Speaking to History: start

[flemmings]

The foreword, the introduction, and the first chapter which summarizes the Gou Jian story as told by the historical sources. This qualifies as speed reading for me.

Had a satori moment some years back when paleaswater was showing me some Chinese opera based on the novel A Dream of Red Chambers. If you haven't read it (and you should, but the novel is long and life is short) understand that there are two main heroines in it, among a host of fascinating women (and one of what a Chinese-kei commenter on a ML called 'a horrid little boy.' He holds the lightbulb and the world revolves around him.) Dai Yu is delicate, sensitive, self-absorbed, passionate (I'd say hysterical, but I'm trying to avoid psychiatric terminology), aesthetic, willful, and no one ever considers her poor nerves (except said horrid little boy, who's exactly like her. They should have married and been like the Carlyles-- 'that way only two people were made miserable instead of four.') She's Heathcliff's Cathy; she's an emo teenager; she's a pain and obviously I have no sympathy for her.

Then there's Bao Chai, who's sensible, down to earth, considerate, long-suffering and practical. Like most such people, she's left to deal with other people's messes, like her impossible brother and cantankerous relations and the vagaries of the horrid little boy himself. Dai Yu has vapours and takes to her bed so no one will bother her; Bao Chai copes while everyone comes and complains to her, though it was perfectly clear to me that she'd rather be in her rooms reading and writing poetry instead of waiting on tiresome aunties. Bao Chai may be an ideal of Chinese female virtue, but she's also the kind of person any westerner wants around because they deal with trouble, they don't make it. And alas, life as well as literature runs more to Dai Yus ('I am a misunderstood free spirit and now I'll have my revenge by showing just how spesshul people like me are and how dull and inferior ordinary people are to Me') than Bao Chais. (Who wants a hero(ine) who's decent and sensible? Petulant!Alec and kills-on-command!Richard 4evah, not commonsense Nicholas and Philip.)

And I was saying something of this sort to paleaswater, who said that Dai Yu is a heroine in China precisely *because* she's selfish and self-willed and concerned only about Wonderful Me. The western commonplace is the eastern rarity. Which proves you can read all the foreign literature you want, you're still seeing it with Your Culture's instincts.

Which brings us to Gou Jian.

The ha ha 'historical' Gou Jian, or atanyrate the Gou Jian of the traditional story (that better?) didn't have, from my POV, much to complain about. He attacked Wu, he was defeated, he was all gungho to resist to the death but his advisors begged him to submit to Fu Chai and humble himself, on the off chance that his country might survive if he did. There's no edict and oaths to Zhou in this one-- becoming Fu Chai's slave is Gou Jian's own proposal, which Fu Chai accepts. Gou Jian and his queen and Fan Li all go off to Wu in a comfortable cart and set up a menage a trois in a comfortable little house; Gou Jian has to drive the king's carriage and his queen has to muck out the stables, but we have no cangues or pillories or Brute 2.5's or rapes by Jin ambassadors. Even the dung-tasting has a context. It's Fan Li's idea: Fu Chai is sick and Fan Li, with his mystical magical diviner's powers, knows he'll get better on a certain day, so he tells Gou Jian to sample the king's excrement and tell him as much. It's not even an unheard-of method but one with precedents for medical diagnosis, and extraordinarily filial sons will do it to ascertain the state of their father's health. Fu Chai is of course impressed by Gou Jian's devotion; he's also, in a telling story, impressed by the way Gou Jian and his queen and Fan Li still maintain the proper social relations between king and courtier and husband and wife even while sitting outside their little house surrounded by stacks of horse dung. Cohen doesn't say what these actions are; he does say Fu Chai climbed a tower to spy on the royal prisoners in secret.

So Fu Chai takes the king and queen into the palace and eventually, on a propitious day, sends them back to Yue, and cedes land to Yue as a gift to them. To my thinking, not a bad bargain: but I was early imbued, not only with notions that sin necessarily invokes punishment, but with stories of Fortune's Wheel and the fall of kings to beggardom and imprisonment ('Call no man happy until he's dead' Croesus, f'rinstance) and occasional return to a happy state. Gou Jian however at once begins to plot revenge for his humiliation. What's his beef, one wonders? He started the war; he deserved to die for being defeated; becoming a slave was *his* idea in the first place, as a way of saving his neck. Why's he so het up that Fu Chai a) accepted his own proposal and b) let him live, in reduced circumstances but hardly with barbaric ill-treatment? Rank ingratitude, we calls it.

As Japanese translators are wont to say, there are three things that matter in understanding a text: context, context, and context. I am missing context.

One notices that our Woxin ups the ante in ways that are congenial to western thinking. Yue is pretty much forced into war with Wu while the old kings are still alive; Gou Jian is hubristic in thinking that one victory means he can conquer the whole kingdom, but then again, the argument that Wu Zi Xu won't let the matter rest carried a lot of weight to my mind. The slavery is slavery and the hardship is hardship; Gou Jian is given quite enough personal reasons to desire revenge on Wu.

And one reason that I'm not sure is them or me or both. Possibly the worst thing Fu Chai does to Gou Jian, by our lights, is to make him deny himself-- make him adopt a pretence that not only negates his autonomy but affects his actual selfness, because the act can't be as perfect as it is unless Gou Jian really means it in some part of himself. Gou Jian resisting in the stocks still has his will and autonomy, and the universe continues to unfold as it should. (It's dumb, because counter-productive, but still admirable and what trad heroes are supposed to do.) Gou Jian in the feather recitation is just bearable for its sheer over-the-topness. ('And if you buy this I have some land in Florida you might be interested in.') Gou Jian saying 'The Great Lord lacks salt' to Wu Zi Xu makes this Canadian's blood run cold. That's the bit I can't bear to rewatch. Gou Jian isn't the same afterwards. Fu Chai and Wu Zi Xu have done something unforgivable by my society's standards-- they've destroyed the hero's selfness. I'm still not certain that it's unforgivable by the producers' standards; and fairly clearly, what was traditionally considered unforgivable is something else entirely.

I continue to read.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

now you make me wants the book!!! Hmmm ... *looks over to hubby and plots the dropping of hints for birthday!* - while he might not concede to the buying of boyband paraphernalia he might get me a history book!!! ^_~

Looking forward to more uhmm dissections. Thank you for sharing.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

If there's a paperback (amazon doesn't offer one and UCal Press seems equally ignorant) you might go for that. You can get the subtitled TV series for the price of the hardcover, which is even better. It still looks to be a lot of how post-Qing China has made use of the Gou Jian story in propaganda-- fine if you're a Chinese social historian, less fine if you're a fangirl.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

I suppose ... it does seem interesting enough though... but I do like the cover art too! I know that might sound silly. I haven't made my library trip yet so I might wait and do that first and 'look see look see' (http://aznsensazn.tumblr.com/post/86458051/english-phrases-that-came-from-chinese) as they say here. Before the hint dropping.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Oh, much more successful, for certain values of success. His way of plotting revenge is to become a virtuous ruler- forgives taxes for ten years, promotes agriculture, raises orphans, maybe even dowers girls so they can get husbands and increase the war-ravaged population. He conducts himself meekly with foreign rulers and gets their good will, promotes trade, welcomes foreigners, blah blah. So it can be presented as 'sees the error of his ways, makes atonement, and then goes out to smite the ungodly', which is to a great extent what the Woxin series did with him. Post-Wu Woxin!Gou Jian is all about the Way of Heaven-- abandoning it got him the pillory, cleaving to it (and its implied benevolence) will gain him victory.

Anyway, back to historic!GJ. After much delay he goes off and besieges Fu Chai's city while he's away, takes it and kills FC's son. Oddly, Fu Chai comes to a settlement over this and cedes him some land, but in the end, and after another ten years or so, Gou Jian meets his army in force and defeats them. Fu Chai capitulates and Gou Jian offers to let him settle in the north of his former country with 200 families to wait on him forever, but Fu Chai says he's too old for that and kills himself.

However Gou Jian has become hardened and suspicious over the years. His advisor Fan Li sees it and says he's leaving. 'Go then,' Gou Jian says, 'but know I'll punish your wife and children with death.' Fan Li says he's still leaving but sees no reason why Gou Jian should kill his family-- and off he goes, the swine. Gou Jian however takes Fan Li's wife and family into the palace and sees to their well-being. Fan Li's colleague Wen Zhong isn't so lucky. Fan Li warns him that his position is precarious but Wen Zhong remains at court, loyal to Gou Jian, and is ordered to execute himself. (Wen Zhong had nine strategies for defeating Fu Chai but only used three of them. His enemies pointed out that he still had six to use against Gou Jian, which is batshit by our standards because Gou Jian knew what the other six were. But no matter: paranoia is paranoia.)

But Gou Jian becomes hegemonist, first of the first only under the (titular) leadership of the king of Zhou. So a success by Chinese lights. Centuries remembered his patience and perseverance and determination and held him up as a model of same. (M says there's a certain ambivalence in the Chinese attitude to Gou Jian-- yeah, determination and all, but look what he turned into. Cohen however thinks that's a recent development from the last century only.)

Fu Chai by contrast becomes, in popular culture, a cruel, vainglorious and pleasure-loving bravo, brought down by the wiles of Xi Shi who was sent to Wu to do that very thing. I begin to think Fu Chai got a bad press, which I wouldn't have thought possible from the Fu Chai of the series.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

She's Heathcliff's Cathy; she's an emo teenager; she's a pain and obviously I have no sympathy for her.

YES thank you.

That's fascinating and illuminating, and unfortunately I have nothing more intelligent to say at this time of the night. But I look forward to further thoughts.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Definitely look see before hinting. Libraries exist for a purpose.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Another not-a-fan-of-Lin Daiyu, I take it? In some ways she's a woman only a man would find attractive.

ETA ignoring of course that Cathy was created by a woman... Ah well.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Very much not a fan of Lin Daiyu. But then again, not a fan of Red Chambers anyway. Haven't got the stamina to finish it.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Cohen is not up to snuff on his historical commentaries. The two major sources from which we get our story of Gou Jian, both have commentaries dating back continuously to Song dynasty on Gou Jian being 阴险， and additionally a comrade in hard times, but not a friend in peace. This was put in the mouth of Fan Li by the compiler of the chronicle, but clearly was actually the opinion of the historians of the time.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Sorry, what I meant was-- the dark side of Gou Jian is presented in the early chronicles and comments, but is omitted from later popular literature that makes use of the Gou Jian story. The usages Cohen presents are from late Qing onwards: elelmentary school readers, plays, speeches, even a cigarette advertisement. Through that period the emphasis is on, quite literally, woxinchangdan-- Gou Jian's perseverence, the extraordinary means he took not to forget his sufferings in Wu, and his ultimate triumph. Cohen says (but I haven't got that far) that it was only later, under Mao and especially when sentiment became anti-Mao, that authors and popular literature included the paranoid king who got rid of his ministers. So in the popular mind, for at least seventy years, Goujian was simply an exemplar, someone to be emulated.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

the dark side of Gou Jian is presented in the early chronicles and comments, but is omitted from later popular literature

That wouldn't have gone down too well with the (Moral Ed teachers of the) kiddies, I suppose. Although, a cigarette advertisement?

Also, thank you! for the parallel between Lin Daiyu and Cathy. At the time that I read the books (Red Chamber first, in conjunction with a very popular China TV serial adaptation, and coincidentally Wuthering Heights around the tail end of the series' run), everyone else (male, female, classmates, adults) was besotted with Daiyu, possibly because of said TV drama. I found her portrayal hackneyed but understandable, whereas in the book she was downright annoying (and although I couldn't define as emo then because I didn't know the term, I knew it when I saw it).

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Oh I see. That makes sense. Though I think Cohen is conflating Gou Jian and woxinchangdan. For the Chinese the act of woxinchangdan is admirable, but Gou Jian may or may not be. In moral ad they teach woxinchangdan, they do not teach the kingship of Gou Jian. Not considered the same thing. Chinese language is full of these proverbs, but the people who give rise to the proverb are not accorded the same admiration. In fact one thing I'm not sure that Cohen got base on your summary is the many people only know the proverb and the fuzzy outline (I'm one of them), but the association with Gou Jian is quite vague. So it's perfectly reasonable for most people to think woxinchangdan is worthy of admiration, while considering Gou Jian to be a less than honorable person. This seeming contradiction is not really a contradiction in the mind of the Chinese at all.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

When I was younger I always preferred Bao Chai as well. She's so pleasant, and such a charming person to have around. But now I'm older I find Bao Chai exhausting sometimes, and that Daiyu has much to be said for her. So in that way I guess she's the reverse of Cathy, whom most people outgrow by the time they're sixteen.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

a cigarette advertisement?

Yes indeed. To demonstrate the iconographic presentation of woxinchangdan-- man lying on a pallet of sticks looking up at a hanging something, which everyone knows is a gall bladder- and its use through the '20s and '30s. So in the advert there's a picture upper left of a group of people gathered together for National Shame Day (May 7 or 9, depending, to commemorate/ protest the 21 Demands) and below them a man, in modern dress, sitting on a pallet of sticks etc etc. To show that smoking Lucky Dragon or whatever is patriotic, and also Carthago delendum est that China must never forget its national humiliation.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I think he understands that the terms woxinchangdan and Gou Jian were used to evoke a certain mindset, and that most people would associate Woxinchangdan and the name Gou Jian without any other knowledge of what Gou Jian did, besides sit on sticks and lick gall every morning. It would seem that one purpose of the book is to show how and when the image became broader-- probably, when there was larger literate base in China and a mass media. He says somewhere that earlier Gou Jian was used to inspire (earlier GJ and in earlier parts of the century, both), but people found that later (ditto) Gou Jian could be used as a figure to condemn the leader of state- Mao as well as others.

Another focus of the book is the way stories are used to interpret life, so the emphasis is on the uses of the Gou Jian story through the 20th century. Historical Gou Jian wouldn't have been known to many people a hundred years ago. Just as, in the west, there is or was (TV changes everything) a general knowledge of who Sisyphus is and what he does, especially after Camus. But very few people could tell you *why* Sisyphus is rolling that stone up the hill, including classicist me who thought she did but was in fact thinking of Tantalus.