Annual Meeting, American Oriental Society, Western Branch

Conference at UC Irvine.

Schedule

Friday, October 12

8:30-9:00: Registration: 135 Humanities Instructional Building, UCI

9:00-9:15: Opening Remarks
Catherine Liu, Director, UCI Humanities Center

9:15-10:45: Panel One
David Knechtges, Chair
Timothy Wai Keung Chan, Hong Kong Baptist University and The University of Sydney
The Frustration of the Fisherman and the Wood Gatherer in Early Chinese Literature
Kong Xurong, Kean University
Yongwu Fu and Intention: A Thematic Study of Fu Xuan’sYongwu Fu
Sujane Wu, Smith College
Not Feeling Ashamed to Learn from Someone Younger: the Meeting of Lu Yun (262-303) and Zhou Chu (236-297)
Zeb Raft, Harvard University
The Poetry of Xie An (320-385)

11:00-12:00: Panel Two
David Schaberg, Chair
Newell Ann Van Auken, Grinnell College
Records of pìn and cháo visits in the Chunqiu: A onesided view of diplomatic travel
Matthias Richter, University of Colorado at Boulder
Degrees of canonization of the Odes as reflected in the Warring States Chu manuscript “Min zhi fu mu” and its transmitted counterparts

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00: Panel Three
Timothy Chan, Chair
Timothy Michael O’Neill, University of Washington
The Shuowen jiezi and Han lexicography
Mark Pitner, University of Washington
The Embodied the Sage: fluid boundaries in Yang Xiong’s Fa yan
Antje Richter, University of Colorado at Boulder
Familial Admonitions: The Emergence of an Epistolary Subgenre in the Han and Six Dynasties Periods
Timothy M. Davis, Brigham Young University
Historiographical Biography and Commemorative Biography

3:15-4:15: Panel Four
Newell Ann Van Auken, Chair
David Prager Branner, University of Maryland
Táng-time Choice of Variant Readings
Richard VanNess Simmons, Rutgers University
Comparing Common Northern Wu and Common Southern Jiang-Hwai with Common Dialectal Chinese

4:30-5:30: Panel Five
Ronald Egan, Chair
Daniel Hsieh, Purdue University
Fragrant Rice and Green Paulownia: Notes on a Couplet in Du
Fu’s “Autumn Meditations”
Daniel Bryant, University of Victoria
Do Parallel Objects Ever Not Meet?

5:30-7:30 Reception: UCI University Club Library
801 East Peltason Drive

Saturday, October 13

8:30-10:00: Panel Six
Paul Kroll, Chair
Jeongsoo Shin, University of Washington
“Shan ju fu”: Self-esteem in the Mountains
Meow-hui Goh, Ohio State University
Seeing in the “Poems on Things” by the Yongming Poets
Wang Ping, Princeton University
Xiao Yan and His Yuefu Poetry

10:15-11:45: Panel Seven
Jonathan Pease, Chair
Linda Feng, Columbia University
Urban Life and the Literature of Experience in Mid- to Late Tang
Kathleen Tomlonovic, Western Washington University
Genealogy and Nomenclature for Northern Song Officials: Names and Titles of the Su Family from Shu
Yugen Wang, University of Oregon
“Handle of the Hatchet”: Fa and Methods of Composition in the Poetics of Huang Tingjian (1045-1105)
Ronald Egan, University of California at Santa Barbara
Voice and Autobiography in the Song Lyrics of Li Qingzhao

11:45-12:00: Business Meeting

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-2:30: Panel Eight
Madeline Spring, Chair
Jie Wu, University of Washington at Seattle
Mediocrity at the Dawn of the Golden Age: A Study of the Gaoshi sanyan shiji
Ping Yao, California State University, Los Angeles
Images of Tang Women in Stupa Inscriptions

2:45-3:45: Panel Nine
Richard Von Glahn, Chair
Ghazzal Dabiri, UCLA
Vis va Ramin Reconsidered: A Product of the Translation and
Adaptation Movements of the 9th and 10th centuries
Anthony Clark, University of Alabama
China, Children, and the New Catechism: Jesuit Adaptation of Ertong Wenxue

4:00-5:30: Panel Ten
Steve West, Chair
Timothy C. Wong, Arizona State University
Written Vernacular and Xiaoshuo Narrative
Y. Edmund Lien, University of Washington, Seattle
Lexical Tone versus Melody for Northern Dramas in Kunqu – A New Study
Yuming He, Univ. of Chicago
Woodblock Illustrations and Reading in the Late Ming
Yan Liang, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Poetic Demons: A Satire on Literati Culture in The Journey to the West
Annual Banquet, Phineas Banning Alumni House, UCI

6:30-7:00 Reception

7:00 Dinner, Followed by the Presidential Address by Jonathan Pease

Abstracts
(in alphabetical order)

David Prager Branner
University of Maryland
Táng-time Choice of Variant Readings

The larger Chinese dictionaries contain a forest of pòy?nzì ???, characters for which more than one pronunciation and meaning is prescribed. No simple synchronic pattern accounts for the variant readings. If the situation seems confusing, recall that it has been much worse
in earlier generations. In the past few decades, various official Chinese organizations have tried to cut back the number of such variant readings, or to promote one primary reading and to pin down the precise conditions when any others are to be used. In spite of theories by prominent scholars that characters ought to correspond in a simple way to morphemes, the
evidence is that the relationship between characters and morphemes in China have always been mixed and that one-to-one usage has often been the result of conscious attempt to simplify the script. The origin of this complexity lies mainly in Táng-time consolidation of older glosses and t?ngji? ?? pairs. The abundance of evidence suggests that most of this consolidation took place through a process of prescriptive decision-making rather than description of popular practice. This paper treats cases where it is clear that a decision could not be avoided and discusses likely reasons for the result.

Daniel Bryant
University of Victoria
Do Parallel Objects Ever Not Meet?

Couplets that are semantically and syntactically parallel have been a feature of Chinese verse from the earliest times. Research on parallel couplets has tended to focus on the feature of tonal antithesis characteristic of poetry in the ‘new-style’ form, especially the development and early history of tonal categories and their integration into poetic prosody. This paper, by contrast, considers the syntax of couplets and in particular the use of verb-object constructions. The question asked is: do poets writing parallel couplets observe any distinctions among various kinds of object (direct, indirect, locative, etc.)? The evidence is drawn from the works of Pao Chao (Six Dynasties old-style verse), Meng Hao-jan (Tang
new-style verse), Li Yü (Five Dynasties tz’u), and Ho Ching-ming (Ming new-style verse).

Timothy Wai Keung Chan
Hong Kong Baptist University; The University of Sydney
The Frustration of the Fisherman and the Wood Gatherer in Early Chinese Literature

This paper examines the role of the fisherman and the firewood gatherer’s responses to the chaotic world as seen in selected personal, textual, and historical contexts of the Warring States to the Jin-Song periods (later third century BC to early fifth century AD). Although the Zhuangzi is the earliest known source of the fisherman persona, various archetypes of this kind, including the boatman and the firewood gatherer, are found in early texts. These figures were not ordinary farmers and uneducated people, but represented members of the civil service who dissented from the central political power, opposite numbers of those who supported it. These two contesting sub-classes together comprised the scholars (shi ?). Since the Eastern Han, the rising sub-class of recluses had a great impact among
intellectuals. The opposing pulls of public service and reclusion constantly haunted the shi. This dilemma became an increasingly prominent motif in literary works, and was personified in the fisherman and the wood gatherer. Despite their different names and sobriquets, and different guises, they have one common archetype: the “second self ” of the writer. In literary
presentation, this “second self ” acts as an advisor to the troubled “first self.” In this entity, there is always a common dilemma that writers or historians encounter: writing as a means of making oneself or certain individuals known to others, especially later generations, can elicit
accusations that one is pursuing fame.

Anthony Clark
University of Alabama
China, Children, and the New Catechism: Jesuit Adaptation of Ertong Wenxue

The opening lines of the famous children’s primer, the Sanzijing ??? (Three Character Classic) states: “When a person is first born his or her nature is good; While people’s nature is closely matched, what they study is far apart.” The opening lines of the Tianzhu shengjiao sizi jingwen ??? ????? (The Sacred Teaching of the Lord of Heaven Four Character
Classic) begins: “The Lord of Heaven is all capable and the true origin of the myriad things; He is without beginning and without end, forever alive and forever king.” The native work draws upon the tenets of Mencius, while the Jesuit Children’s primer draws on the catechetical traditions of the West. Jesuits in the mid-seventeenth century produced an astonishing
volume of Chinese texts, many of which emulated China’s ertong wenxue (Children’s literature) tradition, and most of which remain unstudied. This paper functions as a starting point for new research on Chinese manuscripts produced by missionaries from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. I was granted permission to consult Chinese texts in the Vatican Secret Archives and the Pope’s Private Library during the summer of 2007.
While there, I hand-copied several Jesuit children’s primers that have remained unread since they were archived three centuries ago. This paper is a preliminary report on Jesuit accommodationist strategies of conversion, especially those related to the instruction of children.

Ghazzal Dabiri
UCLA
Vis va Ramin Reconsidered: A Product of the Translation and Adaptation Movements of the 9th and 10th centuries

Composed in c. A.D. 1040, Vis va Ramin is the oldest known romantic epic in New Persian. Written by the court poet Fakhr al-D?n Gurg?n?, Vis va Ramin holds a unique position in the history of Persian literature for several reasons. First, the epic follows in the same vein as Firdaws?’s Sh?hn?mah and stands as an immediate predecessor of Ni??m?’s romantic
epics. Second, the author claims to have taken a Parthian prose romance and translated and adapted it into a romantic epic composed in New Persian. As such, V?s va R?m?n is a unique product of the translation and adaptation movements of the 9th and 10th centuries. In order to address the particular position the epic holds in the development of Persian epic, the paper first treats the issue of the translation and adaptation movements of the 9th and 10th centuries. The translations began in part with the translations of the Arabic histories that deal with Iranian history and mytho-history. The methodologies employed in these translations
resembles those employed in adaptations. Since it is argued that V?s va R?m?n is a successor of the Sh?hn?mah, the paper proceeds to discuss how the Sh?hn?mah is the earliest surviving work that is a direct product of the translation and adaptation movements as it is a rendition of Iranian history and mytho-history in New Persian and in epic form. V?s va R?m?n, composed and completed only a few decades after the Sh?hn?mah, is a translation from Parthian and is an adaptation of a prose romance into epic. It is one of the first extant epics that treats the story of a historical romantic pair outside of the larger picture of Iranian history and mythohistory. As such, it is a forerunner of Ni??m?’s romantic epics, Khusraw va
Sh?r?n and Layl? va Majn?n and to a lesser extent the Iskandarnamah.

Timothy M. Davis
Brigham Young University
Historiographical Biography and Commemorative Biography

It should come as no surprise that biographical works contain elements of subjective interpretation. This is not only true for the arrayed biographies (liezhuan ??) found in each of the twenty-five Chinese dynastic histories, but also holds for the various kinds of commemorative biography used in family rituals associated with the ancestral cult (including muzhiming ??? or entombed epitaphs). The presentation and interpretation of particular facts chosen to represent an individual’s life, are unavoidably, and often consciously, imbued by their authors with persuasive power appropriate to the purposes for which the narrative was produced. In each case, the use of aesthetic features and rhetorical techniques are employed
to enliven historiographical and commemorative biographies, and to convince their audience to embrace (or reject) particular ideologies, values, and truth claims. Occasionally biographies from the dynastic histories and those used in ancestral commemoration are preserved for the same individual. These cases are particularly useful for exploring how medieval biographers exploited literary devices and selective editing to create works with the maximum mnemonic and persuasive power required by their different contexts and audiences. They also provide insight into the prevalent, and sometimes contending, values espoused by different institutions from the period, especially when the various biographical accounts are in conflict with one another. This paper explores the motives behind two very different
biographical portrayals of Guo Huai ?? (237-296), the mother of Empress Jia Nanfeng ??? (256–300), primary consort of Western Jin ? (265-317) emperor Hui ? (r. 290-306), and the rhetorical means by which they were carried out.

Ronald Egan
University of California at Santa Barbara
Voice and Autobiography in the Song Lyrics of Li Qingzhao

One of the usually unexamined assumptions made in reading the song lyrics (ci ?) of Li Qingzhao is that the female voice that speaks in them is that of the author herself. We are accustomed to making this identification and to reading her songs as reflections of her moods and affections at various stages of her life. Li Qingzhao writes, we think, of her longing for her husband, Zhao Mingcheng, when he is apart from her, and of her inconsolable grief after his untimely death. This way of reading Li Qingzhao’s song lyrics is nearly universal in modern scholarship. It is rarely acknowledged, however, that this approach differs from the way we read song lyrics by male authors. With men, we accept the need to draw a distinction between the voice in the song and the author. We do this quite naturally when the voice speaking in the songs is female (as is so often the case), and may maintain the distinction even when the voice is male. This paper examines the reasons for these divergent ways of reading: why do we approach Li Qingzhao’s works in a special way and what are the
justifications for doing so?

Linda Feng
Columbia University
Urban Life and the Literature of Experience in Mid- to Late Tang

During the Tang Dynasty, each autumn between two and three thousand candidates left their provincial homes and converged in Chang’an for the annual civil service examinations. Between their arrival in the tenth month and the announcement of the results some four months hence, these examinees existed in a curious state of limbo: detached from kith and kin and not yet legitimate members of official life. This state presented certain privileges if not a powerful paradox: while the examination is aimed at a young man’s becoming a respectable official entity (i.e., social reproduction), the trip also required an extensive absence from  paternal supervision—with ample opportunities for transgression and for trying out alternatives to the prescribed life path. More than limbo, the young candidate’s in-between state should be termed liminal, straddling anonymity and legitimacy. The stages of leaving home, urban living, and possible incorporation into the sanctioned structure have important repercussions for writing concerned with the experience of what I call the para-literati. Examining anecdotes in texts such as Tang zhi yan ??? and Beili zhi ???, I will demonstrate the ways in which urban living and even urban commercialism play an important role in such experiences. In particular, I focus on a curious Chang’an phenomenon called jinshi tuan ???, or “Jinshi Club,” whose aim was to provide entertainment and publicity for the new jinshi degree holders, often as grand spectacles in the city streets. I hope to show that, rather than being subsumed into the state ritual of recruitment, metropolitan life, with its teeming throng of watchers and hawkers, constituted an unofficial process of induction for the paraliterati
that existed in parallel to the state rituals. This unofficial rite of passage will underlie much of the affective and aesthetic energy in Tang tales in which the young male protagonist’s liminal state detours outside of what Bakhtin calls “biographical time.” In Tang tales where such
protagonists are commonplace, it is often during this interval of transition that occasions for narrative arise, and the said interval’s hold on the literary imagination persists well into novels and plays of subsequent eras.

Meow-hui Goh
Ohio State University
Seeing in the “Poems on Things” by the Yongming Poets

Often enough we do not treat the question of what and how a poet sees as
essential and that has caused us to overlook certain crucial developments in
literary history. The legacy of what is now known as Yongming ?? (483-
493) poetry reflects this problem. Several critics have found it “unnatural,”
by which they meant its diction and sound patterns were too “crafted” and
its depiction too “sensuous.” As this paper will contend, behind the
impression of its “sensuousness” is a poetry that reflects a new way of
seeing. The Yongming poets were attracted to the sight of things not
because they were “rare objects,” but because they could see something
new or different through them. The ability to notice is a central theme of
their poetry and poetics, and their intense and unapologetic scrutiny of an
object is refreshingly different from what came before them.

Yuming He
Univ. of Chicago
Woodblock Illustrations and Reading in the Late Ming

One of the innovations of the expanding book trade in the late Ming was the creation of cover-page illustrations as an effective way to package and promote books. These woodblock illustrations also opened up an imaginative space for readers to exercise their active interpretive competence, a new skill fostered by the wide circulation of texts and images, including circulation beyond the Ming Empire to Korea and Japan. This paper examines the iconographic conventions these cover-page illustrations (re)fashioned, the new relations with texts they embodied, and the roles that various cultural workers (such as publishers, illustrators, and readers) played in implementing these illustrations in shaping the
experience of the book.

Daniel Hsieh
Purdue University
Fragrant Rice and Green Paulownia: Notes on a Couplet in Du Fu’s “Autumn Meditations”

Du Fu’s “Autumn Meditations” (“Qiu xing ba shou” ????) were composed at a time when his verse was reaching new heights of technical complexity as well as richness and depth of thought. He was exploring the use of the seven-syllable lüshi as well as the poetic sequence in his later years and the results can be seen in this series. Critics have often commented on the intricacy and tightness of the organization of the poems with their repeated variations and echoing images, themes, and motifs. Also remarkable is the language of these works. Not only are they among the greatest works of the tradition, they are also among the densest and
most difficult. The diction and syntax can be exasperatingly gnarled and obscure, the meanings layered and at times seemingly contradictory. Many couplets are so full of allusions, ellipsis, and ambiguity that Hu Shi declared them “poetic riddles.” Lu Kanru and Feng Yuanjun, discussing the excessive difficulty, even “incomprehensibility” (bu tong ??) of some of Du Fu’s lüshi lines, single out the second couplet of the last poem in the “Qiu xing ba shou” as an example of Du Fu “falling into heterodox/deviant paths” (duo ru modao ????) and describe it as “not very natural” (bu da ziran ????). This couplet has long been a point of intense debate, and continues to be revisited by modern scholars, not only literary critics
but linguists as well. This paper consists of two parts. I begin by reviewing the history of the interpretation of these lines with the purpose of first determining their basic grammatical structure and literal meaning, and then explore what Du Fu intended to convey with this couplet, the rationale of its imagery, and its place and meaning in the poem and series.

Yan Liang
University of California, Santa Barbara
The Poetic Demons: A Satire on Literati Culture in The Journey to the West

The Journey to the West is a one-hundred chapter novel written in
vernacular Chinese first published in 1592. It tells of a legendary journey
to India by the Chinese Buddhist monk Tripitaka and his three monstrous
disciples. The novel gives a satirical and self-reflective examination of late
Ming culture and society. This paper is a study of chapter 64 of the novel,
in which Tripitaka is abducted by a few tree demons in a deserted
mountain in the middle of the night to compose poems, drink tea, and
enjoy the moonlight. The episode reveals the author’s mixed feelings about
literati culture and lifestyle that compose his own cultural identity. By
presenting the tree demons as stereotypical literati in the appearance,
speech, life style, and passion for poetry, and by presenting Tripitaka’s
unsuspicious delight in their company, the author ridicules the
superficiality and pretentiousness of literati society. Yet the author also
manifests the seductiveness of this culture through his fond description of
it. At the end of the episode, these defenseless demon poets are eradicated
by brutal force when Tripitaka’s non-poetic disciples come to his rescue,
which seems to suggest that the fatal debilitating power of the literati
culture that had enchanted the author and so many of his contemporaries
in late Ming China.

Y. Edmund Lien
University of Washington, Seattle
Lexical Tone versus Melody for Northern Dramas in Kunqu – A New Study

Among the extant music in Kunqu, there are a few Northern dramas whose lyrics closely resemble those of the zaju with a Yuan origin. The prominent example is the play “Dan dao hui” ??? (The single-sword meet) attributed to Guan Hanqing ???—its third and fourth acts are available in the Nashuying qupu ?????published in 1792. Aoki Masaru ?? ??identified ten Northern plays with fourteen acts among the extant Yuan zaju that are still in Kunqu, but one of them was later shown to be written in the Ming. The remaining nine plays, with 102 tunes, are
selected for study on the relationship between the tones of the syllables in the lyrics and their melodies. Referring to the tonal categories in the Zhongyuan yinyun ??? ? for each syllable in the 102 tunes, this paper looks into the two relationships between melody and tone: and intra-syllabic relationship for the syllables that are sung with a sequence of more than one musical note, and an inter-syllabic relationship for every pair of consecutive syllables in
terms of their difference in tone versus the difference in note, that is, the change from the ending note of the first syllable to the leading note of the second syllable. Most of the works since the Ming and Qing treat the relationship between melody and tone from a “prescriptive” angle. A representative of this approach is seen in the works of the renowned music historian Yang Yinliu ???: he gives a set of note patterns for each of the four tones (1 yin ping, 2 yang ping, 3 shang, and 4 qu), such as “Go up or down by one or two degrees, and return to the original position to form a three-note melody” ?????????????????as a pattern for tone 1
syllables. We have introduced a simple notation to represent the changes (ups and downs) of notes in a sequence. When the second note is higher (or lower) than the first by one degree, we denote it by 1u (or 1d). Likewise for 2u, 2d, 3u, 3d, etc. For example, the sequence do mi re is represented by 2u1d. We use 0 to indicate “no change” between two consecutive notes. With this notation, both inter- and intra-syllabic relationships in the tune can be studied: syllables can be grouped by tone, sorted by tonal change or by note change, etc. Our result shows a clear statistical correlation between tone and melody in the 102 tunes. Regarding the intra-syllabic relationship, tones 1 and 2 are very similar—their music tends to go down by a small degree— although slightly more up-going patterns are found for tone 2. Tones 3 and 4 do not use a flat pattern (e.g., 0) at all. In general, tone 3 melodies trend up and tone 4 melodies trend down. Regarding the inter-syllabic relationships, the music tends to stay the same or go slightly down for two consecutive syllables of the level tones (1 and 2); but from the level tones to the other two tones, the music tends to go down. For a transition from tone 3 to 1, 2, or 4, the music trends higher. Transitions from tone 4 to 1 or 2 correspond to music that may change almost equally likely in any direction except staying unchanged. And from tone 4 to 3, music trends down. Our result is consistent with the tonal values of modern Mandarin and confirms the general characteristics of the four tones. This paper also compares the result with the prescriptive rules of Yang Yinliu and shows that there are significant discrepancies. Our result suggests that a comprehensive study of all extant Kunqu may shed light on the tonal values of the Yuan and on the prosodic and tonal patterns of Yuan
qu.

Kong Xurong
Kean University
Yongwu Fu and Intention? A Thematic Study of Fu Xuan’s Yongwu Fu

The genre of yongwu fu has received ever more attention from scholars but
is still an understudied field. Some scholars claim that yongwu fu—
particularly descriptive ones—are meaningless and insignificant. Based on
the extant thirty-nine descriptive yongwu fu of Fu Xuan, however, this
claim is inadequate. In this paper, I will explore the thematic features of Fu Xuan’s
yongwu fu. Through his yongwu fu, Fu Xuan conveys four themes: facing
frustration, admiring strong will, expressing political goals, and selfcultivation.
Fu Xuan develops these themes as latent meanings in
otherwise seemingly ordinary objects. Fu Xuan applies four methods to
convey these meanings: prefaces, personification, allusion, and symbolic
images, which he reshapes of creates to accomplish his goal. For Fu Xuan,
the chosen objects are not simply objects in and of themselves. Instead,
they imply deeper, more profound meanings. This characteristic of
yongwu fu deserves further investigation.

Timothy Michael O’Neill
University of Washington
The Shuowen jiezi and Han lexicography

This paper presents a different understanding of the seminal Han dynasty
dictionary, the Shuowen jiezi, an understanding that attempts—via
comparison with other surviving Han works (e.g., the Erya, Fangyan, and
Shiming), internal evidence within the Shuowen itself, the best of Qing
philology, and a new close reading of the postface—to reconstruct the
lexicographic method that Xu Shen used to compile and organize the text
(this rather than treating it as linguistic “data” or simply regarding it as
linguistically or historically misinformed). Explicating what the author
says and does within the text itself, both theoretically and practically,
macrostructurally and microstructurally, should be crucial for and basic to
understanding the Shuowen: its linguistic or historical inaccuracies are
moot in point and in fact. The paper further argues that the language theory underlying the
Shuowen is resoundingly not a radical break from the prior language
theory within the Chinese tradition (Xu Shen was actually completing the
task set to his teacher Jia Kui by the emperor himself), nor is it in any way
comparable to Western language theory drawn from the
Platonic/Aristotelian episteme—and that the implications of this for
understanding traditional Chinese literary theory and hermeneutics are
frankly staggering.

Mark Pitner
University of Washington
The Embodied the Sage: fluid boundaries in Yang Xiong’s Fa yan

The metaphor of the mingling  (corn earworm) and the guoluo ??
(mason wasp) has had a long use in Chinese texts from the Shijing ?? to
Liu Ling’s  (ca. 221-ca. 300) Jiu de song  and beyond. This
paper traces the varied application of this metaphor and then focuses on
Yang Xiong’s (53 BCE-18 CE) unique use to describe Kongzi’s
relationship to his students. This relationship provides an entry point for
understanding the boundaries of the body, the way the sage both contains
and is contained in language, land and body in the Fa yan .

Zeb Raft
Harvard University
The Poetry of Xie An  (320-385)

Xie An was one of the pre-eminent cultural figures of the mid-4th century
China, but few of his writings are extant today. By far the longest of the
extant works is his “Poem to Wang Huzhi” , a four-syllable
composition in six stanzas. My paper examines this work, and Wang
Huzhi’s response, in the light of the tradition of “presentation and
response” (zengda ) poetry, and in term of the “dark language”
(xuanyan ??) poetry current in the 4th century.

Antje Richter
University of Colorado at Boulder
Familial Admonitions: The Emergence of an Epistolary Subgenre in the Han and Six Dynasties Periods

Admonitory letters addressed to younger members of one’s family belong
to the most popular subgenres of epistolary literature. In this paper I would
like to sketch the emergence of these epistolary texts in the Han dynasty
and the further development of the genre in the Six Dynasties, focusing on
typological and formal features as they present themselves in the about 60
transmitted admonitory letters from these periods. In the case of the
admonitory letter, the generally ambiguous genre of the letter specifically
borders on or even overlaps with the genres of family instruction (jiajie/-
xun ??/?) and testament (yiling/-yan ??/?). I propose that this
affinity is reflected by the existence of two kinds of admonitory letters,
differing in motivation and intention as well as rhetorical features, which I
propose to label inventive and testamentary.

Matthias Richter
University of Colorado at Boulder
Degrees of canonization of the Odes as reflected in the Warrings States

Chu manuscript “Min zhi fu mu” and its transmitted counterparts The Warring States Chu manuscript “Min zhi fu mu” , acquired by the Shanghai Museum from the antique market in Hong Kong in 1994 and published in 2002, has two transmitted counterparts (one in
Liji and another one in Kongzi jiayu). The transcription of the manuscript text by Pu Maozuo ??? has a strong tendency to read the manuscript text as closely as possible to its transmitted counterparts. The most obvious mistakes that this inclination brought about were soon after corrected in the transcriptions of several other scholars. However, some inconsistencies
remain in all transcriptions and interpretations published so far. They are apparently due to the assumption that all three versions of the text (transmitted or manuscript) reflect the same intellectual background and status of the Odes. The present paper will argue in favor of a more consistent reading in palaeographic terms and arrive at the conclusion that the three versions reflect a considerable transformation of the text that was caused by changes in the intellectual milieu in which it was transmitted and used.

Jeongsoo Shin
University of Washington
“Shan ju fu”: Self-esteem in the Mountains

The late Eastern Jin (317-420) and the early Liu Song (420-477) period
was a politically turbulent yet literarily splendid time. Poets began to
explore the landscape of mountains and rivers with attention to scenic
beauty. Xie Lingyun ??? (385-433) was the leading figure of this new
wave of landscape verse. “Shan ju fu” ??? (Living in the Mountains)
represents the pinnacle of his enthusiasm for nature. It is composed of
three parts: his historical overview of eremitism (#1-5), a realistic
description of his estate and its periphery (#6-43), and a philosophical
conclusion (#44-47). The fu is formally similar to fu on the hunting park written by
Sima Xiangru???? (179 BCE–117 BCE), but their subject matter and
rhetoric are opposite. The lengthy scale, literary form, and particularly the
four directional formula (#7-14) are reminiscent of “Fu of Sir Vacuous.”
Both take place in mountain wilds, but Xie observes local land forms and
indigenous habitat, diverging from Sima’s fantasy of foreign plants and
imaginary beasts. Xie enumerates native flora and fauna, devoid of Sima’s
ornamental allusion and hyperbole. His commentary in each section
supplements information for further comprehension. Subsequently, Xie’s
down-to-earth account of the Shi’ning area along with prose commentary
leads us to read the fu as a valid local gazetteer. In contrast, the readers of
Sima Xiangru began to regard the imperial hunting park as a fictitious
preserve full of alien creatures. Xie’s deliberate adaptation of the fu on the imperial park is
associated with his discontent with the court capital. In 422, newly
ascended Emperor Shao (r. 422-424) sent him to Yongjia?? (present day
Wenzhou ??), a de facto exile. After returning to Shi’ning a year later,
he had doubled his family estate there and completed his fu between 423
and 426. His expansion of the estate, comparable to the imperial park in
size, and the composition of the fu, in my opinion, were intended as a
means to recover self-esteem. His philosophically tinged conclusion
reflects Xie’s sense of mental superiority to the capital and his
transcendental detachment from politics.

Richard VanNess Simmons
Rutgers University
Comparing Common Northern Wu and Common Southern Jiang-Hwai with Common Dialectal Chinese

The dialects of mid-Jiangsu Province occupy a region where the Jiang-
Hwai Mandarin dialects border with the northern Wu dialects. Features
that seem to evidence strong Wu dialect influence, or even origin,
characterize the Mandarin dialects in this area, while the Wu dialects are
not free of Mandarin influence. Still, even in this zone of marked language
mixing, the region's various dialects can almost all be classified as either
Mandarin or Wu when examined individually. We can sort out the two
types based on characteristic divergence from Common Dialectal Chinese*
as belonging either to the Common Northern Wu phonological type, or the
Common Southern Jiang-Hwai phonological type. This paper compares
these two local phonologies and their divergent, but typologically
significant, development from Common Dialectal Chinese and how these
three common phonologies are reflected in the mid Jiangsu dialects.
*The phonology outlined by Jerry Norman, in his article “Common Dialectal Chinese” in The
Chinese Rime-Tables: Linguistic Philosophy And Historical-Comparative Phonology, ed. by
David Prager Branner, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006.

Kathleen Tomlonovic
Western Washington University
Genealogy and Nomenclature for Northern Song Officials: Names and Titles of the Su Family from Shu

Literary works composed prior to the Song dynasty reveal an interest in
ancestry and naming; increased attention was accorded these topics during
the Northern Song. The genre of the family genealogy was developed by
Ouyang Xiu  (1007-1072) in his Ouyang shi putu  and
also by Su Xun (1009--1066) in Su shi zupu . Furthermore,
preoccupation with the significance and suitability of names became
evident in works such as “Zhang Yingzhi zixu ” in which
Ouyang Xiu evaluates Zhang’s zi ?and then provides an alternative name
that complements his ming ?. Similarly, Su Xun composes “Zhong xiong
zi Wenfu shuo” to explain how a reading of the Yijing prompted him to change the zi of his brother Huan’s . In order to clarify why he named his sons Shi  and Zhe , Su Xun writes the “Ming er zi shuo.” In the Su Family genealogy and numerous literary works, various
names are used to identify family members. Although it is widely acknowledged that Su Shi (1037–1101) adopted the courtesy name Su Dongpo during his exile to Huangzhou, it is perhaps less known that he also adopted, a name often mistakenly used by others
when referring to Su Xun as Su Laoquan. Both Su Shi and Su Zhe adopted names with geographical references that connected them with their ancestor, the Tang dynasty official Su Weidao (648--805). Consideration of the diverse identities created by the surnames,
given names, nicknames, courtesy names, official titles, posthumous names and titles given to collected works of the Su Family permits readers to reflect on the importance of naming in the Chinese tradition and also on the significance of self identities created during the Northern Song.

Newell Ann Van Auken
Grinnell College
Records of pìn and cháo visits in the Chunqiu: A one-sided view of diplomatic travel

The Chunqiu contains a number of different types of entries recording
diplomatic travel. Two of the commonest entry types are for pìn ? visits
(visits to make amicable inquiry) and cháo ?visits (tribute visits). Pìn visits
were made by noblemen at the behest of their rulers, and cháo visits, by
rulers themselves. Given that the Ch?nqi? is a record of the state of L? ?,
it is not surprising that travel among states other than L? is typically not
recorded. Yet the records are even more restricted than this: all of the pìn
and cháo visits recorded in the Ch?nqi? are inbound vists; that is, these
entries record travel of nobles or rulers from other states traveling to L?.
The Ch?nqi? does not contain a single record of a pìn or cháo visit
originating in L?. In other words, L?’s involvement in this aspect of
interstate diplomacy is presented as entirely unilateral. It hardly seems
possible that L?’s participation in diplomatic travel would be so one-sided,
and if the Zu? zhuàn is to be trusted, the Ch?nqi? records indeed do not
provide an accurate account of events. Yet the question remains: what is
the reason for this discrepancy? Apparently L? had prescriptive rules
prohibiting what were, in fact, pìn or cháo diplomatic visits to other states
from being recorded as such. The evidence assembled here will support my
broader hypothesis that the Ch?nqi? was written in accord with formal,
prescriptive rules that were guided by a strong sense of rank and hierarchy,
and according to which events that L? regarded as shameful were
excluded, suppressed or avoided whereas events that lent prestige to L?
were recorded.

Wang Ping
Princeton University
Xiao Yan and His Yuefu Poetry

Xiao Yan (464-549; r. 502-549), the founding emperor of the Liang dynasty (502-557), a born Taoist practitioner, was the only Chinese emperor to establish the idea of “Emperor-Bodhisattva,” and his reign was a combination of the Chinese “sage king” and the Indian “cakravartin” Xiao Yan was also well-known for his patronage of scholarship and
literature. During his reign, he sponsored the compilation of an unprecedented number of scholarly projects. His own writings, covering a broad range of topics, show that he was a polymath versed in classical scholarship, ritual matters, music, calligraphy, and go or encirclement chess. Xiao Yan was eclectic in his taste in poetry as well. His extant works
include fu, tetra-syllabic poetry, penta-syllabic poetry, and yuefu pieces. Lu Qinli divides Xiao Yan’s poetry into two categories: 54 yuefu pieces and 41 shi pieces. In this paper I shall attempt to examine the process and purpose of Xiao Yan’s yuefu poems in order to shed light on the nature of yuefu compositions at the Liang court and address the issue of wangguo zhi yin (sound of a perished state), a derogatory epithet that traditionally and even into modern times has been used to explain the failings of the Liang dynasty and late Southern Dynasties art and literature.

Yugen Wang
University of Oregon
“Handle of the Hatchet”: Fa and Methods of Composition in the Poetics of Huang Tingjian (1045-1105)

The poetic practice and theory of the Northern Song writer Huang
Tingjian is usually interpreted as a continuation of that of Su Shi, Huang’s
senior contemporary, friend and mentor. I would aargue that Huang
Tingjian’s quest for fa ? or methods of composition, by placing heavy
emphasis on the technicalities of poetic composition, represented a radical
departure from Su Shi, a shift in interest from the final product of literary
composition to the processes and procedures that lead to the final product.
Su and Huang, only eight years apart in age (born in 1037 and 1045
respectively), actually belong to two eras. If we see everywhere in su Shi
lingering influences and traces of a mature medieval sulture characterized
by a conviction of expressive spontaneity and immediacy, what we see in
Huang Tingjian are prominent manifestations of an emergent new culture
marked by its sustained interest in processes, procedures, paths, means, and
above all, “methods,” that will guide the writer through on his way to
poetic perfection. Just as the handle of a hatchet makes it possible for the
chopping power of the hatchet to be delivered to the object being chopped,
it is these processes, procedures, means, and methods that will make it
possible for the feelings, emotions, and ideas—the authorial “intention”
(zhi ?)—to get expression and be represented in the final product of a text.
What Huang Tingjian and his fellow Jiangxi poets were looking
for is a process by which the unknowable and indescribable could be made
known, get described and expressed, and become learnable and
transmissible. In doing so, they were defying one of the most powerful
discourses of medieval Chinese literary thinking—that literary composition
is a spontaneous process, that the path from authorial intention to literary
text is immediate and straightforward, and that writing should not be
marked by painful craftsmanship but by the free flow of energy. The
current paper focuses on how methods of poetic composition are
conceived in Huang Tingjian. It is part of a larger and ongoing project on
Huang Tingjian’s poetics in general and the many forces—literary,
intellectual, cultural, social, and material—that nurtured and prompted its
rise to prominence in the late Northern Song literary critical scene.

Timothy C. Wong
Arizona State University
Written Vernacular and Xiaoshuo Narrative

The communication will examine the late-Ming-dynasty employment of
the written vernacular in xiaoshuo narratives and its enormous artistic
consequences. It will do so in the context of traditional reverence for the
written word in China, which had theretofore retained a far greater
linguistic distance from the variety of spoken “dialects” in a continentalsize
country. It hopes to provide tentative answers to what xiaoshuo really
is, and how it is fundamentally different from the modern fiction with
which it has been lumped by critics for so long.

Jie Wu
University of Washington at Seattle
Mediocrity at the Dawn of the Golden Age: A Study of the Gaoshi sanyan shiji

In the early 680s, a mid-ranking official Gao Zhengchen held three banquets in his mansion in Luoyang to celebrate two seasonal festivals. Twenty-one poets in all, including Gao’s relatives and acquaintances, attended the banquets, and a series of poems along with a preface were
written for each occasion. The most distinguished poet among them was Chen Zi’ang. Most other poets were of little significance in history, and for two thirds of them, the poems written for Gao’s banquets were the only poems that have survived. Later the prefaces and the poems were compiled into a collection known as the Gaoshi sanyan shiji reputedly by the host Gao Zhengchen. This collection was not recorded in any library catalogues until the mid-Qing, when the Siku quanshu was compiled, but the edition included in the Siku quanshu is incomplete. In this paper, I shall present a brief textual history of the Gaoshi sanyan shiji as well as an introduction to the occasions and participants. Reading this collection against the background of the group compositions that had taken place in the early Tang dynasty, I aim to explore the function of poetry for a small social group of leisured aristocrats as a form of entertainment and a medium of communication on formal social occasions. I shall pay attention to the question of how poetry is composed in the knowledge and expectations of the intended audience on such occasions, and in doing so, try to explore the courtly aesthetics that dictated the nature of the early Tang approach to poetic composition.

Sujane Wu
Smith College
Not Feeling Ashamed to Learn from Someone Younger:
the Meeting of Lu Yun (262-303) and Zhou Chu (236-297)

Lu Yun’s biography in the Jin shu, the anecdotes about him in the Shishuo xinyu, as well as his own writings can only reveal some aspects of his public and private life (e.g. his associations with his contemporaries). Additional sources need to be used in order to obtain a complete picture of Lu Yun’s life, particularly in the dubious case of the meeting between Lu Yun and Zhou Chu. Did Zhou Chu really go to seek help from Lu Yun and his brother Lu Ji who were much younger than Zhou at the time? When did it happen? Where did this event occur? Because of the different versions recorded in various sources, a simple event like this often causes problems for scholars. This paper aims to analyze the sources that have been used by scholars and to explore more evidence to provide a plausible account of this event.

Ping Yao
California State University, Los Angeles
Images of Tang Women in Stupa Inscriptions

This paper examines Tang representations of Buddhist women through a close reading of stupa inscriptions. A total of 45 such inscriptions have survived, providing us with a fascinating source of how Buddhist nuns and Buddhist laywomen lived their lives and how Tang society perceived their religious piety. Tang stupa inscriptions reveal that while abandoning or neglecting their family responsibilities was a gross violation of Confucian gender ideology, these Buddhist women were nevertheless portrayed as divinely beautiful, highly intuitive, well learned and exceptionally virtuous. Conversely, the overwhelming acceptance of these
women’s Buddhist piety in turn greatly influenced Tang perception of ideal women.