifang kao, 202–3. See Chen Hsiu-fen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 56. The famous former Han physician Chunyu Yi also records treating a woman suffering from “wanting a man yet not being able to get one” (yu nanzi er bu ke de). Sima Qian, Shiji, 105:2808–9.

83. Wu Kun records a case of a young man suffering from similar derangement and idiocy as a result of sorrow and resentment. See Sivin, “Emotional Counter-Therapy,” 10–11.

84. Yuan Hongdao, “Wenchao,” 14. I follow Naifei Ding, Obscene Things, 84.

85. Jinping mei cihua 1b.3. I follow David Roy, with minor changes, Plum in the Golden Vase 3.

86. Quoted in Plum in the Golden Vase, 430.

87. Ibid., 364–65.

88. Hawkes, Story of the Stone, chapter 23.

89. Li Yu also writes in Casual Expressions that that which one’s nature (benxing) loves obsessively is an antidote to illness because “where there is obsession, there is life itself” (Li Yu quanji, 2.348).

90. Cao, Honglou meng, 2005, 6; Story of the Stone, 50

91. I follow Shuen-Fu Lin in Rolston, How to Read, 286.

92. Li, Bencao gangmu, 3.51, 3.52.

93. Ibid., 18.01, 31.02.

94. E.g., Li, Bencao gangmu, 31.02; 33.13.

95. For the history of these terms, see Wile, Art of the Bedchamber, 19–23.

96. Wu, Yi-li, “The Bamboo Grove Monastery,” 60.

97. A short list of entertainment literature concerned with excessive sex would include The Startled Swan (Jinghong ji, 1590 preface) the main late Ming southern drama to treat the story of Yang Guifei and a major influence on Palace of Lasting Life (Changsheng dian, completed 1688). The Startled Swan features An Lushan procuring aphrodisiacs for Tang Ming Huang (scenes 11 and 12). The novel Marriage Destinies to Awaken the World depicts Zhenge having a miscarriage because of the aphrodisiacs Chao Yuan brought (chapter 4). In Humble Words of an Old Rustic, Su E takes aphrodisiacs by mistake and falls ill (chapter 17). A Precious Mirror for Ranking Flowers also features a scene describing aphrodisiacs and their dire consequences (chapter 58), to say nothing of Plum in the Golden Vase, The Carnal Prayer-mat, Coarse Stories from Zhulin, and so on.

98. Medical texts copied for use in urban areas often featured patent medications with fixed formulas printed in fangshu or available at large pharmacies. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 2447.

99. That aphrodisiacs and tonifying medicines were similar if not the same medicines is evident as late as the 1843 The Illusion of the Story of the Stone (Honglou huanmeng), which rewrites Jia Baoyu as a sexually and romantically successful lover who has six wives. A friend of his from the south gives him an aphrodisiac to keep him from “harming himself” (Huayue chiren, Honglou huanmeng, 19.288–9).

100. SBB Slg. Unschuld 8167, under the heading “pills the led to the beating of an old man,” da laoer wan; 1141–42), and SBB Slg. Unschuld 8429, in which the same prescription appears under the heading “priceless pills to safeguard the true [essence]” (wujia baozhen wan). Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1753–54.

101. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1534.

102. The foreign monk who gives Ximen the aphrodisiac proclaims its tonifying affects:

If used for long, your appetite will be insatiable;

It will stir your testicles and stiffen your organ.

In a hundred days your hair will regain its color;

In a thousand days your stamina will be augmented.

It will strengthen your teeth and brighten your eyes;

And its dangers:

If you are not able to believe these claims,

Mix it in with rice and feed it to your cat.

For three days it will indulge itself without restraint;

On the fourth day it will be too overheated to stand it.

A white cat will be transformed into a black one,

Its excretory functions will stop and it will die. (Plum in the Golden Vase, 3.200)

103. The monk has a purple head, sunken eyes, wears a flesh-colored gown, has a trickle of jade-white mucus dribbling from his nose, and so on. Commentary points out the similarity to a penis: “Now, what does he look like?” (Zhang Zhupo piping diyi qishu, 49.12a).

104. Xiao Jing refers to Juzhong as such. (Xuan Qi jiuzheng lun, juan 6).

105. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 2373.

106. The “Biblio Materia Medica” seems to belong to a parodic genre, along with the likes of Materia Medica: Prostitutes of Essentials (Bencao jiyao, 1754), a Japanese book imitating Wang Ang’s Materia Medica: Provision of Essentials (Bencao beiyao, 1694) and expounding the nature, use, and effects of prostitutes in Edo-era Japan; and the “Money Materia Medica” (Qian bencao, mid-Qing), a piece written in the style of a pharmaceutical monograph elaborating on the effects of the “drug” money.

107. Zhang Chao, “Shu bencao,” juan 12, 40a–41b.

108. Ibid., 41a–b

109. Zhang Chao, in spite of his own warnings, published a collection of short literary language fiction (chuanqi): New Tales of Yu Chu (Yu Chu xinzhi, eighteenth century).

110. Fei Cidu (Fei Mi, 1623–1699) was a member of a counter-neo-Confucianism movement and was a strong advocate of practical knowledge.

111. Three of the people mentioned are military leaders, two good, one bad. The good ones are likened to the proper use of novels as medicine. Growing up, Han Xin and Yue Fei were both poor, fatherless, and self-taught. Zhao Kuo, on the other hand, was the son of a general, widely read in military strategy, but without military experience. Wang Anshi (1021–1086) saw in the Rites of Zhou (Zhou li) an all-encompassing system for realizing the common good, though he was criticized by many Southern Song commentators for this belief.

112. Ibid., 41b.

113. Ding, Obscene Things, 108.

3. VERNACULAR CURIOSITIES

1. Zhang Jun, Qingdai xiaoshuo shi, 131. Columbia University, Harvard University, and the National Library of China have editions that they date to this period on the basis of its Kangxi-era (1661–1722) publisher, Zuile Tang. Sun Dianqi also records that it is a work of the Kangxi period, as does Wang Qingyuan. Zhao Chunhui claims the author was Wang Jia (zi, Jieren; 1610–1684) (“zuozhe chutan,” 83).

2. Tian Zhiwen, Caomu chunqiu yanyi, 25; Ōtsuka, Zōho chūgoku tsūzoku shōsetsu, 155–56.

3. Zhu Yixuan, Zhongguo gudai xiaoshuo, 621; this volume is recorded in Zhongguo tongsu xiaoshuo zongmu tiyao, 570.

4. Wang Qingyuan et al., Xiaoshuo shufang lu, 87. See also Ōtsuka Hidetaka, Zōho chūgoku tsūzoku shōsetsu, 155–56.

5. There are two editions that Wang Qingyuan is unable to date, one that employed woodblock printing, and one that was printed lithographically, a technology introduced into China in the late nineteenth century. The latter may also date to this late Qing era, when popular fiction from the Ming and Qing was published en masse in Shanghai. See Pan Jianguo, “Metal Typography,” 562–70.

6. Among the medical texts that predate the Caomu chunqiu yanyi and have similar titles are Ji Han’s Observations of Herbs and Woods in the South (Ji Han nanfang caomuzhuang), Taiqing’s Herbal Prescriptions (Taiqing caomu fang), Lu Ji’s Book of Herbs (Caomu shu), and Ye Ziqi’s Herbs (Caomu zi).

7. Caomu chunqiu yanyi, “zixu,” 1a–b.

8. Ibid., 1a.

9. Bartholomew, “One Hundred Children,” 71.

10. Story of the Stone, chapter 62, 211.

11. See Shang Wei, “Jinping mei,” 194.

12. West and Idema, Orphan of Zhao, 219–20.

13. Li, Bencao gangmu, 14.01. Li Shizhen also quotes Chen Cheng (fl. 1086–1094), Materia Medica with Additional Comments (Bencao bieshuo) as saying, “When both blood and vital energy are displaced, danggui can lead them back and bring peace to the overall condition. So the name danggui, ‘should come back,’ can be explained as blood and vital energy ‘should go back to their original places.’”

14. Li, Bencao gangmu, 12.10. Although Story of the Western Wing predates Systematic Materia Medica, I use it for the sake of consistency and because it quotes many texts prior to the Yuan, when the play was written.

15. Li, Bencao gangmu, 40.4.

16. Ibid., 12.03.

17. I follow the translation of West and Idema, Story of the Western Wing, 220, with minor changes.

18. Wang Shifu, Jiping jiaozhu xixiang ji, 137.

19. Ibid., 137.

20. According to Story of the Western Wing commentators, many sanqu “conceal the names of medicines” (yincang yaoming), and all with didactic intent. Ibid., 138.

21. At first glance, the Story of Mr. Sangji by the Ming author Xiao Guanlan (early sixteenth century?) appears to be a person’s biography. However, almost every phrase employs the name of a drug. The first few sentences read, “Mr. Sangji [tree fungus], a man of Changshan [Radix dichroae febrifugae], was kind and straightforward [houpu; magnolia officinalis] toward others. When young, he had far-reaching ambition [yuanzhi; milkwort], he attended school and read several hundred books [baibu; stemona], as he got older, he became extraordinarily intelligent [yizhi; Alpinia oxyphylla, a type of ginger].”

22. Li Zhuowu pingben Xiyou ji, 28.4b.

23. Plum in the Golden Vase, chapters 33 and 61 (2:269–70 and 4.38–39).

24. Chen Jingji sings one such poem in Plum in the Golden Vase, 2.271.

25. Tian Zhiwen, Caomu chunqiu yanyi, 25.

26. The Berlin Medical Manuscript collection has a copy, in the back of which is written information about real estate in the area, including how much land was occupied by a school, and how much it paid in fees for journals and newspapers in 1931 and 1932. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 912–20. The China Academy for Traditional Chinese Medicine has a copy of the drama Illustration of Numerous Pharmaceutical Drugs (Yaohui tu), dated 1935.

27. Rhythmic-block melodies (bangzi qiang) was a form of local opera found in Shangxi, Henan, Hebei, Shandong, and so on. I generally use the words “drama,” “play,” and “opera” interchangeably because I focus on content, audience, and the written text without regard for literary merit or generic distinctions.

28. Seven of the 881 medical manuscripts in the Berlin collection copy these plays, though some are missing one or two scenes.

29. Unschuld and Zheng (Chinese Traditional Healing, 175) call them this.

30. Ibid., 921.

31. Disseminating medical information was a widely recognized form of philanthropy that allowed one to demonstrate personal virtue and concern for humanity. See Wu, Reproducing Women, 75–81.

32. Shang zhijun et al., Lidai zhongyao, 470, 504.

33. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1312.

34. The earliest edition of a medical play that I have been able to find is a Yaohui tu edition dated 1840, unless it is for some reason spurious. Lu Dahuang included a version of Caomu zhuan in his edition of Pu Songling’s Works (Pu Songling ji, 1962), though no copy exists from that period. See Jia Zhizhong, “Questioning the authorship of Caomu zhuan,” 26–27.

35. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 2647.

36. The Yixue juyu, “Medical learning, Comprehension by analogy,” has a different plot but the characters and the style is similar to those of the Caomu chunqiu. The Yaoxing xi, has essentially the same plot but recasts some of the characters (Gancao falls ill after his encounter with four robbers, etc.).

37. The surname Jin is likely from a vernacular name for the plant identified by Li Shizhen, jinchai shihu (“Shihu in the shape of a hairpin”). Li, Bencao gangmu, 20.01.

38. By which I mean a body of a politic nature as well as a politic of a bodily nature.

39. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 177.

40. The name Guolao for Gancao was first recorded in the Additional Records of Famous Physicians (Mingyi bielu), according to Systematic Materia Medica. Li Shizhen quotes Tao Hongjing, “Gancao is a principal drug among all the drugs.… It is also called Guolao or ‘the imperial instructor.’ Gancao is similar to the imperial instructor, who is not the monarch, but the monarch follows his instructions. Hence the name Guolao.” Li, Bencao gangmu, 12.01.

41. The shiba fan also circulated in poetic form to aid memory, such as “the 18 [substances whose effects are known to] oppose each other, in rhyme” (shiba fan ge), recorded in the medical manuscripts.

42. Li Liangsong, Zhongguo chuantong wenhua, 330–31.

43. In Chinese medicine, all drugs are toxic to a certain extent, and originally toxicity was a measure of efficacy or power (Cullen and Lo, Medieval Chinese Medicine, 327. “Toxic” refers to undesirable or unpleasant side-effects, or simply to the powerful effects of the drug.

44. The distinction between 密陀僧 and 彌陀僧is lost in some manuscripts, and in the novel version of Caomu chunqiu, suggesting that later editors and copyists were less concerned with linguistic play than were the author(s).

45. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 177–78.

46. Caomu chunqiu, act 1. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 178.

47. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 179.

48. Ibid.

49. Quoted in Leung, “Medical Instruction,” 145.

50. The “white in man” refers to the white sediment in human urine, good for treating (in various versions of the play) mouth sores. Systematic Materia Medica also records that it is a cure for consumptive corpse transmission (chuanshilao). Li, Bencao gangmu, 52.11. Different versions of the play recommend somewhat different drugs, but all of them are in keeping with the form of the particular aria (in this case some form of excrement).

51. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 182 (with small modifications).

52. One play has “stomach” instead of “heart,” which must have been a change made by a copyist with a knowledge of medicine.

53. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 181 (with small changes).

54. Ibid., 182. Dragon bones were usually fossilized animal bones, perhaps from elephants (mammoth), rhinoceros, hipparion (ancient three-toed horses), gazelles, or cows.

55. Jia and Yang argue that the language of the plays was so simple and clear that they must have been meant for performance. If not, they were clearly meant to be read by the broadest possible readership. Qingdai yaoxing ju, 458, 492.

56. Caomu chunqiu, act 10.

57. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 181.

58. Unschuld, History of Pharmaceutics, 230–32. The “Story of Flowery Knotweed” (Heshouwu zhuan) of the Tang dynasty is a political allegory composed around a person bearing the name of a an innocuous plant that has risen to become a much-cherished pharmaceutical substance in Chinese traditional medicine; readers in later times failed to see the original purpose of the author, Li Ao, when he selected a plant without pharmaceutical effects to convey his political message.

59. Wudang, a small mountain range in the northwestern part of Hubei Province, is known historically for its many Daoist monasteries. Wudang is also known as the home of a number of Chinese martial arts (Wudang quan). In the modern period, Chinese martial arts have generally been categorized as belonging to Shaolin or Wudang.

60. Presumably the author chose Hujiao (pepper) as the name for the foreign country because hujiao was produced in countries to the west of China. Hu also is a general marker for things foreign. Li Shizhen says hujiao is produced in countries in the Nanfan area, as well as southern Yunnan, and he quotes Tang Shenwei as saying that it comes from Mojiatuo (Madhyadesha; northern India) to the west.

61. Li, Bencao gangmu, 28.10.

62. In the Systematic Materia Medica, Jin Yinhua is found as an alternate name for rendong, and Jin Lingzi is known as lian.

63. Li, Bencao gangmu, 8.14.

64. Described in chapter 14.

65. Somewhat paradoxically, it also evokes the doctor Sun Simiao, who according to legend rode a tiger.

66. Li Gao quoted in Li, Bencao gangmu, 17.01.

67. Wang Kentang, Zhengzhi zhunsheng (Guidelines for treating illness) 29b–30b. Wang quotes the doctor Liu Zonghou (Liu Chun) in retelling this story. The citation comes from his Subtle Meanings of the Precious Machine (Yuji weiyi), 50 juan, completed in 1396. For Liu’s original quotation, see Liu Chun, Yuji weiyi (Siku Quanshu edition), juan 43:3b–4b. Wang argues that these drugs are appropriate only for stagnations of blood, not for loss of blood or qi. Thanks to Yi-Li Wu for providing this reference.

68. By “popular,” I mean that they are employed hundreds of times in prescriptions listed in Systematic Materia Medica; “infrequently” means that they occur fewer than twenty-five times. In Li, Bencao gangmu, Shihu is known as Jinchai.

69. Wu Cheng’en, Xiyou ji (Renmin Wenxue edition), 831.

70. Monkey is not necessarily a quack, but he does represent an antiestablishment attitude toward medicine (consistent with his carnivalesque character). He says of the medical officials that they are all idiots (Wu, Xiyou ji, Renmin Wenxue edition, 831).

71. Xiyou zhengdao shu, 69.7b.

72. Zhang Shushen, Xinshuo xiyouji commentary, 69.8a.

73. Wujin san is a prescription for prenatal and postnatal illness mentioned by Li Shizhen from the “generally helpful prescriptions (puji fang) that refers to soot as “hundred grass frost.” It also calls for the urine of a boy.

74. Urine from a white horse (baimani) is recorded in Li, Bencao gangmu, as being good for treating a number of diseases, including abdominal hard masses (caused by overeating), as well as those in the breast.

75. Li Zhuowu pingben Xiyou ji, 14a–b. The prefatory material in this commentary edition stresses the large number of “joking” comments in it, but this particular statement seems accusatory, if also funny.

76. Wu, Journey to the West, 276.

77. Li, Bencao gangmu, 5.15. Sourceless water was particularly good for treating hot diarrhea. Sourceless water is one of forty-three different kinds of water discussed in the Systematic Materia Medica. The medical official says that sourceless water is taken from a well, which is also what Li Shizhen says, but Monkey contradicts him, saying that sourceless water is rainwater that has never touched the ground, perhaps parodying the adage “When you drink water, think of the source.” Bencao gangmu, under “sourceless water,” also mentions that the Strategies of the Warring States (Zhanguo ce) records that Doctor Changsang Jun fed his student Bian Que “water from the upper pond” (shangchishui), and after that Bian Que could see clearly the Five Viscera (Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, and Kidneys) and the Six Bowels (Gall Bladder, Stomach, Large Intestine, Small Intestine, Urinary Bladder, and Sanjiao [Triple Burner]) of his patients. Monkey also recalls another diagnostic master, Sun Simiao, the “medicine king,” who used the technique of “dangling the thread” to read the pulses of the king while sitting in another room.

78. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1497.

79. Ibid., 930.

80. Ibid., 950.

81. Ibid., 930. Mo, or wujin, good for stopping treating bloody feces, urine, coughing blood, nose bleeds, seminal emission, kewu (“visitor’s hostility) and zhong’e (“struck by the malign”), postpartum blood loss, and melancholy. Black ink mo was made using soot from burning pine, which perhaps explains the alternate name “pine smoke” for “black gold.”

82. Goldschmidt, Evolution of Chinese Medicine, 173–98.

83. Li Yu, Wusheng xi, 93–106.

84. Ibid., 333. This is effectively the opposite of the treatment for the “stone virgin”; see chapter 4 of this volume.

85. Jue Mingzi is also compared to Chen Ping (and Zhuge Liang) in Caomu chunqiu yanyi.

86. It seems that the commentators on Xiyou ji were not among the group of readers who were familiar with medicine. They repeatedly mention that the author “must have read Nanjing and Maijue every day in order to know how to take the pulses so well” and that “this medicine reflects a thorough knowledge of bencao literature.”

87. I am not alone in my belief that Caomu chunqiu yanyi is far inferior to the caomu plays in terms of the depth of pharmaceutical content. Zhijun, Qianlian, and Jinsheng, Lidai zhongyao wenxian jinghua, 504. It may be that the novel was written first, with the plays developing what they found in the novel into more entertaining and sophisticated literature, and therefore a more useful medical information delivery system. It may also have been that the proliferation of the plays in the late Qing caused a revival of interest in the novel.

88. Li, Bencao gangmu, 15.21.

89. Ibid., 35.47.

90. Ibid., 17.01.

91. Some might say that Li Shizhen was actually classifying the important natural world, since he includes a discussion of some objects, such as crickets, which were not used as medicines but were, Li explains, relevant, since people kept them for fighting or singing. Nappi, Monkey and Inkpot, 53.

92. Metailie, “Bencao gangmu of Li Shizhen,” 223–24.

93. Liu Dabai, Du He Dian, 211–18. Originally published in the newspaper the Dawn (Liming).

94. Idema and Haft, Guide to Chinese Literature, 228.

95. Mentioned by Lu Xun in volume 12 of collected works, Lu Xun quanji, 12.229. Mao Dun called it a symbolic novel in the style of Flowers in the Mirror.

96. The only medicines that are used to treat ailing characters are fantastical, such as “Immortal grass” (busicao), which cures all ailments, but even this seems to have had no special significance. Busicao revives the Han soldiers from all sorts of illnesses, but is also an alternate name for Mai Mendong, a drug cast in this novel as one of the evil, invading generals—another example of the chaos this novel brings on itself.

97. One reader began underlining all of the characters’ names in red ink but gave up before finishing the first chapter. Jiang Hong, Caomu chunqiu yanyi edition in the Columbia University Library.

98. One obvious reason is that because there was money to be made reprinting all kinds of texts (as a result of lithography and new mass market), many previously obscure texts got reprinted.

99. Du Ji, Caomu chunqiu yanyi, 1.

100. “Seeking out the hidden” appears in commentaries from quite early on and became particularly prominent in the late Qing and early Republic in allegorical or roman à clef commentaries of novels. Rolston, Traditional Chinese Fiction, 78.

101. Cf. chapter 2, this volume, for traditional novels that also claimed to alleviate melancholy and engender enlightenment.

102. Ding Yaokang, Xu Jinping mei, “Fanli,” 8.

103. Xizhou sheng, Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, “Fanli,” 7, 8.

104. See Yang Yu-Chun, “Re-orienting Jinping mei,” 205–12.

105. And it is still available today.

106. Many modern editions excise them and put in their place the phrase “two first-rate and wonderful aphrodisiacs,” as in the 1981 Renmin Wenxue edition. Xingshi yinyuan zhuan, 881.

107. Reprinted in chapter 36 of Flower Shadows behind the Screen (Gelian huaying). Soon after Sequel to Plum in the Golden Vase was banned in 1665, a revised version of it was published, titled Flower Shadows behind the Screen (Gelian huaying, late seventeenth century), which strategically deletes all the passages with political associations, such as those concerning the Jurchen invasion. The narrator’s discussions of karmic retribution are also omitted, removing many of the concepts fundamental to Ding Yaokang’s original version.

108. See, e.g., Gong Tingxian, Wanbing huichun, 438.

109. E.g., Xu Qilong, Xinke quanbu, 20:135; Xu Sanyou, Wuche bajin, 18:87, 109; Yu Xiangdou bu qiu ren, 26:503.

110. Wu Huifang indicates that all Wanli-era encyclopedias include one volume named “Fengue.” However, by the Chongzhen period, only one encyclopedia includes a “fengyue” chapter. It then disappeared, and is not found in Qing encyclopedias (“Minjian Riyong leishu,” 111).

111. Handlin-Smith, Art of Doing Good, chapter 4; Wu Yi-Li, “Qing Period,” 161–208; Scheid, Currents of Tradition, chapter 2.

112. Unschuld, Medical Ethics, 62–114.

113. Chen Hongmou, Xunsu yigui, 26a.

114. BSS Slg. Unschuld 8288, “Miscellaneous Hand-copied Notes from People’s Homes” (Minjia zachao), for instance, contains many long passages copied from the novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi yanyi).

115. SBB Slg. Unschuld, 8503. “A Guide to Medications for Treating the Foreign Bug” collects all references to medical and pharmaceutical knowledge in this novel Record of Wiping Out Bandits (Dangkou zhi), which was also known as Supplement to the Shuihu [zhuan] (Hou Shuihu), and also as Conclusion of the Shuihu zhuan (Jie Shuihu zhuan).

116. Widmer, “Modernization without Mechanization,” 65–68.

117. Wang Qingyuan et al., Xiaoshuo shufang lu, 18–162.

118. Shahar, Crazy Ji, 268n1. These dates are all from Wang Qingyuan, Xiaoshuo shufang lu, 1–184.

119. Just as prescriptions with figurative aspects do not seem to be practical, ala Baochai’s “cold fragrance pills” in Story of the Stone.

120. Lu Yitian, Lenglu yihua, 223.

121. Medical cures are discussed in Li Ruzhen, Jinghua yuan, 26.3b–4a, 27.1a, 27.3b–4a, 29.1b–3b, 30.1a–2a, and 95.1b–2b.

122. Colloquies on the Novel (Xiaoshuo Conghua), published in New Fiction (Xin xiaoshuo) between 1903 and 1905. Quoted in Hsia, “Scholar-Novelist,” 463n26. Ying, Wanqing wenxue congchao, 211.

123. Li, Bencao gangmu, 16.10.

124. Quoted in Wang Qiongling, Sida caizi, 420.

125. Wrote Xiaren, who contributed a series of notes on fiction to Liang Qichao’s (1873–1929) journal, New Fiction. Quoted in Hsia, “Scholar-Novelist,” 463.

126. Li Ruzhen, Jinghua yuan, chapter 9.

127. Sun Jiaxun, Jinghua yuan gongan bianyi, 98.

128. Mid-Jiaqing period medical works Jiji danfang and Heshi jisheng lun also record this prescription, changing its name to “Ping’an san.”

129. Xu Dachun, Xu Lingtai yixue quanshu, 401.

130. The medical manuscripts have many examples of the type “secret instructions, must not be given to others indiscriminately” (mijue buke qing chuan yu ren). Some private lists of recipes have a seal printed at the end of each formula stating, “Keep secret [hu feng]!” The relationship of the names Li Ruzhen and Li Shizhen is unclear but could not have been lost on the author of Flowers in the Mirror, or on those of his readers who were interested in his medical prescriptions.

131. Chen Yiting, “Kan Li Ruzhen de yiyao yangsheng guan,” 165–69. The prescription for “five yellow power” (wuhuang san) of chapter 91 does stem from recipe books. The Ming dynasty work Formulas for Universal Benefit lists it, as does Selected Materials for the Preservation of Health (Jisheng bacui fang, 1315). The prescription was comprised of huangdan, huanglian, huangqin, dahuang, huangbai (Chinese cork tree), and ruxiang (frankincense), for “curing wounds inflicted by a stick zhangchuang decreasing swelling, drawing out pus, and reducing swelling.” The prescription in Flowers in the Mirror is the same, but with the addition of xionghuang (realgar), perhaps in yet another attempt by novelists to outdo their predecessors by adding more. To include this prescription with the major ingredients all containing the word “huang” also ties it to caomu literature, word games, and the literary logic employed in them to entertain and delight.

132. See Huang, “Xiaoshuo as ‘Family Instructions,’” 67–91.

133. Li Ruzhen, Jinghua yuan (Renmin Wenxue edition, 27. 124–25).

134. Ibid., 126.

135. The manuscript of “On Seasonal Diseases. All [Therapy] Patterns Prepared for Use” ([Shibing lun. Beiyong zhufa], SBB Slg. Unschuld 8315) does not copy the complete prescription, though. Perhaps the copyist did not read the novel, and got the prescription from some intermediary source, or perhaps he was remarking to himself the uniqueness of the prescription by copying only the ways in which it differed from what he already knew. Unschuld and Zheng (Chinese Traditional Healing, 1489) date the manuscript to 1882.

136. Li Ruzhen, Jinghua yuan. Shu An’s comment (Waseda University Library edition, 29.38a). See also Sun Jiaxun, Jinghua yuan gongan bianyi, 98.

137. Li Ruzhen, Jinghua yuan, 26.120.

138. Ibid., 55.257–58.

139. Chen Yiting, “Li Ruzhen de yiyao yangsheng guan,” 165–69.

140. Zhao Xuemin, Chuanya quanshu, 11.

141. The case of quacks in premodern China was probably similar to that described by Roy Porter in seventeenth through nineteenth century England, where the term applied to doctors who hawked nostrums in public, i.e., “quacking in the market.” Porter shows that those doctors disparaged as “quacks” in fact had the same university medical training and beliefs as their detractors, and that their medical therapies were also the same. Accusations of quackery thus cannot be taken literally as accurate assessment of what a practitioner did or was. Instead, this was a rhetorical device used by one set of practitioners to disparage another. Xu Dachun’s claims similarly conveyed accusations about a self-promoter’s lack of propriety, with the implication being that someone as crass as to promote himself would also not be above selling fraudulent cures. Porter, Quacks.

142. Unschuld, “Chinese Retributive Recipes,” 328–40.

143. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 843, 1747, 1855.

144. “Cao Xueqin diagnoses illness” (Cao Xueqin kanbing). The dating of these stories is uncertain, but some are as late as the 1960s, like those in Zhang Jiading, Tales and Legends of Cao Xueqin (Cao Xueqin chuanshuo gushi).

145. Systematic Materia Medica lists qin as sweet, cold, and nontoxic. It is used in a variety of cures, topically for various bites and toxins, and for curing cases of pathogenic humidity and heat.

146. “Medical Virtue of Mr. Celery” (Qinpu Xiansheng de yide) in Dong Xiaoping, Honglou meng de chuanshuo, 56–57.

147. This likely refers to the area west of Beijing where Cao is supposed to have lived.

148. All Manchu households were placed into one of eight administrative or military divisions known as “banners.”

149. “The Origins of Cao Xueqin.” in Dong Xiaoping, Honglou meng de chuanshuo, 8.

150. When Cao Xueqin names prescriptions, there is inevitably a comment in the margins—“well-named pill” (hao wanming)—suggesting that the prescription’s value was primarily literary and not practical. E.g., the comment on Bao-chai’s “cold fragrance pill.” Feng Qiyong, Qixin Chen, and Xueqin Cao Bajia pingpi, 159.

151. Chu Renhuo, author of the The Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties (Sui Tang yanyi, 1695), saw his own novel as a kind of moral “account book” (zhangbu). Chu, Renhuo, Xiuxiang Sui Tang yanyi, preface.

4. DISEASES OF SEX

1. Jinping mei cihua, 79.17b. Plum in the Golden Vase, 639.

2. One of the most prominent physicians of the Jin-Yuan period, Zhu Zhenheng, who is often -cited in Plum in the Golden Vase and other novels, wrote a preface to his “Views on Extending Medical Knowledge” (Gezhi yulun, ca. 1347) explicitly warning against the dangers of these excesses, and devoted the first two chapters to “admonitions on food and drink” and “admonitions on sexual desire.”

3. For instance, the corrupt official Cai Jing’s name puns on money (cai) and semen (jing); Ximen Qing leaves behind a few pieces of loose silver after an assignation with Pan Jinlian, with “leaves behind” (liu) punning with “dribbling” (liu), equating silver and semen; and there is a similar equation between excessive sexual desire (yin) and silver (yin) throughout the text, reinforcing the equation between sex and money. See Satyendra, “Metaphors of the Body”; Roy, Plum in the Golden Vase, vol. 1, introduction.

4. The commentator Zhang Zhupo uses the terms “retribution” (bao and baoying) to describe the author’s rendering of Ximen Qing and other characters “dufa.” See Rolston, “How to Read Jinping mei,” 210, 214, 232, 240.

5. Yinhan, for instance, which can be translated as “genital coldness,” is discussed in a variety of medical texts as a cause of female and male infertility. Here, it is likely caused by yang depletion and a consequent abundance of cold. Doctors counteract yinhan with heating drugs (including those used as vaginal suppositories). Some of these texts refer to the malady as “shanghan from lasciviousness jiase shanghan].” As for bian du, there is an entire essay on bian du in the Formulas for Universal Benefit (juan 290) that seems to be copied from Easy and Direct Formulas of Mr. Yang Shiying (Renzhai zhi zhi, Song dynasty, edited in Ming, juan 23). The eminent Ming doctor Sun Yikui wrote an explicit comparison of bian du and yangmei (syphilis) in his Pearls of Wisdom from the Crimson Sea (Chishui xuanzhu, 1584, juan 30); and another towering Ming medical figure who explains bian du in detail is Wang Kentang, in his massive compendium Guidelines for Treating Illness (Zhengzhi zhunsheng, compiled 1597–1607, juan 111). Bian du means something along the lines of “toxic accumulation in the groin,” is manifested by swelling, nodes, and sores in the region of relief. Thanks to Yi-Li Wu for these references. Bian du was identified by “swelling and nodes that have developed because of collections resulting from a clash of decayed essence/semen with blood.” Effective Formulas from Generations of Physicians (Shiyi de xiaofang, 1337), quoted in Zhang Zhibin and Zhibin and Unschuld, Dictionary, 65.

6. For instance, Li Guijie uses the term “boils and chancres from heaven” (tian pao chuang), which in the Ming and Qing designated ugly sores on the skin caused by yangmei or mafeng (Jinping mei cihua, 74.7a, 79.18b). See Leung, Leprosy in China, 256n.15. Descriptions of sores accompanied by the “white turbidity” (baizhuo) that later became known as gonorrhea are detailed in Qi Dezhi’s Essence of Surgery (Waike jingyi) of about 1335. Dikötter argues that while gonorrhea seems to have been known and accurately described much earlier than syphilis, “none of these infections, however, was recognized as being transmitted by sexual intercourse [until syphilis became prevalent], although Tang physicians realized that sexual promiscuity encouraged the spread of contagious disease. Called painful urination [linzhuo], gonorrhea was thought to be limited to penile pain during urination and viscid discharges from the urethra. According to Chinese pathology, it was a benign disease that was due to an attack of wetness-heat evil on the urinary bladder” (“Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” 341; Van Gulik, Sexual Life, 182; Wong, “Notes on Chinese Medicine,” 1918, 353).

7. Such diseases included boils and sores/ furuncle (dingchuang), evil sores (echuang), yangmei sores (yangmei chaung), leprosy (fenglai), scabies/ringworm (jiexuan), heat sores (rechuang), ulcerated yangmei sores (yangmei gan xie), carbuncles (yongju), lumbar dorsal carbuncles (jifabei), leprosy with tinea and sores (dafeng xuanchuang), “sores all over the body which are even worse on the scrotum and both feet,” and illnesses like bian du [bian du deng zheng]. Li, Bencao gangmu, 17.21.

8. Li, Bencao gangmu, e.g., 30.28.

9. Description under dafeng zi (Li, Bencao gangmu, 1.48).

10. Li, Bencao gangmu, 4.21.

11. Bian du was discussed often in the Comprehensive Record of the Section on Medicine (Yibu quanlu), a work of the Qing, and mentioned a few times in the Continuation of the Cases from Famous Doctors, Arranged by Category (Xu Mingyi lei’an, ca. 1770), but does not seem to occur much if at all in fictional works after the Ming.

12. This story appears in Words to Structure the World (aka Tales of the World’s Exemplars; Xingshi yan, 1632) and was likely written in the 1630s by the largely unknown writer Lu Renlong, “A Husband Leaves His Wife,” 37.12b.

13. Grant, Chinese Physician, 103–54. Stone Mountain Medical Cases was the first collection of medical cases published. An influential medical text, often reprinted, it was also included in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries.

14. Jinping mei cihua, 100.6b; Zhang Zhupo piping diyi qishu, 100.6b.

15. Jinping mei cihua, 100.12b; Zhang Zhupo piping diyi qishu, 100.13a.

16. Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics, 7.

17. Leung, Leprosy in China, 32–33.

18. Volkmar, “Concept of Contagion,” 149–50.

19. Leung, Leprosy in China, 38.

20. Gong Tingxian, Wanbing hui chun, 966. The term “careless while traveling” probably refers to men carelessly seeking sexual pleasure during their travels. The consequence would be contagion by sexual intercourse or contact with materials contaminated by the sick.

21. Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 35–38.

22. Gong Tingxian, Jishi quanshu, 1066.

23. Zhibin and Unschuld, Dictionary, 639.

24. Golden Mirror of the Medical Lineage, juan 73.

25. Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics, 92–103.

26. See Kuriyama “Epidemics,” 10.

27. The ideas in this section are largely taken from Leung, “Evolution.”

28. Dikötter, Sex, Culture, and Modernity; Furth, A Flourishing Yin; Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics.

29. By the late Qing, yangmei was known to be sexually transmitted, though some still believed it to be caused primarily by transgression. One prescription in the Berlin medical manuscripts (“Good Recipes that Have Proved to Be Effective” [Yingyan liangfang], SBB Slg. Unschuld 8082, late nineteenth century) for treating “red bayberry toxin knot” (yangmei jiedu, presumably syphilis) is followed by the comment that it is “transmitted from a prostitute boat” (changchuan chuanlai), which is to say that professional groups transmitted certain relevant prescriptions among themselves, and that in this case the cure for syphilis was transmitted from the prostitutes to the doctor. In this case the prescription and the illness share a vector. Some medical manuscripts from the Republican period show a great deal of interest in syphilis and venereal disease but do not include antibacterial prescriptions.

30. Li, Bencao gangmu, 18.27.

31. Ibid.

32. Li, Bencao gangmu, 18.27. Li writes, in the same entry (tufuling), “Nowadays persons who love lewdness [haoyin zhi ren] often suffer from red bayberry poison sores [yangmei du chuang].

33. Zeitlin, Historian of the Strange, 61–65.

34. Yi Ming, Essentials of Domestic Living, chapter on “protecting life” weisheng.

35. As Hanson notes, Chen exchanged the original 梅 mei, of yangmei and meichuang, meaning “Myrica berry” that rotting sores resemble, for the homonym mei 黴, meaning “damp” or “moldy,” and subsequent publications wrote the title as mei 霉, or “rotten,” pointing also to the meaning “corrupt” (Speaking of Epidemics, 88).

36. Chen Sicheng, Meichuang milu, 10. Based on the 1885 edition.

37. Ibid., 6.

38. Chen Sicheng, Meichuang milu, 10–11. Translation modified from Leung, Leprosy in China, 46.

39. Evil qi was pathogenic evil that could harm from outside or inside. Drugs used to treat it also treated demons, spirit beings, and gu poison. It was also related to “wind evil,” “summer heat evil,” “dampness evil,” and so on.

40. Zhang Hong in Yang Bin, “Zhang on Chinese Southern Frontiers,” 172–73.

41. Wu Qian et al., Yizong jinjian, 52.78.

42. The idea that chuanran contamination could be a factor in the spread of epidemic diseases began to be discussed in the seventeenth century. See Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics.

43. Xiao Xiaoting, Fengmen quanshu, 1:9a.

44. Kuriyama, “Epidemics,” 9.

45. Ibid.

46. “The Bell Doctor’s Handbook” (Lingyi shouce), SBB Slg. Unschuld 8253; Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1340.

47. “Hand-copied Miscellaneous Pharmaceutical Recipes” (Yaofang zachao), SBB Slg. Unschuld 8167. Syphilis becomes a topic of great interest to a wide variety of doctors in the late Qing and Republican periods. One manuscript (“Handcopied Miscellaneous Medical Recipes Transmitted through the Generations” [Shichuan yifang zachao], SBB Slg. Unschuld 8138), copied at the beginning of the Republican period, records seventy prescriptions, thirty of them for venereal diseases such as syphilis. Late Qing manuscripts often focus on opium smoking, syphilis, malaria, scrofula, and dysentery. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1087.

48. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 64–65.

49. Few dispute the fact that the arrival of syphilis in Europe coincided with the return of Columbus’s men from Hispanola in 1493, but whether the two events are connected is hotly debated. There is similarly no clear geography of the disease’s transmission to China, but it was likely first introduced by (Portuguese?) traders to the ports of Guangdong in the sixteenth century, as a 1502 medical work recorded that it was called “boils of Guangdong” (guangchuang) by the people of the lower Yangzi region.

50. Lai was used to refer to a variety of contagious diseases, including leprosy and syphilis.

51. Quoted in Zhou Zuoren, “On Passing the Itch,” 45.

52. Ibid.

53. Leung, in Leprosy in China, details how the concept of “selling the sickness” had a strong effect on medical theory.

54. Wu Jianren, Ershi nian mudu, 547–49.

55. Leung, Leprosy in China, 118.

56. Quoted in Leung, Leprosy in China, 116.

57. Quoted in Zhou Zuoren, “On Passing the Itch,” 45.

58. It also points to a male anxiety toward female sexual activity, particularly outside of the bonds of marriage.

59. For the cult of female chastity, see Theiss, Disgraceful Matters.

60. Furth, “Androgynous Males,” 1. Daily-use encyclopedias invariably had chapters on “foreigners” (zhuyi, waiyi) depicting a great variety of biological variation. Encyclopedias also always contained chapters on fertility and birth (taichan).

61. The Berlin medical manuscripts attest to this with their great variety of aphrodisiac recipes and prescriptions for conceiving.

62. The concept of the “stone maiden” persisted well into the modern period. Tsung writes, “Some naive girls are talked into having [premarital] sexual relations with men to prove that they are not ‘stone girls’ [shinü]” (Moms, Nuns, and Hookers, 44). Chai Fuyuan details the varieties of “stone maidens” in his ABC of Sexology (Xingxue ABC), 115–16.

63. Li, Bencao gangmu, 52.37.

64. The fifth or “pulse” is a woman with highly erratic menses, often the result of an emotional condition.

65. A variant of “stone maiden” (shinü) is “solid maiden” (shinü). Shen Yaofeng, author of Master Shen’s Essentials of Medicine for Women (Shenshi nüke qiyao, 1850, with preface by Wang Shixiong), suggests that “drums” can be cured in infancy by surgery (19).

66. Furth, “Androgynous Males,” 20–22.

67. Ibid.

68. Li Yu, Bian nü wei er, in Li Yu, Silent Operas, 137–59.

69. All of the text in quotations is from the Thousand Character Classic. (Peony Pavilion, scene 17).

70. The locus classicus from Zhuangzi reads, “The emperor of the South Sea was called Swift, the emperor of the North Sea was called Sudden, and the emperor of the central region was called Chaos [hundun]. Swift and Sudden from time to time came together for a meeting in the territory of Chaos, and Chaos treated them very generously. Swift and Sudden, devising a way to repay Chaos’ generosity, said, “Human beings all have seven openings through which they see, hear, eat, and breathe. Chaos alone is without them.” They then attempted to bore holes in Chaos, each day boring one hole. On the seventh day, Chaos died. Zhuangzi, 98.

71. In Li Yu quanji, juan 9, 195–97.

72. Sommer discusses Qing court cases that center around “stone maidens,” in which the woman not only symbolizes chaos but literally creates practical dilemmas for the marriage market and the legal system (“Gendered Body,” 20–22).

73. Suchen recommends a similar treatment for the emperor, who suffers depletion from too much intercourse with women. He prescribes the emperor to lie down with one young boy hugging him from behind, and another hugging him from the front, thereby infusing him with yang energy. (Xia, Yesou puyan, chapter 96).

74. Xia, Yesou puyan, chapter 94. Quoted in McMahon, Misers, Shrews, and Polygamists, 160.

75. Xia, Yesou puyan, chapter 96, 1099. Huli Zheng points out that this is clearly a process of domestication, of taming barbarians, but it is also about restoring bodily order, curing non-Chinese sexual bodies with a Chinese sexual body (Encountering the Other, 102).

76. Xia, Yesou puyan, chapter 102, 1178.

77. Ibid.

78. Feng Menglong, “The Fan Tower Restaurant,” 275–90. This story is also discussed by Zeitlin in Phantom Heroine.

79. Zeitlin, Phantom Heroine, 136.

80. Tang Xianzu, Mudan ting, 1. As Huang explains, in the late Ming, the term qing included “sexual desire,” but was gradually divorced from this meaning in Qing-era fiction (Desire and Fictional Narrative, chapter 3).

81. When responding to the judge’s question about Liniang’s cause of death, the Flower Spirit explains, “She was tenderly entwined in a dream of a young scholar when a chance fall of petals startled her into wakefulness. Passionate longings brought about her death.” See Tang Xianzu, Peony Pavilion, scene 23, “Infernal Judgment,” 130. The phrase “to die from longing for sex/desire” appears in the title of the huaben story that was the probable source for the play.

82. Hua Wei, “How Dangerous Can the Peony Be?,” 751.

83. Tang Xianzu, Mudan ting, juan 7 and 16. Phrases such as hailin de, niniao qulai, huaming liulu, and nian huanong liulin refer to dribbling urine, and thus sometimes are interpreted by medical historians as referring to the penile discharges associated with biomedical gonorrhea. The last phrase, though, can also point to dallying with women and becoming depleted through such dalliance. Appropriating a term for male behavior and applying it to virginal Du Liniang, even if it does not refer explicitly to biomedical syphilis (as Birch believes it does; see Tang Xianzu, Peony Pavilion, 28, 76), emphasizes her longing as a sexual one and its attendant maladies.

84. See Tang Xianzu, Mudan ting, 74n25.

85. Tang Xianzu, Tang Xianzu quanji, 644–45.

86. Ibid. I follow Huang, Desire, 5.

87. Elsewhere, Tang Xianzu even expressed his admiration for Tu’s romantic lifestyle; see his poem “Huai Dai Siming xiansheng bingwen Tu Changqing” in Tang Xianzu, Shiwen ji, juan 7, 202–3.

88. Li, Bencao gangmu, 1.11. In at least one encyclopedia, too, yangmei is listed under the heading “good prescriptions for [diseases] of retribution [yingyan liangfang].” “Spitting blood and blood in the phlegm” is also listed under this category.

89. See Martinson, Pao Order, 136–218.

90. E.g., such commentaries include the following: “How could the retribution due a character as vicious as Ximen Qing be complete without his wife becoming a prostitute?” (Zhang Zhupo piping diyi qishu, chapter 18); “It is certainly fitting that the imperial commissioner’s retribution [huanbao] should come in the form of Lady Lin’s adultery with Ximen Qing”; “.… Clearly [Ying Bojue] is another Ximen Qing who will suffer a similar indescribable retribution for his own sins” (chapter 23); and “Ximen Qing does not have a single relative from his own family. The retribution [baoying] meted out by Heaven is cruel enough, but the author’s hatred for him is also virulent” (chapter 86).

91. Jinping mei cihua, 3.1a.

92. Jinping mei cihua, 3.1a; Plum in the Golden Vase, 1.62. This poem is not in the Chongzhen or Zhang Zhupo editions, likely because of a change to most of the verse passages rather than any systematic attempt to eliminate references to venereal disease, since such mention is not excised from prose passages.

93. Zhang Zhupo piping diyi qishu, 1269.

94. Ibid., 1296.

95. Xu Dachun, “Bing you guishen lun,” 1.38a–b.

96. Zeng Pu, Niehai hua, 343.

97. Berg suggests this major theme in Carnival in China, 112–14.

98. Ibid., 1–3.

99. The close homophones tian bao chuang and tian pao chuang (boils and chancre sent from heaven) were often used interchangeably. The former are discussed in Marriage Destinies in chapters 11, 153; 25, 337; and 93, 1136. “Retributory chancres” (baoying chuang) are mentioned in chapter 66.

100. Chapters 6, 7, 25, 39, and 93.

101. Chapter 39.

102. Xizhousheng, Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan, chapter 39, 508–10.

103. Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan, chapter 93, 1135.

104. Ibid., chapter 93, 1136. This description is similar to those of Ximen Qing’s illness causing his bone marrow to dry up. The illness of “penis shrinkage” is not acknowledged by elite medicine but was apparently widely recognized among the general population. It is recorded in one medical manuscript as resulting from “excessive sexual intercourse.” Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 798.

105. Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan, chapter 93, 1136. Cheng An exhibits venereal ulcers (yukou), a symptom also displayed by Li Ping’er in Plum in the Golden Vase.

106. Dohi, Beitrage, 32. While the use of mercury had moments of popularity and disrepute, the side-effects of taking it were often misdiagnosed as symptoms of syphilis itself.

107. Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan, chapter 93, 1136.

5. DISEASES OF QING

1. Plum in the Golden Vase, 17.349.

2. Roy translates this as “a consumptive inflammation of the bones.” Plum in the Golden Vase, 1:349–50; Jinping mei cihua edition, 17.7b–8a; Chongzhen edition, 214. The Zhang Zhupo commentary (Gaohetang piping diyi qishu, 17.8b) has “points to yin depletion leading to inner heat.” The phrase that Dr. Jiang uses, “necessarily of the category of the family of [fatal] melancholic [disorders]” is taken from a story titled “The Story of Mr. Penglai” (Penglai xiansheng), which contains a similar plot scenario. The story is found in the Emulative Frowns Collection (Xiaopin ji), the postface to which is dated 1428. But the phrase in “Story of Mr. Penglai” refers to the deadliness of unrestrained emotion, and it was the author of the Plum in the Golden Vase who made it clear that it was “bone steaming” that was related to the six passions and the seven emotions, and in particular static congestion yujie. “The Story of Mr. Penglai” does suggest that the (fatal) melancholy syndrome was contagious, with the suggestion to bury the clothes and gifts of the beloved dead for fear of infection or contagion (ranji).

3. Plum in the Golden Vase, 1.349; 363 (Roy).

4. Ibid., 1.351.

5. Jinping mei cihua, 59.15a.

6. Plum in the Golden Vase, 5.412.

7. In his survey of kewu, Cullen shows how what he terms the “non-rationalistic discourse” of this children’s illness persisted in certain contexts. Cullen, “Threatening Stranger,” 39–62.

8. Plum in the Golden Vase, 4.59.

9. Ibid., 4.33, 46.

10. Ibid., 4.49.

11. The authorship is uncertain, but it seems that Xue Ji (1487–1559) is the likeliest candidate. It contains entries on over three hundred medicinal substances and is illustrated by almost five hundred paintings in color.

12. Shiwu bencao, late Ming Wellcome Library, image number L0039387.

13. Jinping mei cihua, 17.4b.

14. Plum in the Golden Vase, 4.35.

15. Ibid., 4.50.

16. BCGM 12.31.

17. Ibid.

18. It is also made clear that white jiguanhua is to treat diseases with whitish discharge, and red flowers are to treat those with bloody discharge. BCGM 15.26.

19. Xifeng is approximately the same age when she dies, perhaps twenty-six.

20. Plum in the Golden Vase, 4.42.

21. Ibid., 4.46.

22. Ibid.

23. The heishu was a generic term for the esoteric numerological and divinatory texts used by yin-yang masters and diviners to ascertain information about the past and future lives of the deceased, based on the dates of their birth and death.

24. This refers to cases in which the earthy branches that occur in a person’s horoscope and the five phases that are correlated with them are thought to conflict with each other.

25. He also predicts that in her next life, she will die from a fit of anger at age forty-one. Plum in the Golden Vase, 4.76.

26. Ibid., 3.489.

27. Ibid., 3.340–42. Jinping mei, 54.18b–19a.

28. Plum in the Golden Vase, 3.346.

29. Hanan believes that chapter 55 was edited first, and then chapter 54 was edited by a different person. Hanan, “Text of the Chin P’ing Mei,” 32.

30. “Five overstrains” can refer either to “overstrains of the five Viscera” (liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys), which can happen from exhaustion or excessive emotion, or, to the “five pathological conditions” (overstrained seeing, lying, sitting, standing, and walking, which will damage the blood, the vital energy, the muscle, the bone, and the tendons, respectively). The seven impairments are too much food, impairing the spleen; too much anger, causing adverse flow of vital energy and impairing the liver; prolonged sitting in a damp place, injuring the kidneys; cold weather or drinking of cold beverages, injuring the lungs; too much sorrow and anxiety, injuring the heart; excessive wind and rain, cold, and summer heat, impairing the constitution; and great shock, impairing thought.

31. BCGM 3.34. “Qi” in this context also refers to semen, as in the phrase “astringing primordial qi,” or stopping seminal emission.

32. Grant finds that exhaustion (lao) is the leading factor in male illness, with 40 percent of male patients diagnosed with it, and 20 percent of female patients. Grant, Chinese Physician, 69–90.

33. Xu Dachun, Huixi Yian.

34. Furth, Flourishing Yin, 300.

35. Ibid., 48.

36. Zhu Zhenheng, Additional Discourses on Extending Knowledge through the Investigation of Things (Gezhi yulun, comp. 1347), “Seyu zheng,” 8a.

37. Medical manuscripts sometimes refer to involuntary seminal emission as “to let down the white” (diaobai), and they were also quite concerned with this malady.

38. Shapiro, “Puzzle of Spermatorrhea,” 557.

39. SBB Slg. Unschuld 48024.

40. E.g., Ms. 8138, 8747, 48024, and 8180.

41. Shapiro, “Puzzle of Spermatorrhea,” 553.

42. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 922.

43. Annals of Herbs and Trees, play, scene 10.

44. “Treatise on Yang Being Abundant and Yin Being Insufficient” in Zhu Zhenheng, Gezhi yulun, juan 2, 4b–5a.

45. Quoted in Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 2709.

46. Compiled by Wang Kentang (1549–1613). Shapiro, “Puzzle of Spermatorrhea,” 557.

47. Zhu Zhenheng, Danxi zhifa xinyao (Danxi’s Method from the Heart), juan 66.

48. Ibid.

49. Quoted in Shapiro, “Puzzle of Spermatorrhea,” 558.

50. BCGM 3.52

51. One edition of the recension of Sequel to Plum in the Golden Vase is titled Flower Shadows on the Curtain [Demonstrating] Retribution over Three Lives, Newly Engraved with Commentary.

52. E.g., those who suffered from yangmei were being punished for their licentiousness. Smallpox, for instance, was surrounded by popular rituals that called attention to the uncleanliness of sex and of the female reproductive body. Parents were to abstain from intercourse during their child’s illness, and menstruating women were to keep out of the sickroom. This ritual is observed (and violated) by Xifeng’s husband, Jia Lian, in Story of the Stone (1.21.424). For more on retributory illnesses, see Schonebaum, “Medicine,” 172–79.

53. Story of the Stone, 1.12.251. Eifring translates both as “lovesickness,” but it is important to keep in mind that they also have implications of sin and retribution (“Psychology of Love,” 300).

54. “Melancholy distempers” in Hawkes’s translation (Story of the Stone, 1.8.189).

55. Hawkes translates it as “retributory illness” (Story of the Stone, 1.12.251). For a discussion of Jia Rui, see chapter 2 of this volume.

56. Story of the Stone, chapter 12.

57. Wang Ji cited in Grant, Chinese Physician, 112.

58. See Shapiro “Puzzle of Spermatorrhea,” 560.

59. That is, except as the depleting object of man’s uncontrolled desire and expenditure. Shapiro, “Puzzle of Spermatorrhea,” 562.

60. E.g., BCGM 13.11, 52.29. Some drugs treat continual uterine bleeding as well as seminal emission (e.g., 9.29, 13.11, 14.21, 35.07, 51.15, 52.29). One drug, if overdosed, causes seminal emission in men and uterine bleeding in women (BCGM 20.03). Li claims of many drugs that they treat seminal emission due to consumptive disease (laoji, chuanshi, guizhu) and depleted states.

61. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 2746.

62. Furth, Flourishing Yin, 79.

63. Dai Yuanli, Michuan zhengzhi yaojue, juan 5.

64. Zhang Junfang, Yunji qiqian, juan 32, quotes Medical Ethics Discussed by Doctors Throughout the Ages (Lidai Mingyi lun Yide) to substantiate this claim.

65. BCGM 3.34.

66. Quoted in Furth, Flourishing Yin, 71–72.

67. Quoted in Furth, “Blood, Body, Gender,” 304.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid., 305.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid., 306.

72. Yi-Li Wu has pointed out to me that some medical texts, such as the Yizong jinjian, may have used 蟲 chong (bug, worm) to write 爞 chong, meaning to be fumigated or steamed by hot qi, as noted in the Kangxi Dictionary (Kangxi cidian) and commentaries to the Book of Songs. Private correspondence.

73. Zhong’e is an early term used in pre-Tang works for symptoms of sudden pain and fullness in the abdomen, constipation, coma, etc., due to a sudden attack of malignant, pathogenic factors. See Cullen and Lo, Medieval Chinese Medicine, 423.

74. Lin Daiyu’s illness is a prominent exception, given her karmic “debt of tears.” Yet her consumption is always discussed in the novel as being caused by her sadness or lovesickness.

75. This is also the case with the ailment known as “ghost fetus” (guitai). See Wu, “Ghost Fetuses,” 184–95.

76. Consumption worms (laochong) were discussed by a broad group of healers well into the Republican period. For instance, one medical manuscript in the Berlin collections dating to the 1930s or 1940s presents a “technique of restoring to life patients suffering from consumption” (laozhai huanzhe zhi huishengshu). The author claims to be able to use drugs to detect if “consumption worms” are present inside the patient’s body. Included is a detailed explanation of how to persuade an audience on the road to accept treatment. Ms, 8033, 786.

77. Wu, “Body, Gender and Disease,” 101.

78. Wu Yi-Li, Reproducing Women, chapter 1. Chen Hsiu-fen examines this shift in the history of stagnation syndromes (yuzheng). Chen Hsiu-fen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 51–82.

79. Ding Yaokang, Xu Jinping mei, 44.340.

80. Ibid., 44.8b–9b.

81. Furth, Flourishing Yin, 32. Another medieval work that instead of healing focused on the bedchamber arts, the Secrets of the Jade Chamber (Yufang mijue, six dynasties period), reiterated this medical view that sexual frustration and erotic thoughts often result in “having sex with demons.” (Hsiu-fen Chen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 52).

82. Sun Simiao, Beiji qianjin yaofang, 389.

83. Hsiu-fen Chen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 59. The comparative difference is presumably related to women’s more restricted access to sex.

84. Ibid., 62. Yuzheng might also be translated “depression disorder,” since it was frequently linked to extreme melancholy.

85. Xue Ji (approximately 1488–1558), e.g., in Annotations on Good Prescriptions for Women (Jiaozhu furen liangfang), 6:16. See Chen Hsiu-fen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 61.

86. In Chinese, “gui” generally refers to “the spirits or souls of a dead person” (e.g., deceased ancestors), which seems to be equivalent to “ghost” in English. However, the “gui” in “meng yu guijiao” as recorded in classic Chinese medical texts has more ambiguous connotations. It could refer to ghosts, evil spirits, devils, fox fairies, or a malignant supernatural being. I thus interpret “gui” as “demons” unless otherwise specified. As for the different meanings of “ghost,” see Zeitlin, Phantom Heroine, 4–5.

87. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1349. Another manuscript has a recipe to treat “bewitchment by coquettish fox spirits”; see chapter 2 of this volume.

88. Both trends are usually identified as beginning in the seventeenth century and peaking in the eighteenth. For the former, see Ko, Teachers; for the latter, see Theiss, Disgraceful Matters.

89. Furth, “Blood, Body and Gender,” 61. Zhang Ji, Jinkui yaolue lunzhu (Commentaries and annotations on medical treasures of the golden casket), 6:90–91.

90. Feng Menglong, “Jiang Xingge chonghui zhenzhu shan” (Jiang Xingge reencounters his pearl shirt), 28.

91. Dating back to the great preface of the Book of Songs, “Poetry expresses what is intently in the heart” (shiyan zhi) is one of the earliest formulations of that genre.

92. For a more detailed argument about these characters, see Schonebaum, “Medicine.” For Daiyu, see chapter 82, 2519, 2521, and 2523; chapter 96, 2913; and chapter 97, 2919. Qin Shi’s deficiency of blood (xinqi xu er sheng huo) is discussed in chapter 10, 283. Adamantina’s illness is “heat which allowed pathogenic influx” (zou moru huo), chapter 87. Aroma coughs blood from taxation (chapter 77). The actress Lingguan (Charmante) coughs blood (chapter 72).

93. See Theiss, Disgraceful Matters.

94. Schonebaum, “Medicine.” Honglou meng, chapters 55, 69, and 74, respectively.

95. Honglou meng, chapters 93, 110, and 111, respectively.

96. Ibid., chapter 10.

97. The detailed prescription for Qin Shi bears out a condition of depletion. A textual crisis (that Qin Shi’s death is foretold in chapter 5 to be one of suicide by hanging, and then she dies of depletion and blood loss in chapter 12) is explained by a red inkstone (actually “odd tablet”) comment “that ‘Qin Keqing dies in the Celestial Fragrance Pavilion because of her licentiousness [yinsang]’ indicates the author’s historiographical style … [but] this Old Codger let her off the hook and ordered Xueqin and Meixi to delete [the incident of incest?] pingyu” (Cao Xueqin, Xinbian Shitou ji Zhiyan zhai, 253). The consequent illness is thus one that points to licentiousness / sexual transgression.

98. This formulation seems to be original to Story of the Stone.

99. Story of the Stone, 5:372; Honglou meng, 1602.

100. Story of the Stone, 4:343. Daiyu is told not to worry so much; on at least three occasions she is told that she is making herself ill. Story of the Stone 1:410, 2:134, 4:67.

101. A further aspect is that by this time Daiyu has decided to will her own death.

102. Honglou meng, chapter 34.

103. That Story of the Stone attempts to separate depletion disorders into those caused by desire or lust and those caused by passionate longing is reflective of what Martin Huang has identified as the unresolvable tension between qing and yu in Story of the Stone. Story of the Stone is held up as the most powerful synthesis achieved in the Chinese literature of desire, since it concludes in a way that avoids the desexualization of qing while fully acknowledging the difficulty of reconciling qing and yu. Carlitz, “Review,” 52–158.

104. “The basic sinew” refers to the sexual organ, thought to be the meeting place of all sinews. “White overflow,” according to the commentator Wang Bing, refers to semen in men, and vaginal fluids in women. See Unschuld and Tessenow, Huang Di, Nei jing su wen, 658–59.

105. Story of the Stone labels Daiyu’s illness with a term whose exact formulation is quite rare in any literature. “Laoqie zhi zheng” occurs very rarely in that exact that formulation, and “laoqie” only a few times in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries. Of those occurrences, all are from Ming and Qing sources. This term seems to be borrowed from Ling Mengchu’s book of vernacular stories Slapping the Table in Amazement (Erke paian jingqi, 1628), juan 32.

106. Sun Simiao, Hua Tuo shenfang, juan 18, item 18012, 251.

107. Chen Hsiu-fen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 60.

108. Zhang Jiebin, Jingyue quanshu, 16:346. Quoted in Chen Hsiu-fen, “Between Passion and Repression,” 55.

109. Li Yanshi, Maijue huibian, 3:62.

110. Zhulin nüke, juan 1, cited in Wu, Yi-Li, Reproducing Women, 257.

111. Peng Dingqiu, Quan Tang Shi, 539:41; 802:9027.

112. Plum in the Golden Vase, 60.490.

113. For another example of a chaste, consumptive beauty, see Wu Jianren, Ershi nian nudu zhi guai (Strange events witnessed in the last twenty years), chapter 16.

114. Hanson, “Depleted Men,” 303.

115. On the connections between hyperfemininity and masculinity, see Zeitlin, Phantom Heroine. See also Huang on caizi and femininity, Negotiating Masculinities, chapter 7.

116. Hanson, “Depleted men,” 303. Unschuld and Zheng (Chinese Traditional Healing, 1816–17) note that restorative recipes are almost always found in texts that were written by city dwellers, and thus are not frequently found in the medical manuscripts, which tend to be written by itinerant physicians who travel through the countryside.

117. Hanson, “Depleted Men,” 303–4. See Furth, Flourishing Yin, 145–51.

118. Grant’s claim, in Chinese Physician, 134.

119. Hanson, “Depleted Men,” 304.

120. Andrew Plaks’s book The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel famously makes the case for these novels to be seen as works of great complexity written by and for hyper-literate readers (3–55).

121. Jinping mei, 8.129.

122. And those readers, and the readers who were fascinated with them, created a market for depictions of sickly women.

6. CONTAGIOUS TEXTS

1. “A letter on [the courtesan] Lin Daiyu to the ‘Master of Entertainment,’” Youxi bao, November 2, 1897. Quoted from Yeh, “Shanghai Leisure,” 213.

2. In the 1870s, a courtesan surnamed Hu became known by the professional name Lin Daiyu. Another courtesan named Jinbao who admired Hu took up the name Lin Daiyu and shortly afterward became one of the four most famous courtesans (sida jingang) of the late Qing and early Republic, discussed above by Li Boyuan. At least two other well-known courtesans of this period also took Daiyu’s name for their own, Lu Daiyu and Su Daiyu. Yeh, Shanghai Love, 142.

3. See McMahon, “Eliminating Traumatic Antimonies,” 104–7; Widmer, Beauty and the Book, 217–48. These sequels to and imitations of Story of the Stone were popular in the early modern era, such as In the Shadow of the Story of the Stone (Honglou meng ying, 1877), Dream of the Green Chamber (Qinglou meng, 1878); in the modern era, with its True Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou zhen meng, 1939); and still are today, with works such as Murder in the Red Mansion (Honglou meng sharen shiqing, 2004) and The Story of Tanchun (Tanchun ji, 2007).

4. One sequel that is more properly identified as a parody, social satire, or science fiction, Wu Jianren’s 1907 New Story of the Stone (Xin Shitou ji) finds Baoyu in modern Shanghai, where he learns of Lin Daiyu the courtesan.

5. See the descriptions of Daiyu’s life and activities in Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures, 145–52.

6. Yeh writes, “Popular papers … contained almost daily reports on fashion in the Shanghai courtesan world, including the minutest details about the color and cut of their newest outfits.” An article titled “Lin Daiyu’s Dress Most Extravagant” in Youxi bao, October 11, 1897, raves about courtesans’ display of beauty and about their competition in fashion on the occasion of the Shanghai Derby’s autumn race. Youxi bao ran a full-page article with a close-up of Lin Daiyu on May 4, 1899 that read, “Yesterday … Lin Daiyu wore a blue satin gown trimmed with pearls; she was riding in a four-wheeled carriage drawn by black horses, with her coachman dressed in a gray crepe de chine jacket and a black-rimmed straw hat.” This detailed report about Lin Daiyu’s pearl-embroidered coat helped to make this garment a rage among upper-class wives. One article reports on Lin Daiyu’s choice of date to first appear wearing her winter hat for afternoon tea at the fashionable Zhang Garden, and another discusses her choice of auspicious day to open a business. Yeh, Shanghai Love, 54.

7. Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures, 150; Chen Boxi, Lao Shanghai, 102. Her inspiration for this makeup might have come from her involvement in the stage world. Lin Daiyu was also an active and well-known opera singer who regularly performed at the theater in the Zhang Garden with the all-female Mao’er opera troupe Mao’er Xi (Yeh, Shanghai Love, 62).

8. Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures, 150.

9. Hawkes, Story of the Stone, 16. Courtesan novels describe women asking the wives of men who frequent courtesan houses to share their knowledge of courtesan fashion and behavior. Yeh writes that some wives, concubines, and even daughters were driven by such curiosity about courtesan lives that they disguised themselves in men’s clothes and accompanied their husbands or fathers to the courtesan establishments (Shanghai Love, 47).

10. Wang Liaoweng, Shanghai liushinian huajie shi, 50–51.

11. David Wang makes a similar claim when he writes of the figure of the courtesan in late Qing fiction that they “may well have prefigured the emotionally and behaviorally defiant postures of the ‘new woman’” portrayed in 1920s women’s writing (Fin-de-siècle Splendor, 59).

12. For many examples of concepts that were supplanted by Western medicine, see Wong and Wu Lien-Tie, History of Chinese Medicine.

13. Zhou Zuoren, “On Passing the Itch,” Pollard trans., 94.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 93.

16. Ibid., 95.

17. Zhou essentially updates traditional fiction criticism by claiming that fiction should disseminate scientific knowledge, as opposed to moral messages.

18. Although as early as the 1840 scientists such as Allgemeines Krankenhaus, John Snow, Louis Pasteur, and Joseph Lister had theorized that microorganisms might have the potential to cause disease, it was not until 1876 that Robert Koch isolated the anthrax bacillus, the first bacterium identified as the cause of a disease.

19. Ge Hong, Baopuzi neiwai pian, juan 7.20.

20. In the chapter “Prescriptions for Treating Corpse Infestation and Ghost Infestation.”

21. Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 25.

22. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1171 and 166.

23. In China, La Dame aux Camelias was reprinted at least four times, rewritten in short story form, serialized, and made into a film by 1932. Committee for Research on Chinese Culture, Shinmatsu Minsho shosetsu mokuroku, 15.

24. One of the reasons for its popularity was that La Dame aux Camelias (and a year later the opera based on it, La Traviata), were not thought not only to be true to life but actually true. This may have appealed to modern Chinese authors and readers who were invested in rectifying the past and making fiction more about conveying truth than titillating with sex and romance (Coward, “Introduction,” xv).

25. Lee, Romantic Generation, 167.

26. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 22, 13.

27. Zhang Gongrang, Feibing ziyi ji, 8.

28. Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Maupassant were all famous syphilitic writers. For more on the metaphors and meanings ascribed to syphilis, see Hayden, Pox, 111.

29. Zhang Gongrang, Feibing ziyi ji, 8–9. See also Andrews, “Tuberculosis,” 132. Again, Lin Daiyu is brought to life, this time treated as a “real” poet with a disease from which historical people suffered.

30. This is Rey Chow’s observation (Woman and Chinese Modernity, 74).

31. Ibid., 75.

32. Dumas, La Dame aux Camélias, Lin Shu trans., 139.

33. Ibid.

34. Boming is the classical term used to describe unlucky beauties—particularly Lin Daiyu. In the Ming, this term encompassed lusty men too, e.g., “Let the reader take note: there is a limit to one’s energies, but desires are without bound. He whose lusts go deep has a shallow fate [boming]. Ximen Qing gave himself up to licentious ways, ignoring [the fact that] when the oil is used up the lamp is extinguished and that when the marrow is exhausted a man dies” (Jinping mei cihua, 79.8a–b).

35. Dumas fils, La Dame aux Camélias, David Coward trans., 106, 118.

36. Ibid., 119.

37. Ibid., 124.

38. Roland Barthes focuses on the objective gaze that Marguerite seeks to gain and control through her love and illness, arguing that “Marguerite is never anything more than an alienated awareness: she sees that she suffers, but imagines no remedy which is not parasitic to her own suffering; she knows herself to be an object but cannot think of any destination for herself other than that of ornament in the museum of the masters” (“The Lady of the Camellias,” 103–5).

39. Dumas fils, Chahua nü, Lin Shu trans., 89, 131.

40. Ibid., 9.

41. Dumas, La Dame aux Camélias, David Coward trans., 10.

42. Ibid., 11.

43. Dumas, Chahua nü, Lin Shu trans., 130.

44. Ibid., 39.

45. See Lai Douyan’s comments in note 103 below.

46. “Because I have had happiness in my life, I am now paying for it twice over.” Dumas, La Dame aux Camélias, Lin Shu trans., 141.

47. The Predestined Affinity of Sickness and Jade was based on Xuan Ding’s (1832–1880) short piece “Story of Qiu Liyu, the Mafeng [Leper] Girl” (Mafeng nü Qiu Liyu chuanqi, 1877), and also known by the name “Story of the Leper Girl.” Several actresses were famous for their portrayal of Qiu Liyu. For more on The Predestined Affinity of Sickness and Jade, see Leung, Leprosy in China, 124–31.

48. Viper wine, a treatment for mafeng, was found in both medical texts and fiction since the Tang. Leung, Leprosy in China, 33.

49. Leung makes this point in Leprosy in China (127).

50. Ibid., 129.

51. Modengxianzhai zhuren, Bing yu yuan chuanqi, 31.

52. The title change was made to thwart censors. See Shang Wei, “Stone Phenomenon.” Bing yu yuan could also be translated “[Drama of] the Love Story of the Sick Beauty.”

53. Translated by Lau as “consumption,” and by Barlow as “TB.” This is the term used by Xiao Hong in “Hands” (Shou, 1936) and Ba Jin in Cold Nights (Hanye, 1947) as well. Lu Xun used the older term laobing in “Medicine.”

54. Ding, I Myself Am a Woman, 78.

55. Ibid., 52.

56. “Shafei nüshi de riji” was published in Xiaoshuo Yuebao in 1928, less than three years after Lin Daiyu’s highly publicized death. Courtesans re-refigured Daiyu (from the Confucian wish-fulfilling refigurations of the many Story of the Stone sequels) to be not only beautiful, sensitive, and gifted, but the emblem of the modern romantic female to be loved and pitied.

57. See Leung, Leprosy in China, 84–131.

58. Ding, I Myself Am a Woman, 58; Ding, “Shafei nüshi de riji,” 340.

59. Ding, I Myself Am a Woman, 90.

60. Dumas, Chahua nü, Lin Shu trans., 50.

61. Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 44.

62. Ding, “Shafei nüshi de riji,” 352, 354.

63. Feuerwerker, Ding Ling’s Fiction, 44.

64. Ding, I Myself Am a Woman, 53.

65. Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences,” 5.

66. Ibid., 20.

67. Ding, I Myself Am a Woman, 79.

68. Keaveney, Subversive Self, 101.

69. Tang Xiaobing, Chinese Modern, 158.

70. From The Trick of Succeeding on the Literary Scene (Wentan denglong shu, 1933), quoted in Lee, Romantic Generation, 39.

71. Xulao is defined in the 1587 Myriad Ailments Return to Spring: “Fire surges and burns up ‘true yin’ [a term for the source of vital energy and reproductive functions], thereby producing coughs, shortness of breath, phlegm, fever, vomiting of blood, bleeding, spontaneous sweating, and nocturnal semen emission.” Gong Tingxian, Wanbing huichun, 20.

72. Yu Dafu, while writing stories about love denied by national movements, and himself suffering from tuberculosis, felt he was a kindred spirit with Huang Zhongze (Huang Jingren, 1749–1783), the Qianlong-period poet. Yu liked to think that Huang and his wife suffered from tuberculosis, as he himself did (Tang, Chinese Modern, 99).

73. Guo Moruo’s 1926 novel Fallen Leaves (Luoye) is a notable exception, but one that also connects syphilis and tuberculosis.

74. Chong can refer to bugs, insects, worms, and their demonic variations. The breadth of this category is indicated in the earliest etymology of chong, first used as a name for the viper and then expanded as a general term for anything small that crawls or flies, is hairy or naked, or has shell-like plates or scales (Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 74).

75. See Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, chapters 1 and 2. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 9–11.

76. They emphasize “bugs as natural and demonic agents of destruction,” a concept that can be traced to Shang inscriptions. See Unschuld and Tessenow, Huang Di nei jing su wen, 180–83; and Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 74.

77. Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences,” 3. For more on sha and “killer demons,” “dark afflictions” (heiqi), and the epidemic of rumor attending them in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Haar, Telling Stories, chapter 5. On sha in jiezhu wen, see Liu Zhaoru, “Tan kaogu faxian de Daojiao jiezhu wen,” 51–57.

78. Trans. Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences,” 24.

79. Consumption was caused by or related to conditions called flying corpse (feishi), transmission by corpse (chuanshi), corpse influx (shizhu), ghost pouring (guizhu), corpse worm (shichong), taxation worm (laochong). Refer to fig. 5.2. All of these terms also appear in the medical manuscripts: e.g., chuanshi is found in BSS Slg. Unschuld, 8420, 8346, 8125; feishi in 8385, 8381; shiqi in 8453; guizhu in 8645; laochong in 8559, etc.

80. Quoted in Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences,” 8.

81. Plum in the Golden Vase, 62.61, 62.73.

82. Cao Xueqin, Honglou meng, 2:1077; Hawkes, Story of the Stone, 78.563.

83. Wang Dao, Waitai miyao, juan 13.

84. Hong Mai, Yijian jiazhi, Chicheng guang zhou section.

85. Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences,” 18.

86. Tang Yiji, Wei Jin nanbei chao, 361–73.

87. Yang, “Concept of Pao,” 299.

88. Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 25.

89. Quoted in Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences.”

90. Ibid.

91. Andrews, “Tuberculosis,” 128. See also Li Jianmin, “Contagion and Its Consequences,” 203.

92. Wu Qian et al., Yizong jinjian, 4.485.

93. Gong Tingxian, Wanbing huichun, 200.

94. Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 262. A manuscript copied in the 1930s includes a “technique of restoring to life patients suffering from consumption” (laozhai huanzhe zhi huishengshu) that was likely copied from the records of an itinerant healer. The author claims to be able to employ pharmaceutical drugs to detect whether or not “consumption worms” (laochong) are present inside the patient’s body. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 786.

95. Ge Chenghui, “Zhongguoren yu jiehebing,” 589.

96. Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 262.

97. Zhang and Elvin, “Environment and Tuberculosis,” 523.

98. Ibid., 521.

99. See Andrews, “Tuberculosis,” 116–22. We are concerned here with perceptions, and not with “reality,” since creation of statistics for illness and death at this time was either educated guesswork or the careful collection of flawed data (e.g., incidence of TB in a hospital taken as reflective of incidence of TB in the population at large).

100. Unschuld and Zheng, Chinese Traditional Healing, 1170–71 and 166.

101. Andrews, “Tuberculosis,” 133.

102. Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 260.

103. For instance, Lai Douyan, a graduate from the University of Chicago and a professor of Public Health at the National Medical College of Shanghai wrote in 1934, “The rich people in our country are quite different from those in Europe and America. They prefer to congregate in large numbers, dislike outdoor activities, and call the kind of woman threatened by a gust of wind a paragon of beauty. The rich, as a result, are more likely than the poor laboring masses to be infected with tuberculosis. That is the crucial difference between China and the West” (Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 260).

104. According to Sean Lei, in the 1930s, even in the capital of Nanjing, one-third of the city’s dying received no medical care at all (“Habituating Individuality,” 261).

105. Wong and Wu, History of Chinese Medicine, 757–58.

106. China Medical Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation, Medicine in China, 2.

107. According to Ott, American medical writers began to associate tuberculosis with poverty and the “dangerous classes” in the 1890s. This reconfigured the identity of the Western consumptive patient and resulted in permanent stigmatization (Fevered Lives, 70).

108. Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 261.

109. Li Boyuan, Guanchang xianxing ji, 578.

110. Fitzgerald points out that ever since Lord McCartney visited Beijing in 1793, spitting was seen as the trademark of “John Chinaman.” The prevalence of this racist stereotype among Westerners and its impact on Chinese national pride was even more evident over a century later when Sun Yatsen (1866–1925), the founding father of the Republic of China and a Western-trained physician, interrupted the last of his public lectures on the “three principles of the people” to counsel his audience against spitting and burping in public “because this habit revealed to Westerners that Chinese people had no control even over their own bodies” (9–12).

111. Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 261.

112. This, even though statistics indicate that from one-third to one-half of Chinese households had only two generations. Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 267.

113. For a detailed account of the antituberculosis movement, see Lei, “Habituating Individuality,” 256–52.

114. “In the classics of Chinese medicine, winds [feng] cause chills and headaches, vomiting and cramps, dizziness and numbness, loss of speech. And that is but the beginning. ‘Wounded by Wind’ [shangfeng], a person burns with fever. ‘Struck by Wind’ [zhongfeng], another drops suddenly senseless. Winds can madden, even kill.… Chinese doctors traditionally suspected [wind’s] ravages in nearly all. ‘Wind is the chief of the hundred diseases,’ the Neijing declared. And again, ‘The hundred diseases arise from wind.’” (Kuriyama, “Epidemics, Weather and Contagion,” 234).

115. See, e.g., Lu Xun, “Fuqin de bing,” 53–57.

116. Zhou, Bingzhu Houtan, 96. Zhou is referring to Unorthodox Observations from Liu Ya (Liuya waibian), published in 1791, in which Xu Houshan (erroneously) describes the phenomenon of the “winter insect, summer grass” (actually a fungus that grows as a parasite on small insects). Zhou quotes his claim, “With the onset of winter the grasses gradually wither. The insect then pulls itself out of the ground and wriggles along, its tail still swishing the grass attached to it,” and derides him for believing that summer grass really did spring from the winter insect.

117. Ibid., 96.