City of Marvel and Transformation

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City of
Marvel and
Transformation
Changan and Narratives of
Experience in Tang Dynasty China

Linda Rui Feng

University of Hawaii Press

Honolulu
 2015 University of Hawaii Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feng, Linda Rui, author.

City of marvel and transformation : Changan and narratives of experience in Tang Dynasty
China / Linda Rui Feng.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-4106-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Chinese literatureTang dynasty, 618907History and criticism. 2. Chinese literature
ChinaXian ShiHistory and criticism. 3. Xian Shi (China)Intellectual life.
4.IntellectualsChinaXian ShiHistory. I.Title.
PL2501.F46 2016
895.1009'003dc23
2015006680

University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free

paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Designed by George Whipple

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc.

 Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1
Chapter One
Narrating Liminality and Transformation 24
Chapter Two
The Lure of Changan 44
Chapter Three
Navigating the City Interior 68
Chapter Four
Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 88
Chapter Five
Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 112
Epilogue 135

Notes 139
Glossary 167
Bibliography 173
Index 187

v
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 Preface and Acknowledgments

This project began as a joyful bout of reading stories from the Tang dynasty
(618907), followed by trying to make some sense of the freshness and wonder I
found in them. My initial question had been quite simply, Why are these stories
so different from what came before, and after? Along the way, of course, I discov-
ered that we needed to ask better questions of our sources. In order to fully under
stand the forces that produced these tales, I had to look beyond any single genre
of literature in the Tang. Just as importantly, I found that I had to pose ques-
tions that extend into extraliterary disciplinesurban history, anthropology,
and space and place studies, to name just a few. If this book repeatedly staggers
across the borders delineating these disciplines, it is because, to borrow the
words of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga on treating the problems of cul-
ture, one is constantly obliged to undertake predatory incursions into provinces
not sufficiently explored by the raider [herself]. If I were to cordon off each of these
provinces of inquiry and leave their consideration for specialists in those fields, it
would be to deny much of what drew me to the literary in the first place. It would
also mean losing the opportunity to do justice to the complexity of the subject
athandnamely, the sense of lively interaction between a group of people and
aplace.
As suggested by the subtitle, this book is concerned with lived experiences as
they come to us through writing. These experiencesreal and imaginedare
inflected in urban and spatial terms, and are a way to retrieve lost ligatures be-
tween senses of the self and a sense of place. Because they are rooted in a particular
period in history for which we cannot fall back on familiar, post-Enlightenment
terms such as intellectual, society, or meritocracy, in the chapters there is a
good deal of specialist content in the discussion of institutional structures (such
as the civil service examination) and ontological categories (such as the lite-
rati) that were in the process of being formed in middle-period China. None-
theless, I remain hopeful that by asking questions about how urban sojourns
shape subjectivity and perceptions, this book can reach readers interested more

vii
viii Preface and Acknowledgments

broadly in studies of personhood, spatial practice, and cities elsewhere as living

cultural systems in flux.
Thinking about the people who have made this book possible is to revisit mo-
ments of warmth and clarity. At Columbia University, a number of people
guidedand goadedthis project from the very inception. It was my enormous
fortune to have Professor Shang Wei as my adviser and mentor. When first told
of my inchoate enthusiasms, he could have reasonably encouraged me to pursue
any number of more sensible topics. But he did not. Instead, he suggested ways to
read deeply and widely, and took every opportunity to show me how to develop
good scholarly habits and to unfold research problemsalways with his trade-
mark patience and humor (both of which, I am sure, were taxed in the process).
Professor Bob Hymes, with all his erudition (including knowledge of cephalo-
pods), wit, and curiosity, taught me that the ability to say I dont know is in fact
the most important capacity for any scholar to have. Knowing this has sustained
me in this venture more times than I can count. I am indebted to Professor Haruo
Shirane, who was the first to encourage me to go beyond dipping my toes in the
humanities and apply to graduate programs, for offering me lots of good advice
once I got into one. Im grateful to Professor Wendy Swartz, for both scholarly
and practical guidance at early stages of my career, and to the late Professor Pei-
yi Wu, who took time to discuss with me translation issues on the Beili zhi. Pro-
fessor Michael Marme ably shared his knowledge of urban history. Stephen West
went above and beyond his call of duty to comment on my early work with detail
and meticulous care; over the years, he has also continued to inspire me with his
own research wizardry.
Since joining the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of To-
ronto, I have been lucky to have in my home institution a cohort of scholars who
are as accomplished as they are personable and supportive. I feel privileged to
call myself their colleague, not only because of the high caliber of work they do,
but also because of how much they have made me feel at home in the corridors of
Robarts Library. To the staff at EAS, without whom nothing would get done, I
thank Paul Chin, Norma Escobar, and the incomparable Natasja VanderBerg,
whose professionalism and laser-sharp good sense have never failed to astound
me. Lucy Gan at the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library repeatedly helped me with
book-related favors (often at the last minute), with great kindness and resource-
fulness.
At times, my intellectual pursuits seemed to take on the path of a molecule in
Brownian motion, and I think fondly on the many conversations I had with friends
and colleagues near and far who were generous with their time and insight.
Christian de Pee asked me many tough questions about the project, some of
 Preface and Acknowledgments ix

which Im still trying to answer. With characteristic ingenuity and stamina,

Yunte Huang always found ways to build bridges for me, and shared with me his
joys and tribulations of putting words on paper.S.E. YSC Kile has joined me
on adventures spanning three continents, and over the years created some of my
happiest memories involving reading, learning, and traveling. With his work on
both sides of the divide, Tong Lam showed me the expansive horizons of an artist-
scholar, and his photographs lent shape and form to my vague inklings and day-
dreams. I thank the following people for their helpful suggestions on drafts and
not-even-drafts, and for prodding me along: Tony DeBlasi, Michael Gibbs Hill,
Tom Keirstead, Paize Keulemans, Meng Yue, Garret Olberding, Atsuko Sakaki,
Andre Schmid, Satoko Shimazaki, Mingwei Song, Nick Tackett, and Curie Vi-
rag. As autumn morphed into winter, and winter into spring, over hot beverages,
desserts, and main courses (in no particular order), Yi Gu and Janet Poole gave
me courage time and again to look at my snarled sentences with a renewed sense
of possibility. Im ever thankful for their companionship and spirit. I am indebted
to my editor, Pamela Kelley from the University of Hawaii Press, for her unflag-
ging faith in this project, and to the anonymous reviewers who offered generous
and substantial advice on ways to improve the book.
My early research was supported by a fellowship from the Fulbright IIE pro-
gram. More recent research has been supported by a Connaught Start-Up Grant
and the Connaught New Staff Matching Grant at the University of Toronto. The
writing of the first draft of this book greatly benefited from leave time granted by
the Department of East Asian Studies. I thank the Schoff Fund at the University
Seminars at Columbia University for a subvention grant toward publication;
early versions of the ideas presented have also benefited from discussions in the
University Seminars on Traditional China. I am grateful to the publishers of three
journals for their permission to incorporate into this book previously published
material from the following three articles: Changan and Narratives of Experi-
ence in Tang Tales, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 71, no. 1 (2011): 3568;
Negotiating Vertical Space: Walls, Vistas, and the Topographical Imagination,
Tang Studies 29 (2011): 2744; Unmasking Fengliu in Urban Changan: Reread-
ing Beili zhi (Anecdotes from the Northern Ward), Chinese Literature: Essays,
Articles, Reviews 32 (2010): 121.
Members of my familynuclear and extendedhave graciously put up with
the heterodox tempo and demands of my work life, and with my reneging on
promises of visits and family outings. They have teased me about being a tuolaji
when my pace seemed incomprehensibly slow, but at important moments have
told me to take my time to do this well (especially MYZ, who had to live with my
complaints and miraculously still looks forward to my next book).
x Preface and Acknowledgments

I dedicate this book to the memory of my remarkable grandparents, Zhu

Zongying and Feng Ruiquan. From my earliest days, they imbued me with a vis-
ceral love of language and stories, as well as the sense that curiosity and imagina-
tion are as important as knowledge. That they did this with laughter and without
the weight of pedagogy was nothing less than having sprinkled stardust on my
life in its most formative years.
 Introduction

This book is about the interconnection between an urban space and a group of
writers who came through its fold during their formative years. In this sense the
city in question, depicted through meandering trajectories rather than immuta-
ble essences, exists with these writers in a state of mutual illumination. For the
writers, this illumination arose out of circumstance rather than design, because
their writing was never aimed at producing a portrait of Changan per se. Instead,
we see the capital city brought into focus through the lens of their perceptual pref-
erences, shaped by their shared education, inherited knowledge, and personal
circumstances in the second half of the Tang dynasty. Their concerns about the
eventual outcomes of their sojourn, the unfamiliar arrangements of urban space,
all the expected and unexpected encounters within the citys wallsthese con-
cerns come to us in narratives that constitute a city in the mindscape.
To these writers who are the intermediaries between the city and text, Changan
was megalopolis, political launch pad, and, perhaps most importantly, cultural
paradigm. It was frequently on the minds of Tang writers and storytellers not
merely as a neutral backdrop, but rather as a lived space that shaped aspirations
and the production of text. By lived space, I mean something that transcended a
mere inventory of structures and constituents. It was engendered by crossings,
reciprocities, assemblies, the intersections of gazes, and the flow of knowledge and
opinions. As such, we see from their writing that Changan served as the site and
mechanism of transformations central to literati identity in the latter half of the
Tang, a time when new domains of experience and new perceptual categories came
into being.
This book aims, then, to conceptualize the following Tang literary phenom-
enon: narrativeswith the capital city as setting and steeped in everyday details
repeatedly depict experiences that are spatially evocative and socially specific, rather
than those that can be reduced to ethical universals. These narratives, echoing one
another in multifaceted ways, often raise this implicit question: how should an
aspirant and/or newcomer behave in Changan? The possibilities for answering
this question reflect the anticipated elevation of civil service examinees to servants

1
2Introduction

of the state; they also posit life changes that are not so much hierarchical as lat-
eral, as their writers sought to mediate among competing claims for the value of
literary talent. The narratives explore the role of the literatus as wayfarer, the in-
terplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for
extraofficial promotion and for finding unorthodox forms of valuation and live-
lihood. These explorations are subsumed under the importance of metropolitan,
situational knowledge, and they bring to our attention an unprecedented inter-
val of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced
by the social and spatial contiguities of urban space.
The term narrative I have been using so far may seem imprecise, but that is
so by necessity: they are texts brought together across otherwise distinct biblio-
graphic categories; they are imprints of a mode of literary representation from
which it is possible to identify convergent concerns about Changan as a shared,
contested, and, at times, imaginary space. Even though these protean texts do not
treat the city as a subject in and of itselfin fact they predate the idea of the city
as experiential categorythey nonetheless offer us ways to retrieve the dynamism
of human inhabitants, to understand the city at the human scale.
This introduction outlines the books arguments, its major textual sources and
theoretical models. I would like to begin by giving the reader some context on
Changan as an imperial capital and urban center in Tang-dynasty China.

Changan in Context
Changan has been compared to great world cities such as Babylon, Rome, Lon-
don, and a few others.1 Like Babylon before it, its cultural legacy has outlasted its
physical structures. In contrast to ancient Rome, which served as the seed of an
expanding empire, Changan was designed and erected for an ambitious empire
after it had already been won. Situated in the Wei River valley, surrounded by
mountains, its inland geography also distinguished it from capital cities like Con-
stantinople and London, bordered by sea and river. Changan was originally built
as Daxing City (Daxing Cheng), the capital for the Sui dynasty (581618), which
had managed to unify China after centuries of division.2 The Sui dynasty was
short-lived, but not so its successor, the Tang dynasty, which would last about three
hundred years. In 653, thirty-five years into the founding of the Tang, Daxing City
was designated as the primary Tang capital and renamed Changan.3 This name,
meaning long-lasting peace, harkens back to the capitals predecessor just to its
norththe Changan of the Western Han (202 BCE9 CE), an erstwhile capital
city contemporary with Augustan Rome. Tang Changan flourished at the same
time medieval Europe saw a general urban decline, and it drew people, goods,
 Introduction3

Imperial capitals from Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties in the Wei River valley region. (Based on
Xiao, Zhongguo jianzhu yishu shi, 309; and Xiong, Sui-Tang Changan, map 1.2.) Map inset:
location of modern-day Xian, Shaanxi Province, China.

ideas, and fashion from Central Asia through the Silk Road.4 With an estimated
one million inhabitants, medieval Changan stood as one of the most populous
urban centers of the world until the year 904, when it was abandoned and dis-
mantled on the eve of the dynastys collapse.
Tang Changan occupied what is the present-day city of Xian in Shaanxi Prov-
ince, and the walls of Xian (built in late-imperial times) enclose a fraction of the
generous space once allotted to Changan. Although any visitor to modern Xian
4Introduction

will be reminded of its ties to the Tang capital, other than two brick pagodas reno-
vated in later erasthe Large Goose and Small Goose Pagodafew traces re-
main of Tang-dynasty Changan.5 In contrast to imperial capitals closer to our
time, such as Beijing from the Ming and Qing dynasties, our most comprehensive
knowledge of the morphological features of Tang Changan comes from archaeo-
logical reconstructions and transmitted texts. Modern archaeological findings
have allowed scholars to reconstruct the architectonics of palaces, markets, and
some of its residential quarters.6 Urban geographical treatises, many of which
were compiled well after the fall of the Tang, offer descriptions of its morphol-
ogy.7 From these sources, we know something about its monumental scale: an
unprecedented 9.7 by 8.6 kilometers.8 The nine longitudinal and twelve latitudi-
nal thoroughfares of Changan demarcated over one hundred residential wards
(fang or li), which were in themselves sizable spatial units (over one kilometer in
length and half a kilometer in width, on average).9 The avenues between the wards
were vast: archaeologists found that between Pingkang and Xuanyang Wards, for
example, the avenue was twenty-nine meters wide, which was enough to fit twenty
carriages across it.10
In the words of its contemporary poets, Changan was a place of ninefold
walls. City walls staked out its perimeter; inside the city walls, residential wards
in turn had their own walls and gates. City gates and ward gates were regulated
by a quotidian rhythm: they closed at sundown and reopened at sunrise. This
curfew, which limited nighttime movement between the residential wards but
not within them, was enforced in order to maintain civic order and curb crime.
Unlike cities closer to our time, Changan was designed within a tradition of con-
taining commercial activity: two official markets, placed in the eastern and
western halves of the city, granted controlled access for suppliers and for city
residents.
It is perhaps easy to associate this partitioningof people and activitieswith
a form of limitation, especially when Changan is compared to the imperial capi-
tal of the subsequent dynasty, Kaifeng of the Northern Song (9601127), which
had open streets and dispersed commercial activity.11 Yet it is misguided to think
of Changan as an example of an unliberated medieval city, awaiting the ero-
sion of aristocratic power to transform it into the open city found in subsequent
centuries. When partitions and curfews emerge in Tang informal narratives, they
demonstrate that Changan was more than the sum of its partitions; several nar-
ratives discussed in later chapters recount elements of quotidian experience lived
around, across, and even above urban partitions and enclosures. Walls, after all,
are not always impermeable barriers, nor signs of backwardness. To borrow a
hypothetical question raised by Haun Saussy, musing over Chinese walls ancient
 Introduction5

A modern reconstruction of the layout of Changan. (Based on Hiraoka, Tangdai de Changan

yu Luoyang ditu, map 1.) Each square on this chessboard is a blank space, bearing signs of
erasure and simplification. The following residential wards are frequently mentioned through-
out: (1) Anding Ward; (2) Anyi Ward; (3) Chongren Ward; (4) the Cien Pagoda in Jinchang
Ward; (5) Jinggong Ward; (6) Pingkang Ward; (7) Qujiang, or the Serpentine Pond, a popular
recreation area; (8) Xinchang Ward; and (9) Xuanyang Ward.

and modern: What if the relation between the human animal and the walled
community did not simply amount to opposition and struggle? What if walls were
(and are) the skins surrounding forms of collective life?12
To understand how and why Changan captured the imagination of writers
in its heyday, we must understand Changan for both its initial raison dtre and
6Introduction

its later appropriationand improvisationby its dwellers and sojourners. When

I look at a diagram of the layout of Changan, drawn as a set of neat squares re-
sembling a chessboard or a tab of chocolate, I see the signs of simplification as well
as erasure: these well-behaved squares and rectangles enclose blank spaces
where there were once other, more unruly, traces. By framing the analysis of this
project under the notion of city space, I hope to move away from the assumption
that Changan was defined first and foremost by its imperial plan, that it served
as the precursor to a telos of Chinese urban history. Instead, it behooves us to
examine Changan and its collective life within its own cultural framework
wards and all, walls and all.

Changan as a Place of Collective Life

Changan was, no doubt, many things to many people. Yet because out of those
who lived in the city there are many whose traces have vanished and whose expe-
riences are beyond knowing, what we have access to most easily are the views of
the writers of their agemen of letters who shared a curriculum of education and,
to a large extent, an outlook for their future. As a city that thrived and fell centuries
before the inception of the nation-state, the capitalist economy, and the self-
consciously modern, Changan is crucial to our conversation on collective life
because it was the ground zero of migration driven by talent, even if the kind of
social mobility it promised was circumscribed at best.
Traveling to the capital was not uncommon in imperial China before the Tang,
of course, as the educated elite had long been heading to Han-dynasty Changan,
Luoyang, and later, Six Dynasties Jiankang (modern-day Nanjing) for participation
in government service and cultural life. Several characteristics, however, distin-
guished the case of Tang-dynasty Changan as it became a space of dislocation
and relocation. First and most tangibly, Changan in the Tang routinely exerted a
new centripetal force on men hoping to be of service in the empires bureaucracy.
With its inception in the Sui, the civil service examination (ju)a system whereby
officials could be repeatedly recruited through demonstrated mastery of certain
subjectscame into its own during the Tang.13 The examination system, perpet-
ually adjusted and adapted through the centuries that followed, would eventually
become one of the most durable institutions in Chinas long imperial history,
exerting an unparalleled effect on both literature and the cultural elite until the
beginning of the twentieth century.14 However, it is important to keep in mind
that during the Tang, some of its key social categories and institutionswhich
subsequent eras took for grantedwere still in the process of formation, negotia-
tion, and revision. For example, a number of soon-to-be-obsolete degree subjects
 Introduction7

were conferred at one point or another throughout the Tang; the quota for each,
their administration, as well as the content of the test questions were all subject to
ongoing debates and adjustments, propelled by advocates as well as critics of the
recruitment system.15 Additionally, it was only from the second half of the Tang
that the jinshi (Presented Scholar) degree, with a curriculum that emphasized
belles lettres, fully emerged as a highly coveted distinction that would exert sig-
nificant impact on literati identity.16
One characteristic that distinguished the institution of examinations during
the Tang, however, was its symbiosis with a metropolitan center. In contrast to
the later, Song-dynasty model, in which examinations were administered in pro-
vincial centers and held in the capital only once every three years, throughout the
Tang all subjects of the examinations were held annually in the capital. Examin-
ees were, by definition, Changan dwellers. With few exceptions, each autumn
around the tenth month, thousands of candidates from the provinces would make
a mass ingress into Changan, bringing with them page boys, servants, and hopes
of upward mobility.17 As suggested by a Tang adageWhen the sophora blos-
soms, the examinees get busy (guihua huang, juzi mang)18the examination pro-
cedures, for which the candidate sojourned through the winter and entered the
examination grounds in the spring, became a recognizable seasonal marker in the
capital. In his study of examination lore, Oliver Moore calls this calendrical
rhythm the annual examination program, whose key moments became deeply
entrenched with the seasons in Changan.19
Despite the fact that in Tang practice the jinshi degree did not automatically
lead to an official post, and despite the fact that it channeled a relatively small num-
ber of officials into the bureaucracy, the thirty-plus jinshi degrees conferred each
year occupied a disproportionately large imaginary space.20 From the eighth
century on, the annual registers of degree winners (dengke ji) were avidly com-
piled to commemorate the new recipients. Feng Yan (fl. 750800) recounts how a
failed candidate reverently held this register on top of his head, calling it the Su-
tra of the Names of Thousand Buddhas.21 Interest in the examination results
reached beyond the candidates themselves; according to an entry in the Tang en-
cyclopedia of institutions, Each spring after the list of new degree holders was
announced, within a dozen days, the names of jinshi degree holders would be-
come known throughout the realm.22 Even one emperor seemed to be in its thrall.
Ninth-century anecdotes report that the late-Tang emperor Xuanzong (r. 846
859), in an imitative gesture aimed to flatter, once wrote a name card describing
himself as the provincial tribute scholar, jinshi candidate Li, and presented it to
that years presiding examiner.23 Here the emperor styled himself after the stream
of examinees that became the most noticeable group in the latter half of the Tang:
8Introduction

so-called tribute scholars (gongsheng). These were candidates who, in contrast to

pupils from the imperial academies, had been educated in the various provinces
and dispatched to the capital as eligible contenders.24
As the jinshi degree gradually came to encapsulate career success and literary
recognition, it became a paradigm inseparable from Changan as the hosting site
of its preparation and competition, as well as what Elman calls the tournament
of talent for officialdom.25 By the latter half of the Tang, urban commercial ven-
tures began to evolve alongside examination culture. The so-called jinshi club (jin-
shi tuan), for example, was staffed by Changan urbanites and catered to each
years crop of new degree recipients, handling banquets and orchestrating con
spicuous outings for a profit.26 As documented in narratives, examinees also
became a client base for ventures including fortune-telling, sales of examination-
related writing portfolios, and for poetry-savvy courtesans.
Because it brought together peers, superiors, and networks of appraisers and
potential spectators, Changan and its variegated spaces presented unparalleled
opportunities for play and contest, in which bestors and boasters could emerge
triumphant by publicly demonstrating their literary skill, even outside of the ex-
amination grounds. Some of these public arenas included temple grounds, recre-
ational areas such as the Serpentine Pond (Qujiang), the pleasure quarters in Ping-
kang Ward, markets, as well as open avenues. Men of letters wrote on the interior
and exterior walls of buildings with high pedestrian traffic, to showcase their tal-
ent and also in some cases to satirize others. In anecdotes set in Changan, ordi-
nary encounters easily coalesce into urban theater, spurred by a community of
beholders frequently referred to in contemporary texts as haoshi zhe, which means
variously in these contexts newsmongers, aficionados, busybodies, or enthusi-
asts.27 These Changan venues and the onlookers they attracted altered both liter-
ary production and how literary aspirants thought of themselves: in Changan, it
became necessary yet insufficient to merely possess talentone needed to deploy
it widely and publicly as well. In short, examination sessions in Changan created
a platform where a man of letters could be simultaneously a servant of state, a vir-
tuoso poet, and an urban celebrity.
When I refer to the Tang literati, I have in mind men of letters (wenren) who
were in ways large and small unified by their education and aspirations embod-
ied in the civil service examination in general, and the jinshi degree in Changan
in particular. The many authors of the texts used in this book shared a common
past in their belles lettres curriculum, held a common aspiration for future ser
vice in the bureaucracy, andto various extentsparticipated in comparable ex-
periences of annual recruitment in Changan. As Peter Bol points out in his study
of the transformation of the shi class from the sixth to eleventh centuries, office
 Introduction9

holding, learning, and pedigree were the primary components in the shi identity.28
The jinshi degree, by conferring eligibility for office and by confirming the degree
holders literary skill and learning, fulfilled the two most important criteria for
shi identity during this time.

Theoretical Models
Even though Henri Lefebvre had in mind primarily Western, postcapitalist socie
ties in his study, the position he articulates in The Production of Spacethat
space is generated, not a priori given, and that it constitutes an essential aspect of
human interaction and the history of societiesremains relevant to studies of me-
dieval China. Lefebvre cites the Greek city as an example:

The city of the ancient world cannot be understood as a collection of people

and things in space; nor can it be visualized solely on the basis of a num-
ber of texts and treatises on the subject of space, even though some of
these...may be irreplaceable sources of knowledge. For the ancient city
had its own spatial practice: it forged its ownappropriatedspace.
Whence the need for a study of that space which is able to apprehend it as
such, in its genesis and its form, with its own specific time or times (the
rhythm of daily life), and its particular centers and polycentrism (agora,
temple, stadium, etc.).29

In the chapters that follow, I discuss these appropriated, forged social spaces in
Changan, characterized more by assembly and encounter than by its collection
of infrastructure. For an imperial capital like Changan, envisioned initially as the
seat of a newly unified realm, another useful conceptual tool from Lefebvre is his
formulation that space is produced through the mutual intervention and conflic-
tual unity among a triad: perceived space, conceived space, and lived space. He
characterizes conceived space as the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, tech-
nocratic subdividers and social engineers, subjecting its people and objects to
established relations. Lived space, on the other hand, is the space of inhabitants
and users, but also of artists, writers, and philosophers;30 it speaks and embraces
the loci of passion, of actions and of lived situations, and thus immediately im-
plies time.31
If Changan had been designed as enclosed rectangles within a larger rectangle,
then the stumbling itineraries of the newcomer, captured in narratives, belie this
orthogonal spatial control. If walls were initially built to sequester and contain,
then in the same kinds of narratives we see them becoming conduits rather than
10Introduction

partitions in space. Throughout my analysis, I draw upon ideas from Michel de

Certeau, who points out that everyday practices of users resist being reduced to
the disciplinary powers of institutions: even where institutional controls of space
are in principle maintained, commonplace activities in fact circumvent them.32
For Chinese cities before the Song, the studies of which have tended to favor as-
pects of their design and their imperial subjectivity, de Certeaus work provides a
welcome perspectival shift from that of the planners of a space to that of its users.
De Certeaus ideas are particularly germane to Changan, whose legacy of enclosed
wards, imposing walls, and perpendicular avenues preferentially survive, in lieu
of the transient and now-forgotten meanderings of its denizens.
Making an observation about the millennium-old city of Suzhou, Frederick
Mote notes that in the case of Chinese cities, The past was a past of words, not of
stones.33 This observation is equally applicable to Changan, whose monumen-
tality is also rooted in narratives of experience.34 Meanderings of examinees nav-
igating Changan make visible an alternate spatial perception, one akin to what
de Certeau calls the itinerary view, made in terms of operations and serial move-
ments. This view stands in contrast to the map view, aerial panoramas that flat-
ten out a totalizing observation abstracted from time.35
This book is titled City of Marvel and Transformation because men of letters
in the Tang did not come to us as fully formed writers, poets, and political agents;
instead, they grappled with a period of social indeterminacy newly distended by
the civil service examination in Changan. In order to conceptualize the figure of
the Changan-bound aspirant in anecdotes and imaginative renderings, this book
draws upon interpretive studies of culture that focus on rites of passage, some-
thing that accompanies every change of place, state, social position and age.36
Especially pertinent to our exploration is the work of the cultural anthropologist
Victor Turner, and in particular his concept of the liminal, a term derived from
the word limen or threshold, which can be applicable to both space and time.
As elaborated by Turner, a liminal state is an existence outside of normative so-
cial structure. Its position eludes classifications in cultural space; it is not this or
that, here or there, one thing or the other.37 For Turner, whose work began with
African tribal rituals and later included studies of theater and narrative in large-
scale societies, liminality is the fecund intermediate phase in the three-stage
progression that defines rites of passage: (1) detachment of an individual from
society; and (2) a phase of liminality, followed ultimately by (3) reincorporation
into society, where the initiated is once again expected to abide by customary
norms and standards. Turners work elaborates on this second of three phases,
making it possible to speak of liminal personas or liminaries who are betwixt
and between established states of social structure.38
 Introduction11

I do not wish to use Turners formulation of liminality as a universalized con-

cept of rite of passage in the context of premodern China. Rather, the application
of its framework toward the literary construction of Changan helps us better as-
similate the rich cultural particulars we find in the Tang corpusparticulars
intimated by depictions of the degree seeker on the threshold of official life. The
formulation of liminality encourages us to look in the interstices of established
social positions for literati men. It breaks us from the habit of seeing preofficial
life as a simple
preparatory imitation of the career to come, and from thinking of
literati men as if they had always been incumbent officials, bound by the duties
and rights associated with such. Ritual and literature are connected because both
are society talking about itself, the reflexivity of society, Turner reminds us.39
When we view Tang narratives of experience focusing on the anticipatory, con-
tingent, and probational, we can pry open a little-discussed interpretive space to
expose an elusive state of preofficial life wherein, to borrow Turners words again,
actuality gives way to possibility, in a subjunctive mood of culturethe heart of
experiences that are reflexive and explorative.40
In terms of specific Tang cultural practice, we see that most Tang examina-
tion rituals took place after the liminal statethat is, they applied to the new de-
gree holder rather than to the aspirant. In his study of ritual procedures through-
out the jinshi examination season, Oliver Moore points out that the most elaborate
and continuously practiced rituals of the examination cycle were those celebrat-
ing the conferral of the degree.41 This is not surprising, since this was the point at
which the newly initiated forged important ties: he became part of a cohort of
same-year degree recipients (tongnian), who were in turn disciples (mensheng) to
the presiding examiner (zuozhu) responsible for their success. Both of these
networks would remain lasting and powerful relationships in his subsequent
career. Although during the Tang the actual conferral of an official post required
additional steps, at this point, elaborate postdegree rituals registered the new de-
gree holder as a Changan insider, who would soon enough have access to the
portals of power.42
In contrast to the certitude and functional unity of degree-conferral rituals,
ceremonies to welcome examinees reveal ways in which they were not yet integrated
into the political and social structure of the capital. According to examination
anecdotes, each autumn, the tribute scholars were gathered together in the Da
ming Palace in the northeast corner of Changan. There, an official who was re-
sponsible for greeting foreign rulers and envoys and for handling tributary gifts
met the candidates and proclaimed the following words to them: You, who are
erudite and conversant, have traversed mountains and rivers from the far reaches
of your prefecture that recommended you. This must have wearied you. Your
12Introduction

examiner is of the utmost fairness [yousi zhi gong], and will not leave out anyone
[who is deserving].43
The nature of the presiding official and the formulaic expression of solicitude
(xuanlao) in this gathering together create a rather ambivalent picture of those
being welcomed into Changan. On one hand, in this account the examinees
are treated as outsiderstravelers from across mountains and rivers; on the other
hand, they are also treated as provisional insidersthat is, slated to be designated
as such by the examiner, who is described as utmost fair. The proverbial Confu-
cian admonition for proper social relationships, to take ruler as ruler, minister
as minister, father as father, son as son (junjun chenchen fufu zizi), became com-
plicated for these tribute scholars in Changan; they could not be defined solely
by kith and kin, and since they were not yet legitimate members of the court hi-
erarchy, neither ruler nor minister could yet play a meaningful part in their lives.
During the examination season, there was another attempt to accommodate
the aspirants into the imperial social order and the classifications of society and
power. This was the imperial audience on the first day of the new year, designed
to showcase the Tang empire writ large. At that time, examinees gathered along
with court officials, foreign dignitaries, and the years tribute goods. Since tribute
goods embodied the ritualized exchange between the empires periphery and its
center, these candidates, in effect, took part in a display as the human counter-
part to tribute goods. In the seventh century, a court official even petitioned for a
change in the candidates physical placement in the audience, suggesting that they
be placed in front of the tribute goods rather than behind them, so as to not value
objects and demean men.44 This petition may seem comical to modern readers,
but the dissension over the placement of examinees only underscores their proba-
tional, interstitial status.
By Tang writers own testimony, as tribute scholars, their predegree period in
the capital was marked by a sense of isolation. In a letter to his friend Yuan Zhen
(779831), Bai Juyi (772846) recalls: When I first began as a jinshi candidate,
there was not one relation of mine in the court; among the high officials, not one
was acquainted with me.45 Receiving his degree a generation later, the poet Shi
Jianwu (jinshi 820) lamented that, as an aspirant in Changan, In the city of nine-
fold walls, no kith or kin for me/Among eight hundred men, I alone am sur-
named Shi.46
Beside the lack of social ties, predegree life was also characterized by an
absence of ready guidelines for action, so that trial and error had to substitute for
definitive procedures for advancement. This condition applied even to those with
connections to patrons. In 837, the year after Li Shangyin obtained the jinshi de-
 Introduction13

gree, he wrote a letter recalling this lack of guidelines for the floundering neo-
phyte:

Once I became recommended from the prefectures as a tribute scholar, I

went to the capital to seek [my fortune]. I thought that there must have
been earlier degree holders who had become successful, and I could surely
turn to such a person for support. I put on my shoes, left home, and trav-
eled back and forth alone for several years without obtaining anything in
the end. I could not make sense of this. Recently someone close to me told
me, Its best if you submit your writing to this person or thatthis can
be the means for you to rely on. Thus I rushed back and forth to submit
[my writing].47

As described here, much advice on how to proceed came from word of mouth,
and it was only in retrospect that the rules became clear. Li Shangyin, of course,
was hardly the most destitute of candidates: he obtained early the patronage of
Linghu Chu (766?837), a man who helped Li both financially and socially.48 Li
Shangyins description of groping his way through multiple examination seasons
reminds us that at this point in the history of the examinations, guidelines for
seeking recommendation were not institutionalized and formalized, but were in-
stead found in a network of embedded and situational knowledge in the capital.
Where ritual behavior and moral guidelines failed to adequately accommo-
date the interstitial position of the examinee in Changan, literary production and
raconteurship filled this void with inventive vigor. Tales about the aspirant going
to and from Changan, as traveler and neophyte, flourished and became closely
keyed into life in the capital. Narratives that highlight the liminal phase of lite-
rati life accommodate the ontological ambiguity wherein the aspirant is defined
against institutions to which he may someday, but does not yet, belong.

Tang Tales and Anecdotes as Sources

Unlike cultural historians studying later ages, we do not have at our disposal a
comparable variety of sources that might otherwise offer access to the lives of
Changan residents and sojourners. For example, we have no capital journals in
the fashion of A Dream of Splendors Past in the Eastern Capital (Dongjing meng-
hua lu) to describe the Song capital of Kaifeng, nor tourist guides, contemporary
maps, nor collected records of guilds, associations, and theater performances. In
the late Tang, there once circulated etiquette guides for the first-time examinee,
14Introduction

but those, too, are no longer extant.49 As students of the Tang, we tend to spend
more time piecing together fragments than sifting and selecting from available
material. More recently, scholars such as Seo Tatsuhiko have done much to mine
these fragments for ways to reconstruct life and spatial particulars of Changan.50
What I try to do in this book is less reconstructing a historical city as investigat-
ing how it figures in patterns of life trajectories, self-conceptions, and cultural
mobility.
To understand how literature gives shape to a city while this city in turn shapes
literary text, this book takes on historicized close reading of materials unified by
a shared sense of time and space rather than by formal characteristics. Written
expressions of urban experience do not belong to a single genre, inherited biblio-
graphic category, or to any particular literary movement. They consist of letters,
epitaphs, poems, and, most importantly, prose narratives that at one time belonged
to collections of miscellany and are variously referred to as notebook jottings (biji),
minor talk (xiaoshuo), miscellaneous histories (zashi), disparate accounts (zashu),
or combinations thereof. Collections of these narratives served as repositories of
unofficial histories, eyewitness accounts, elaborations of the fantastical, literati
anecdotes, and conversation fodder. Glen Dudbridge aptly calls this corpus of
ninth-century narratives a fluid, restless, unstable, pervasive, irregular and rich
sea of prose literature.51 The metaphor of water is justified, because not only does
the content of this corpus shape-shift and seep into a wide spectrum of cultural
life, it also tends to take on the shape of whatever genre vessel it is poured into.
Narratives of this kind, either separately or as collections, have long challenged
efforts of classification due to their heterogeneity, such that one scholars exam-
ple of xiaoshuo may be another scholars idea of zashi, and so forth. The attempt
to tame this unruly corpus began as early as the Song, when the retrospective la-
bel of transmissions of the marvelous (chuanqi) was applied to tales, and their
production was also erroneously attributed to Tang examinees submission of
writing samples to examiners and prospective patrons.52 I do not want to produce
moreor more minutely labeledvessels to contain this corpus; instead, I want
to focus on it as literary imprints of collective concerns. As Dudbridge urges
us regarding Tang narratives, we should confront the primary texts as best we
can in their own environment and accept all the complexity that may face us
there.53
Most of the collections I examine in this book were compiled in the second
half of the Tang, and by and large deal with private concerns rather than public
ones. They include titles that highlight their nature as a receptacle for captured
conversations or snippets of news, such as Mr.Fengs Record of Things Heard and
Seen (Feng shi wen jian ji) by Feng Yan (fl. 750800), Topical Conversations (Yinhua
 Introduction15

lu) by Zhao Lin (jinshi 834), and Records of Unfettered Conversation (Jutan lu) by
Kang Ping (jinshi 878).54 Collections such as Supplements to State Histories of the
Tang (Tang guoshi bu) by Li Zhao (fl. 820s), Lost Histories (Yi shi) by Lu Zhao (jin-
shi 843), and Missing Histories of the Tang (Tang que shi) attributed to Gao
Yanxiu (jinshi 874) highlight their role as scavengers of history, even, at times, up-
dating official history. Collections such as Records of the Rivers East (Hedong ji)
by Xue Yusi (fl. 820s), Sweet Swamp Lore (Ganze yao) by Yuan Jiao (fl. 860s), and
Booklet from Sanshui (Sanshui xiaodu) by Huangfu Mei (fl. 872904) highlight,
with their titles, local color. Collections such as Mixed Morsels from Youyang
(Youyang zazu) by Duan Chengshi (ca. 803863), or Dry Snacks (Gan sunzi), at-
tributed to Wen Tingyun (c. 812866), on the other hand, call attention to their
eclectic tastes and gustatory diversity. Collections such as Transmitted Marvels
(Chuanqi) by Pei Xing (fl. 860s) and Chronicles from Xuanshi Hall (Xuanshi zhi)
by Zhang Du (835886, jinshi 852) contain a variety of narratives imbued with
elements of the marvelous (qi) or unusual (yi).55 Another collection of occult lore,
Records of Original Transformations (Yuan hua ji), written in the mid-ninth
century by an author we know only as Mr.Huangfu (Huangfu shi), is emblem-
atic of the lacunae in the textual history of collections of this kind. In such cases,
the authorship or dates of the text can be uncertain, or we may know very little of
the putative author outside of the texts attributed to him, leaving us to speculate
about their circulation and dates of composition.56 Some texts cited in this book
also come from Five Dynasties recollections of Tang events, such as Casual Talk
from the Northern Dream (Beimeng suoyan) by Sun Guangxian (895968), New
Book from the South (Nanbu xinshu) by Qian Yi (fl. 9981023), Forest of Words
from the Tang (Tang yu lin) by Wang Dang (d. 1107), and Unaccounted Events from
the Kaiyuan-Tianbao Reigns (Kaiyuan Tianbao yishi) by Wang Renyu (d. 956).
This book also draws upon two topical collections of anecdotes that depict
Changan-based events from the last decades of the ninth century. We get a strong
sense of a localized space from the first collection, Anecdotes from the Northern
Ward (Beili zhi), attributed to Sun Qi (fl. 880s). It consists of a series of vignettes
from the pleasure quarters of Changan just before the rebellion led by Huang
Chao (d. 884) devastated the capital in 881. These vignettes are spatially organized
and focus on alleys in one quadrant of Pingkang Ward where courtesan households
congregated. The author writes as an observer and participant in the pleasure
quarters, which he depicts as a product of examination culture of the late Tang.57
The second collection, Tang Gleanings (Tang zhi yan) by Wang Dingbao (870940),
shows us the important ways in which the jinshi degree was a metropolitan de-
gree, and elucidates the growth of the examination as an evolving institution.58 It
also cross-references a number of late-Tang anecdotal collections examined
16Introduction

throughout this book, showing evidence of intertextuality and circulation among

the entries in collections.
Different components of this corpus, in and of themselves, may not present a
comprehensive, or even coherent, picture, but they resonate with each other and
also overlap productively with other genres, in particular narrative poetry.59 Their
stated value and claims to authority lie in having access to a multiplicity of plau-
sible explanations for human behavior and natural phenomena. In the prefaces
of collections of these texts, the author often makes it clear that the compilation
was motivated by the recording of some form of private experienceoften
secondhandrather than by historiographic ambitions or by any universal model
of order. They often recorded unusual events without formulating theories or cat-
egorical knowledge to explain them.
I heard this from so-and-so, who happened to be the son of such-and-such:
the levels of mediation in these narratives bolster, rather than dilute, their inter-
est to us, because they show that the content of the narrative occupied a group of
people rather than just one individual. They are not inherently more psychologi-
cally transparent, nor do they necessarily offer us a mimetic representation of Tang
literati life. In many instances, they are compressed and more vivid versions of
ordinary records of events. Their value for this study lies in their tendency to de-
pict events and people at a remove from the calibrations of autobiography, with
competing claims to legitimacy, and in their tendency to focus on the shifting na-
ture of statuses. Just as importantly, in tales and anecdotes it is often possible to
find moments when the construction of hierarchy is a little less conscious of it-
self, when conventional systems of encoding the world are loosened, for a moment,
in favor of asking, what if?
These collections were not included as part of the literary collections (wenji)
of writers, the body of work in the classical genres with which writers sought to
build their reputation and hoped to cultivate their posthumous fame. The pro
cess of selecting and culling a writers work to go into such collections systemati-
cally rejected those that did not conform to a canonical notion of literature or
those that were born of circumstances too informal to merit keeping, pieces that
were (in the words of Bai Juyi) evoked from some fleeting moment or thing,
stirred up by a chuckle or a chant.60 As a result of being excluded from the influ-
ential bibliographic module of the wenji, independently circulating tales and
collections seldom received the same care in attribution, dating, and collation
that the more orthodox genres received. Compared to the Tang manuscript leg-
acy for more canonical genres, the survival of which Owen likens to a kind of
flotsam and jetsam after waves of large-scale loss,61 these narratives were prone
 Introduction17

to an even more perilous fate of loss. In some cases, the originating Tang collec-
tions were partially or completely lost, but their entries are preserved as part of a
five-hundred-fascicle Song-dynasty compendium, Extensive Records of the Tai
ping Era (Taiping guangji), containing a large number and variety of Tangand
earliernarratives. This capacious compendium, commissioned by the second
Song emperor and printed in the year 981, organizes its multitudinous tales
under encyclopedia-format headings, from the sizable number of entries under
the categories Divine Transcendents (Shenxian), Numinous Oddities (Lingyi),
or Wind and Rainbows (Fenghong), down to zoological categories such as Foxes,
Tigers, and Wildfowl and Other Birds.62 Thus preserved, these narratives give us
a view that has been mediated by Song anthologizing practice, but they nonethe-
less offer insights into the warp and woof of a mode of literary production that
has been elsewhere subject to the ravages of time.
Very much a part of this textual matrix is one ninth-century narrative of a
young man who is first lost, then found, in Tang-dynasty Changan. The Tale of
Li Wa (Li Wa zhuan) was written by Bai Xingjian (776826), the younger brother
to the poet Bai Juyi, and brings together several major arguments of this book.
This tale begins as a promising young tribute scholar, Zheng, leaves home for
Changan. Once there, he becomes smitten with the eponymous courtesan, moves
in with her, and depletes his fortune after two years. He is abandoned by Li Wa
and her madam, but recovers from sickness and poverty by becoming a dirge
singer with a funeral parlor, eventually winning a citywide singing competition.
From this height, however, he plunges again: his father discovers his sons dis-
graceful livelihood and beats him nearly to death. Sinking to the nadir of his
existence, the young man succumbs to begging on the streets of Changan. Before
long, he is discovered in this state and is rescued by the selfsame Li Wa, who nurses
him back to physical and spiritual health. He then successfully obtains his degree
and embarks on an illustrious official career, while Li Wa ultimately assumes the
role of his virtuous wife.
The story has an enduring appeal from its own time to subsequent eras.63 Part
of this appeal, I believe, comes from capturing the energies inherent in a moment
when the protagonist is perched between well-defined possibilities of social inte-
gration. It is about unbecoming, then becoming: a budding talent becomes a
brothel dweller, then a dirge singer; a well-born scion is beaten and renounced by his
father. The bulk of the story describes his detour in Changan, during an existen-
tial interlude that takes place in an underregulated world. In chapter1 of this book,
this interlude is examined in conjunction with other texts. In chapter3, Li Wa is
compared with other tales in which the newcomer to Changan loses his bearings
18Introduction

and takes a series of wrong turns under the destabilizing forces of its underbelly.
The climactic singing contest in the tale is discussed in chapter 4 as part of a
larger cultural phenomenon of contests and the showcasing of talent.
Li Wa is decidedly not a singular work that emerged out of a cultural vac-
uum. It may stand out for how it is writtenits length and complexitybut not
for what is written, and for why it may have come into being. If anything, Li Wa
is all the more remarkable for the narrative elements it shares with a thicket of
other texts from the Tang. For example, the inception of Li Wa is suggestive of
the sociality and complexity emblematic of Tang tales from this time.64 Its tex-
tual history also shares the fluidity and restlessnessas well as the maddening
gapsof narratives that have come down to us from this time. It had initially been
part of a ninth-century anthology of tales that also included other well-known
Tang writers.65 This collection is lost, but several of its entries eventually came to be
collected in the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era.66 A strong body of scholarship
on the tales authorship, transmission, intertextuality, and its relevance for literary
culture gives me the luxury of building on previous studies of this tale. Li Wa,
then, serves as the armature to many of the new topics introduced in this book.67
While Li Wa is a long narrative tale with a beginning, middle, and end, texts
I call anecdotes tend to be shorter records of incidents where the identity of the
subject and its currency are vital to its impact. Anecdotes are more likely to cap-
ture a moment, a blunder, an encounter, or a conversational exchange. For New
Historicists, the use of anecdotes allowed literary critics such as Stephen Green-
blatt an expanded range of texts and to find in the past traces of lived experiencea
touch of the realthrough selected fragments.68 In the context of premodern
Chinese literary studies, anecdotes, variously termed yishi, yiwen, or gushi, also
offer alternatives to the rigid canonicity of literary studies. Read as separate en-
tries and as collections, anecdotes can be vehicles to mediate between top-down,
official histories and biographies and first-person representations, whether to de-
stabilize accepted notions, to ground authorized accounts with networks of wit-
nesses, or to inject well-trodden forms with marks of a historical individual and
subjective experience.69 Anecdotes preferentially absorb moments of irony and
tension; they help us understand the cultural logic of conflicts and affiliation,
sources of contempt as well as pride. In his study of Chinese poetics, Stephen Owen
refers to the implicit knowing of poets and to the circumstances of formation
of writing that is never re-created in documents: They were built around truths
which poets and readers never thought to speak of, never needed to speak.70 Tang
anecdotes allow us to get closer to these kinds of implicit knowing, to forces of
social cohesion or rupture, all of which help us retrieve something we may call a
collective imagination.
 Introduction19

Toward a Collective Imagination

The number of narratives that can be accommodated in this book is admittedly
only a fragment of the corpus I just described. What gives the selected narratives
representative force, however, is not the assumption of textual unity or canonic-
ity, but that they are evocative of each others concerns. Each textual example cited
should be thought of not as a single point of proof, but rather as a node. In other
words, they are related as mediated and transmitted narratives of experience that
were of particular interest to men of letters from their time.
Within the tales themselves, we see evidence of the sociality of their content.
Literary historians have long pointed out that many Tang tales had a rich and lively
pretextual existence, in which they were orally circulated among like-minded
friends.71 Although the circumstances, timing, and location of these storytelling
sessions often cannot be verified or re-created exactly, scholars of Tang literary
history have been able to make use of limited clues to understand the occasions
that gave rise to tales referring to storytelling and transmission.72 The work of
Sarah Allen suggests that as tales were told, read, heard, and embellished, the li-
terati storytelling collective repeatedly gravitated toward narrating some sequence
of events that interested them, drawing from a larger contemporary repertoire of
stories Allen describes as public narrative property.73 Tales attributed to men of
letters such as Shen Jiji (ca. 740ca. 800), Li Gongzuo (ca. 778848), and Niu Sen-
gru (779847), for example, all bear internal evidence that they began as conver-
sations among literati friends, be it aboard a boat during travel, in a hostel room
shared with friends, or in residences while entertaining guests.74 They evoke forms
of mediation: frequent exchanges at informal gatherings and instantaneous com-
mentary in storytelling milieus detailed with names, official titles, dates, and
places. The participants in these conversations call attention to the impetus to seek
out and preserve accounts that describe unexpected transformations and cross-
ings of boundaries, be it social hierarchies or the boundary between the mundane
and spiritual worlds. They are often described as yi, meaning remarkable, extraor-
dinary, and evocative of wonder. They describe circumstances in which sitting
with friends may lead to a discussion in which a listener clapped his hands and
listened with rapt attention, or in which the audience sighs deeply at the end
of a story told.75
The storys ability to evoke an affective responsebut not necessarily a mor-
alistic interpretationplays an important role in these texts. Stephen Owen ob-
serves that in mid-Tang poetry as well as prose, writers often use the rhetoric of
the discourse of authority to draw attention to a private, idiosyncratic world, while
earlier debates and interpretations were primarily based on the reformation and
20Introduction

elaboration of received knowledge.76 In these aforementioned tales, we see ex-

amples of this desire for extracanonical knowledge. In one case, author Shen Jiji
laments in a colophon that a storys protagonist has not fully appreciated his en-
counter with an extraordinary fox lady: Unfortunately, Zheng was not a man of
refinement: he only enjoyed [Rens] beauty but did not probe her temperament. If
he had been a man with deeper insight, he could have sorted out the principles
of transformation [bianhua zhi li], investigated the boundaries between spirits
and humans, and with the fineness of patterned words, transmitted feelings of
subtle marvel, rather than stopping at appreciating her outward fetchingness.77
The colophon implies that being a man of deeper insight requires, at the very
least, being kept abreast of events that cannot be adequately explained by re-
ceived knowledge.
These instantiations of mediating experience also show that the stories thus
recorded do not transparently capture the circumstances of a writers life. In the
colophon of Li Wa, for example, Bai Xingjian explains the connection between
the protagonist (the young scholar) and the author:

My paternal great-uncle was once prefect of Jinzhou, was then transferred

to the Board of Finance, and became a Commissioner for Land and Water
Transport. In all three posts he took that young scholars place and so be-
came well informed about these matters. During the Zhenyuan Reign I
was once talking with Li Gongzuo of the Longxi [clan] about the charac-
ter of womanly virtue, and accordingly told him this Duchy of Qian
story. Gongzuo clapped his hands as he respectfully listened. He told me
to put the story in writing. So I took up my brush, dipped it in ink and set
the story on the record in broad outline. The date: eighth month in the
autumn of the year yihai. Bai Xingjian of Taiyuan.78

The nature of these protagonistsbe it Zheng or any number of other characters

is neither completely autobiographical nor fully fabulist. That is, although these
protagonists have some basis in historical and possibly identifiable individuals,
theirs is more akin to an amalgamated identity, bearing a set of characteristics that
befit members of a community in a particular cultural context. The plot of these
narratives elaborates forces that befall such members, rather than ascribing ex-
periences to any single individual.
The tale, then, reconstructs the experience of someone two degrees removed
from the author Bai Xingjian. We may call such records composite gossip or hear-
say, but the narrative distance does more than that. It is this distance of two de-
grees of removal that affords the author freedom to reveal, without the burden of
betrayal, the subjects youthful transgressions and indiscretions.79 This is the so-
 Introduction21

cial distance at which the liminality of a stage of life meets the subjunctive, what-
if mood of storytelling.
These stories are derived from shared attitudes toward depicted events, and
such attitudes did not always coincide with ethical universals.80 They make a vir-
tue of ambiguity and multivalence. In Shen Jijis commentary, one might say that
what the less-refined protagonist fails do in the tale (i.e., probing more profoundly
into Lady Rens temperament), the group of storytellers was striving to accom-
plish by narrating his experience. Sorting out the principles of transformation
(bianhua zhi li) and investigating the boundaries between spirits and men (shen
ren zhi ji), even in less ambitious ways, are shared concerns in Tang tales, includ-
ing those that do not have metatexts alluding to storytelling sessions. As the fol-
lowing chapters show, such investigations encompassed, importantly, the antici-
pated transformation (bianhua) of an examination candidate in Changan. The
tales repeatedly raise the following question: how should a young man behave
when the certitudes of his education dissolve in an underregulated world with few
existing ties, when ethical-moral universals must now be translated into experi-
ential actuality and situational knowledge?
The repeated narratives of the wonderment and frustration of the neophyte
in Changan show that there was no single answer to this question. Attempts to
address possibilities in this line of questioning seem to have occupied elite story-
tellers, long after they themselves ceased to be examinees. Their retelling of expe-
riences constituted a narrative mode in which Tang dynasty writers in the sum-
mer of their powers ruminated over younger versions of themselves who were on
the cusp of starting their careers. We find articulation of these concerns in letters
written by those such as Li Shangyin and Bai Juyi, but they find their most sus-
tained expressions in the amalgamated identities of protagonists in Tang tales,
in which navigating Changan means to recognize its opportunities as well as
artifice and deception. These narratives of experience move fluidly and some-
times playfully between appreciation, commentary, embellishment, and even
reorientation of the narrated events. My approach in this book is not to identify
a unified motive for this corpus of Tang texts, but rather to tease out the ways in
which Changan functioned in this cultural context: as a lens to amend self-
knowledge and refine a conception of personal transformation, with all its in-
consistencies and serendipities.

Structure of the Book

Each of this books chapters takes up one of the shaping forces of Changan:
through its lure as a destination, through its nonlinear urban space, through its
potential to broadcast images and reputations, and through its demimondea city
22Introduction

within a city. Before the discussion reaches Changan proper, chapter1, Narrat-
ing Liminality and Transformation, first examines the changing social and
intellectual structures in the second half of the Tang that engendered literati
identities as capable of advancement and transformation. It argues that the
Changan-based recruitment mechanism opened up a new period of social inde-
terminacy, and that this changing conception of the literati self became repeat-
edly explored in the Tang narrative imagination, through a variety of tales that
consider the possibilities and channels of both official and extraofficial transfor-
mation. Chapter2, The Lure of Changan, considers the impact of routinized
travel to Changan at a time when the significance of the capital was rapidly evolv-
ing. Driven by the prospect of official posts and a more elusive sense of cultural
plenitude, literati aspirants during the Tang began to forge a new relationship to
the capital. Narrative plot and details reflect the frequency, duration, and emo-
tional weight of these routinized trips. Chapter3, Navigating the City Inte-
rior, takes up the question of how narratives depict the newcomer as he makes
his way in Changan through its nonlinear streets and across its spatial partitions.
The proverbial neophyte in Tang tales, frequently represented as being put to the
test by the citys extraofficial and extrafamilial networks, shows that literati per-
sonhood in the latter half of the Tang was a distinctly metropolitan one, and was
profoundly colored and inflected by the distinctive and unruly configuration of
space and social alliances found in Changan. Chapter4, Staging Talent in Ur-
ban Arenas, shows that for the precareer man of letters, an important aspect of
establishing oneself was the successful demonstration of talent in the public eye.
This chapter focuses on examination lore, in which the urban space of Changan
allows candidates to define themselves by vying for recognition outside the ex-
amination ground proper. Narratives of urban spectacles and public competi-
tion intimate an invisible crowd of onlookers, whose presence helped to cement
(or undermine) the reputation of the neophytes. Chapter 5, Negotiating the
Pleasure Quarters, takes up the case of Pingkang Ward as the intersection be-
tween sexual commerce and examination culture. Through contextualized close
reading of key vignettes from the late-Tang collection Anecdotes from the North-
ern Ward, this chapter argues that they illustrate the scintillating points of con-
tact between the demimonde and a world of alleyways, chanted gossip, and wily
transactions. They make visible the channels and flows of information, desire,
and resources in an urban space that would have been otherwise invisible in
more conventional literati writings from this time. Here in the undulating lanes
of Pingkang, the literati visitor must acquire the ability to recognize the work-
ings of such a world operating behind the discourse of romance (fengliu).
In the pages that follow, I hope to open up an interpretive space in which so-
journs in and travels to Changan reveal how the Tang literati came to terms with
 Introduction23

the problem of transformation and the problem of becoming. Narratives of expe-

rience with Changan as their setting are repositories of unruly experiences that
are rarely at home in historiographic genres. They amend our understanding of
the cultural history of literati in between social identities and institutions, as they
straddle both anonymity and legitimacy.
In order to understand the forces that acted on the collective identity in the
precareer life stage of the literati, we must understand the new dispensation in
which urban sojourn combines with the cult and professionalization of literature
to redefine who qualifies as a man of letters. Let us turn, then, to the changing
notion of whenand howa man of letters becomes a man in full.
c ha p t e r on e

Narrating Liminality and Transformation

Whenand howdoes one become a man in full? Of central interest to this chap-
ter is how this transition is envisioned for men of letters in the Tang. If the cul-
tural elite was increasingly made and not bornan important shift that would
continue well into the Songthen ones personhood must come to terms with
what Erik Erikson calls a protracted period in which to grow up and to grow into
the specifications of a given group in a given place on earth in a given period of
history.1 In Tang literati discourse, this protracted period became increasingly
associated with the stretch of years between the completion of education (most
often obtained provincially) and the attainment of a jinshi degree in the capital.
This was a period of life associated with both social and geographical mobility of
the tribute scholar (gongsheng), for whom Changan would become an inelucta-
ble destination.
Anne Behnke Kinney argues that in early China, the development of a child
into a virtuous adult was described as the culmination of a long, gradual pro
cess beginning at conception; the notion of childhood became the focus of at-
tention in the Han due to a number of cultural and historical conditions such as
the formation of a textual canon and the expansion of service through recommen-
dation.2 Appearing at about the same time as this awareness of accumulated
attainment, Record of Rites (Liji), a ritual reference providing guidelines for edu-
cation and proper behavior, sets out a mans process of maturation in intervals of
ten years: at age ten (or nine by Western reckoning), a boy goes to school; the on-
set of adulthood is twenty, when he reaches the capping age. At this point, he is
considered to have reached the end of boyhood. Ten years later, at thirty, he reaches
his prime, and it is at this stage that he takes a wife.3
Making sense of these decadal life stages is a process that is at once social and
relational as well as introspective. The Tang categorical book, Record of First Learn-
ing (Chuxue ji), a kind of encyclopedia that may have facilitated mastery of the
inherited tradition and used as a manual for composers of poetry,4 defined the
capping ceremony as the beginning of ritual for the initiated, who from this
point on is considered to be complete in [his] attires; after this his countenance

24
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 25

and bearing will be rectified, his facial expressions even, and his words without
contrariness.5 When the early Tang scholar-commentator Kong Yingda (574648)
elaborated on this text, he explained a mans development through medical dis-
course that also echoes a dictum in the Analects: Upon thirty a man is estab-
lished; his blood and vital essence [qi] are settled; for this reason he is said to be
in his prime.6
What a young man should do with his life between these ritual milestones is
the subject of other texts and discussions. Some of these discussionsfamily in-
struction books, for exampleare explicit and normative, and reflect contempo-
rary perspectives on intergenerational change. Peter Bol compares two such family
instruction manuals from the sixth and twelfth centuries, noting the differences
in how each author advised his descendants, to illustrate the sweeping changes
that took place in how the shi class defined itself across these centuries.7 Broadly
speaking, the sixth to twelfth centuries constituted a period during which acquired
learning was beginning to replace clan membership as the primary claim to eli-
gibility for governmental service. To contextualize the second half of the Tang: it
sits at the halfway point between the lives of Yan Zhitui (531591) and Yuan Cai
(fl. 11401195), the two men whose respective books on family
life Bol uses to dis-
cuss the overlapping of social history and intellectual history in the context of
this longue dure.

New Perceptual Categories of Life Milestones

By way of comparison, in the Han, the successful classical scholar typically be-
gan a career by entering office through his fathers high rank or through local rec-
ommendations.8 In the course of the Tang, although hereditary privilege still
constituted a channel into officialdom, significant changes were afoot in this career
trajectory for the elite. Kong Yingda, who annotated the aforementioned Liji pas-
sage on decadal change, and who received a mingjing (Canonical Expert) degree
from the Sui court, lived too early in the dynasty to have witnessed the pomp and
pageantry of jinshi examination culture and the role it played in the shared dis-
course of literati formation.9 As the examinations (ju) evolved, discourse on a
mans attainment in life increasingly coupled the idea of reputation or name (ming)
to the annual conferral of the jinshi degree. Thus emerged a new threshold, fre-
quently referred to as completing ones name (chengming). Although age-specific
designations such as capping age and prime continued to be used in these
kinds of discussions, by the late Tang the language with which literati men de-
scribed their status and career attainment became augmented by newer notions
of this ming.
26Chapter 1

Aspirants toward this new milestone became a recognizable, discrete, and

talked-about social entity. The establishment of a recognizable examination culture
generated its own contingent timeline of progression, neologisms, images of tri-
umph, and norms of operation.10 Degree seekers (juzi) stepped onto the so-
called arena competing for a name (mingchang or wenchang). Because they wore
plain hempen robes, they were variously called the hemp-clad (mayi), cloth-
clad (buyi), or the white-robed (baipao). Here the descriptive white signifies
the absence of insignia and official garb. Eventually, when one is assigned to an
official post, the change was called doffing the coarse clothes (jiehe), or the
shedding of an unmarked, precareer status. In contrast, high-ranking officials
were described as the vermilion-robed or purple-robed.11 The colorless hempen
robes were a cultural signifier of a period during which examinees, having com-
pleted a preparatory education, awaited a new identity.
One anecdote from the ninth-century collection Supplements to State Histories
of Tang illustrates the cultural logic of the sumptuary metaphor. When a peren-
nially failing examinee is asked, How is it that theres a flood of white robes these
days? he wittily explains the compelling reason: Because the flood of vermilion
and purple robes have made them so.12 In other words, the examination craze
was driven by white robes wanting to become colored ones.
Literary language from this time became enriched with a set of terms to refer
to this kind of status shift. New degree holders were referred to as becoming men
of the Apricot Garden (xingyuan ren) or men under the flowers (hua xia ren)
in reference to the celebratory springtime rituals for new degree holders. When
literati men referred to examination success, we frequently encounter invoked im-
ages of Taoist lore, such as breaking a cassia branch (zhe gui), appearing on the
register of immortals (xian ji), ascending the immortal isles (deng ying), or
reaching Taoist utopia (tao xi).13 Han Wo (844923), for example, compared his
jinshi degree success in 889 to a promotion of the mortals to the ranks of sylphs,
something as unexpected as finding hempen-clothed men in the portals of power.14
Another common metaphor likens receiving a jinshi degree to a process of
transformation (bianhua). In previous eras, this capacious concept was used to
describe the mutability and creative forces of the cosmos, and for describing
changes among plants, animals, and other materials in nature.15 In the Tang con-
text of personal development, bianhua began to denote the life-altering change
when an aspirant became a jinshi degree holder. Yao He (jinshi 816) wrote one
year that he resolved to stay in Changan after a failed examination season, to fight
for the one success after a hundred defeats.16 Mobilizing the image of transfor-
mation (hua) that turns the base into the sublime, he justifies his optimism with
a seasonal transformation found in the natural world: after all, he says in his poem,
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 27

even the much-shunned decaying grass can transform into fireflies.17 Later in
theTang, Luo Yin (833909) described his protracted unsuccessful attempts at
the degree as twelve years in which he could only watch the transformation of
others.18
In this context, bianhua describes a change that is a thorough replacement of
an old self with a new one: literati men who had earlier received education with
comparable quality and duration were immediately and sharply differentiated by
the results of the examinations. Wei Zhuang (836910) in 893 described new de-
gree holders that year as magical birds that suddenly charged into the sky against
a prior scene of tranquility and stasis:

At the fifth watch, a sliver of waning moon hung by the Department wall,
Scarlet banners and rainbow pennants stood out in the dawn mist.
Nowamong a thousand torches, the orioles soar out of the valley,
After a bell chimes, cranes dash up into the sky.19

This poems full title is Submitted Respectfully to New Elders, in the Guichou
Year, after Failing the Degree, which means that this poem was addressed to those
who had earlier in the spring sat as Wei Zhuangs equals in the examination com-
pound. Once the degree was conferred, these erstwhile peers became reclassified
with the language of generations: the select few became the elders (xianbei), while
the rest became the latter-born (houjin).
Other anecdotes illustrate the befuddling mismatch between age and experi-
ence on one hand, and degree status on the other. Many bittersweet examples of
this kind recount two men who start out as peers in their student days and who
subsequently find themselves worlds apart due to differences in luck, ability, con-
nections, or any combination thereof. In 860, one perennial examinee named Liu
Xubai (jinshi 860) sat for the degree under an examiner who, twenty years previ-
ously, had been his peer. Liu lamented in a couplet, I dont know how many more
years will still pass by like this/As I wait for the impartial examiner, wearing
hempen robes.20 Another, more lighthearted anecdote seems to suggest that ex-
aminees should treat others with this potential transformation firmly in mind.
In this anecdote, as examinees are completing their written responses during an
examination session, a rather gauche candidate barges in on Zheng Guangye (fl.
860s); he asks to be given half of the seating space, to be fetched water, and even
for Zheng to boil him tea. When it turns out that this obliging Zheng receives the
top degree, the embarrassed intruder sends Zheng a self-deprecating verse: I
didnt recognize your eminence [guiren] because of my mortal eyes; after today
I am the latter-born, all because of my debased features.21
28Chapter 1

For candidates entering the examination compound together, learning may

have been accumulative, but the conferral of recognition for learning was dramatic
and gained overnight. The temporary fellowship among examinees during the ex-
amination session evaporated once the pass list was publicized. This radical
transformation stands in contrast to an ideal of learning as gradual accumula-
tion, a more normative view in which Confucian adulthood represents a contin-
uous ritualization from poetry to music.22
Like the term bianhua, another important phrase referring to examination
success, ascending the dragons gate (deng longmen), similarly presents the sta-
tus elevation as a meteoric rise rather than a gradual climb, and the history of this
phrase demonstrates how gaining recognition had evolved by Tang times. Accord-
ing to the fifth-century collection of anecdotes A New Account of Tales of the
World (Shishuo xinyu), the original usage of the phrase referred to an act of defy-
ing gravity and current: at a famous rapid in the Yellow River about 900 li east of
Changan, it was believed that if any fish were to surmount the rapids, they would
instantaneously change into dragons.23 In one of the anecdotes of Tales of the
World, dragons gate refers to the home of an exemplar of literati men, Li Ying
(courtesy name Yuanli): [Li Yings] manner and style were outstanding and
proper. He maintained a haughty dignity, and wished to take upon himself the
responsibility for the Moral Teaching and right and wrong for the whole realm.
Among the junior scholars, if anyone succeeded in ascending to his hall, it was
said that they had climbed through the Dragon Gate (Lung-men).24 In this early
medieval usage, to reach the dragons gate is the natural consequence of ascend-
ing the hall in the home of Li Ying. This usage can also be put in the context of
its originary meaning. In the Analects (XI 15), ascending [Confuciuss] hall de-
notes a crucial milestone of learning. From the home of Confucius to the home
of Li Ying, the metaphor of a dragons gate instills the milestone with a new ele
ment of sociality: beyond the accumulative study under a teacher-sage, it empha-
sizes inclusion in the circles of an enlightened patron conferring recognition.
By the Tang, the meaning of dragons gate had evolved even further, this time
from the drawing room of a patron like Li Ying to a wider arena in Changan, as
the examinee surmounted the new hurdle of the jinshi degree. According to Feng
Yan (fl. 750800), himself an eighth-century jinshi degree holder, people used
dragons gate to refer to degree success because the procedures for the degree
had become rigorously difficult. In his collection of miscellany, he describes the
examination procedures as consisting of mixed essay writing (zawen) and com-
pleting the classics (tiejing). Only the talents of broad and thorough erudition,
Feng Yan writes, could manage this selection process. He goes on to explain the
consequences of degree success: For this reason, these days people liken receiv-
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 29

ing the jinshi degree to ascending the dragons gate. As [the degree recipients]
doff their hempen robes [to take up official posts], they are often assigned posts
that are noble and lofty. [In this way] in just over ten years, their footsteps could
be found in the most exalted halls of the court.25
In the late eighth century when this collection was written, Feng Yan still felt
the need to explain the origin and rationale of the dragons gate. By the middle of
the ninth century,
however, the phrase had already become part of a word hoard,
appearing frequently in occasional poems referring to this coveted milestone. For
example, in 843, twenty-two new jinshi recipients each presented congratulatory
poems to their examiner, Wang Qi (760847), who was serving his third term in
the vaunted post of jinshi examiner.26 Even though Wang Qi did not teach any of
these candidates, he was ritually analogous to Confucius (as teacher) and Li Ying
(as patron). Of these twenty-two poems, seven invoke the dragon gate metaphor
at one point or another and describe the examiners role as a facilitator in this
process. One such poem highlights the examiners illustrious record of generat-
ing dragons:

From years past, under your gate dragons were transformed in full,

Today, the rippling waves advance the latter-born.27

Another member of this group of new recipients, Huang Po (jinshi 843), had pre-
viously lingered in Changan for thirteen years taking the jinshi examination.
His poems couplet combines several of the popular expressions likening jinshi
success to a grand metamorphosis:

Oft I have envied the dragon-gate rivaling the Transformation,

Repeatedly I watched the rooster-topped tree rank the noted talents.28

The collective vocabulary used in these poems offers a shared vision of this insti-
tutional milestone that was changing the meaning of the term ming as reputation,
name, and being of note. In this new paradigm, being established was no longer
solely contingent upon age-specific settling of the vital humors; the new recogni-
tion was a complex amalgam of institutional procedures and negotiated relation-
ships, as well as popular perceptions of a candidates aptitude.
Between the time a man finished his education and when he was appointed
to his first official post and doffed the hempen robes, he in fact passed several
hurdles: the first was gaining qualification at the prefectural or provincial level to
be dispatched to the capital as a tribute scholar; the second was to pass the ex-
amination (for the degrees of jinshi, mingjing, etc.) in Changan; last but not least,
30Chapter 1

once he became a new degree holder, he must pass the selection examination
(guanshi) from the Ministry of Personnel (Libu) before he was conferred a sub-
stantial post.29 Of these three hurdles, the first was relatively informal, focusing
more on fitness than on skill; the third hurdle, the selection examination, did pre
sent a problem for some, such as (in the most famous case) Han Yu, who failed
three times. By and large, however, the most significant hurdleand most often
called the dragons gatewas the obtaining of the jinshi degree.
The hemp-clad examineelingering in the dressing room of official life
emerged in the Tang as a new phase of life that hitherto had no parallel. In con-
trast to the period of education in which a body of canonical texts could be
mastered in a predictable amount of time, this state of waiting for induction
into officialdom was of indefinite length. A subgenre of Tang occasional poetry,
the examination failure poem (xiadi shi), registers the unfulfilled ambition of
examinees. These plaints are all too familiar to readers of Tang poetry, but they
only seem clichd when viewed through the long institutional history of the ex-
aminations, which spanned the thirteen centuries from the Sui dynasty (581618)
to the early twentieth century, by which time the examinationsnow known as
kejuwere finally abolished. In the Tang, there were precocious winners as well
as geriatric candidates, though by the end of the ninth century the latter were far
more numerous. Popular wisdom in the ninth century declared that age fifty was
considered relatively young to receive the degree.30 This elastic period of life
taxed the existing ritual and cognitive classifications for the literati; it lacked
universal milestones of the kind defined by the capping ceremony, and was con-
tingent on a number of parameters in the recruitment procedures that were
still
fluctuating throughout the Tang. It prompted new kinds of discourse on the ex-
aminee, the city-dwelling aspirant, the literatus-in-waiting.

A New Chronotope for Narratives

How did Tang writers make sense of this transitional life interval? When exam-
inees died during this phase of life, their mourners often expressed regret over
their perishing without [having established] a name (buming er shi), and writ-
ers grappled with how to situate such an abruptly terminated, unstable identity.31
In the year 851, Du Mu (803852) wrote an epitaph for an examinee named Gong
Yao (d. 850), who died when he fell off a horse. The epitaph begins with Gongs
search for literary patrons and his demonstrable skills:

In the twelfth month of the fifth year of the Huichang Reign [845], I went
from Qiupu to serve as governor at Tonglu, and passed by Qiantang. Gong
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 31

Yao came to me seeking audience as a jinshi candidate, bearing his poems.

Prefect Li Bo of Zhaojun said at the time, Besides being a poet, Cultivated
Talent Gong also excels at playing the zither. So we asked him to play the
Tune of Swift Stream, and what he played was lucid and mellifluous. When
we drank wine [and conversed], I found him to be quite principled, and
his manners were refined and harmonious. Afterward, I traveled south,
and read his poems in the boat. They had an air of eremitic tranquility.
Four years later, I was governor at Wuxing, and had the occasion to con-
verse with jinshi candidate Yan Hui about matters of ghosts and spirits.
He told me: There was an examinee Gong Yao who came here last year.
He was sitting in the hostel during the day, and felt as if two people came
summoning him. He drove his horse rather fast; at first he was across the
saddle, but the horse bolted and he fell and broke his left leg. He died ten
days later. Only then did I understand.32

The epitaph begins as a literati biography, which celebrates an idealized vision of

wenren. It concludes by veering toward a supernatural explanation, before the text
ends just shy of being a ghost tale. In the epitaph, Du Mu notes that Gongs death
came up in conversation as part of a desultory discussion about ghosts and spir-
its (yan ji guishen shi). This context nudges the epitaph toward the uncanny:

When I recall our meeting in Qiantang and trace the memories carefully,
it was as if it was only yesterday. From this I found out that he was buried
in the open country, and so I ordered military officer Xu Liang to inter
him at Mount Bian, fifteen li northwest from the prefectural city walls. Yan
[Hui] was close to Gong Yao, but even he did not know Gongs native place,
so it cannot be recorded here. Alas! Why did two ghosts appear and star-
tle his horse, to cause him to die of a broken leg? Written on the second
day of the fifth moon of the fifth year of the Dazhong Reign [851].33

Outside of this epitaph, Du Mus oeuvre includes more conventional epitaphs

of established literati men that enumerate lineages, offices held, progenies, and po
litical accomplishments.34 Compared to these more standard biographies, this is
a commemorative writing with a speculative tone and a mediated authorial stance.
It is, in essence, a tentative biography of a literatus before his official biography
could properly begin. Because Gongs past connections (lineage and native region)
are now lost, and because his future promise (office held, literary accomplishment)
remains unfulfilled, Du Mu is constrained to write about a phase of Gongs life in
which his potential lay open to be recognized. Accordingly, the deceased is cap-
tured in a state of abeyance.
32Chapter 1

This state of abeyance occurs during a period in which Gong Yao was, in Vic-
tor Turners words, betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by
law, custom, convention and ceremonial.35 The epitaph Du Mu wrote, chafing
against its own generic limits, struggles to locate the deceased candidate in a net-
work of classifications. In the end, Du Mu opted to write what he knew and spec-
ulated on what he did not: Gongs brush with the supramundane, implying that
Gongs death had been set in motion by unseen, ghostly forces.
From this brief yet evocative life narrative, it is but a small leap to arrive at an
account that makes more explicit connections between the lives of examinees and
the workings outside of the normative social order. Du Mus attempt to fill in the
gaps of Gongs life stops short at positing an exact scenario that caused the aspi-
rants premature death, but many tales from the ninth century are written to probe
these very events.36 In other words, the open-ended process of initiation associ-
ated with obtaining a jinshi degree became an occasion for narrative in a new way.
These narratives explore alternative models of transformation, integration, and
elevation.
For example, we find the following tale (from the mid-ninth-century collec-
tion Lost Histories) with a beginning that features a situation similar to the afore-
mentioned epitaph, in which a candidate visits an established literatus in search
of patronage. It contains the amalgamated identity of an examinee-protagonist,
desultorily named Scholar Zhang, and the more specific name of Niu Sengru (779
847) serving as the prospective patron: When Niu Sengru was the county mag-
istrate of Yique, Scholar Zhang, a traveler from the eastern Luo region, was about
to take the jinshi examination, and went to call on Niu with his writing portfolio.
Midway there, torrential rain and hail came down, and since it was almost dusk
and he was far from hostels, he rested under a tree.37 In the rest of the tale, the
waylaid examinee becomes a hapless witness to yakshas (creatures of Buddhist my
thology) wreaking mayhem in the night.
I want to give the reader a sense of the socially specific nature of these pro-
tagonists, by focusing on the opening lines of some of the tales. We find tales that,
like the following from the collection Records of the Rivers East, begin with a
candidate in a particularly hopeless situation in the capital: During the Tianbao
Era, a young man of the Lu clan of Fanyang was an examinee in the capital, but
failed year after year, and gradually fell into poverty. Once, he rode his donkey at
dusk and saw that a monk was giving a lecture at a monastery with a sizable audi-
ence gathered about. As he sat down in the lecture hall, he fell asleep from ex-
haustion.38
Another tale, which is discussed in detail in chapter2, is attributed to the col-
lection Record of the Unusual (Zuan yi ji) by Li Mei (fl. 846859), and follows a
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 33

perennial examinee as he longs to return to his distant home south of the Yang-
tze River between examination seasons in Changan: Chen Jiqing was a native of
Jiangnan. He had been away from home ten years in pursuit of the jinshi degree.
Since he resolved not to return home with ambition unfulfilled, he sojourned in
the capital, making a living by selling writing.39
In another tale, this time from the ninth-century collection Records of Origi-
nal Transformations, a protagonist, also from south of the Yangtze, meets a band
of gravity-defying knights-errant and becomes inadvertently implicated in their
daring heist from the inner palace. Like Li Wa, this tale is steeped in the urban
space of Changan. It is in the undulating alleys of the city where the protagonist
becomes inductedwe might say abductedinto an alternative universe: Dur-
ing the Kaiyuan era of the Tang, a man of Wu Prefecture entered the capital to
take the Canonical Experts examination. Having arrived in the capital, he was
walking in leisure amid the lanes of the wards, when he came upon two youths
wearing hempen tunics, who greeted him with clasped hands as they passed. Their
manners were humble and respectful, yet they were strangers to him. He thought
they had mistaken him for someone else.40 Capital-based encounters such as
this can range from encounters with ghosts, immortals, or suprahuman beings, to
another encounter type that takes the examinee to foreign lands. In one such
tale, a failed examinee embarks on a trip with the prince of Silla (on the Korean
Peninsula) and is blown off his course; the protagonist glimpses the world of divine
transcendents but ultimately fails to join them due to homesickness.41
These tales amount to more than an interest in anomalous phenomena. What
unites the tales I have cited is not their otherworldliness per se, but rather a shared
concern with the experiences of lettered neophytes, a concern that was the prod-
uct of the literary culture and social discursive practices that became pronounced
in the second half of the Tang. The protagonists social indeterminacy and con-
stant wandering are represented as a rift in time, during which conflicting hier-
archies and value unfold.
We might say that the liminal identity of the examinee constituted an emer-
gent chronotope tied to both the examination calendar (time) and the setting of
Changan (space).42 This emergent chronotope breaks these tales away from Six
Dynasties anomaly accounts (zhiguai) and shapes the concerns and narrative logic
that found expression in Tang tales.43 The countless variations on extracurricular
encounters represent a relentless fascination on the part of storytellers and chron-
iclers with the plight of examinees as entities in the making. These narrative per-
mutations ask what might happen to a man of learning while he is in a state of
abeyance in or en route to Changan. Their answers to this question, in the form
of narratives, are not limited to strategies for examination advancement, but rather
34Chapter 1

reach into the very reality and validity of this transformation itself. How does the
recruitment principle behind the jinshi degreethat talent will be recognized by
the impartial examinerget carried out in the hurly-burly of the city where the
dragons gate is located?

Narrating the Liminal: The Unbiography

Let us consider three ninth-century tales of comparable length from the Exten-
sive Records of the Taiping Era. They are categorized respectively as Various Tra-
ditions and Records, Dreams of Journeys, and The Swarms of Crawlers, yet
what they have in common is their shared temporality, and their being different
literary responses to the emergent state of liminality. They show not a universal
rite of passage into officialdom, but rather a multiplicity of trajectories in which
we see a conscious routinization of chance and imagined channels of transfor-
mation. The potential trajectories inherent in these stories, whether
artful or
clumsy, capture what Turner calls the subjunctive mood of culture.44 This sub-
junctive mood, aglitter in both Gong Yaos epitaph and extended ghost-haunted
tales, unites them across writing genres. It is in this sense that I can juxtapose a
tale of a young man summoned by underworld emissaries alongside The Tale of
Li Wa, which has no ostensible supernatural elements. Let us look at how The
Tale of Li Wa begins:

In the Tianbao reign there was a gentleman of Xingyang, prefect of Chang-

zhou, whose name I omit, leaving it unrecorded. He was highly re-
garded in his time and maintained a lavish household staff. At the age
when he knew heavens will he had a son, only just at the capping age,
outstandingly and brilliantly gifted with literary skills. He was far above
the common run, profoundly admired by others of his generation. His
father loved him and prized his ability, and would say: This is my familys
thousand-li colt.45

Though marked from the outset by potential for success, the young Zheng
takes the path of a spiral rather than an arrow toward this sanctioned outcome.
Recall that in the rest of the tale, the protagonists encounter with the urban world
of courtesans, dirge singers, and beggars is contained and depicted as a transgres-
sive interlude. This containment is exemplified by the incongruity between the
tales external frame story of virtue (in which an aspirant eventually becomes an
exemplary official) on the one hand, and the tales internal story of degeneration
(in which a young man whores, sings, and begs) on the other.
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 35

The tale ultimately returns the young man to the normative social order, along
with a courtesan-turned-duchess, with whom he sires exemplary offsprings. The
tale thus ends as it begins: with an established pedigree, the expected compass
of ritual relations, and a son-turned-father to serve as template for future genera-
tions. The tale ends just as Zheng becomes fully emplaced in the mechanism of
social order. In other words, the narratives terminal point is the point where the
protagonist is qualified to enter official history.
If we were to take the protagonists biographical details from The Tale of Li
Wa itself, the epitaph that we might compose from them would appear completely
unrecognizable to readers of the tale. Here is what it might say about our storys
protagonist:

Zheng So-and-Sos father was the Duke of Xingyang, who ended his days
as the prefect of Chengdu. Zheng himself was precocious and excelled in
literature in his youth. At age twenty he set out for the capital to take the
examinations, and by age twenty-five, when he obtained the Fine Talent
degree, his fame had caused a stir in the Board of Rites. The following year
he obtained the Remonstration with Integrity degree and doffed his
hempen robes with an appointment as Adjutant of Chengdu Prefecture.
Throughout his career he was promoted in a succession of pure and dis-
tinguished offices. His wife, the Duchess of Qian, ne Li, bore him four
sons, each with illustrious careers. The Zheng family had such integrity
that a three-headed lingzhi fungus grew near their home and white swal-
lows nested in their rafters. News of these miraculous events reached even
the emperor himself.

I have created this imaginary epitaph to demonstrate that the tale is occasioned
precisely by the gaps and deliberate silences in official biographies. Official biog-
raphies rarely mention events in a mans precareer youth, and, when they do, the
emphasis is not so much on his early life but rather, as Hans Frankel puts it, to
bring to light the earliest manifestations of his innate qualities, the period when
his personality-type first became apparent.46 The tale, as if shimmering on the
other side of a looking glass, shows a fascination with narrating experiences that
cannot be contained by institutional structure and by social duplication. We might
say that, in terms of its temporality, the story is an anti-epitaph.
In his study of Li Wa, Kevin Tsai points out that Student Zhengs dalliances
with the Other constitute ordeals that are part of the Turnerian rites of matura-
tion, after which the protagonist is tempered for higher office and restores the
fatherson relationship.47 While this reading is suitable for Li Wa in particular,
36Chapter 1

I argue that other tales featuring similar protagonists at a predegree life interval
show that the literary treatment of this liminality does not portray their subject
as driven by a singular pathway. Instead, these tales, all of which narrate events
outside of official biography, show a plurality of transformations: they involve not
only the anticipated movement up the ladder of success (as in Zhengs case) but
also divergent paths out of the system altogether, through competing hierarchies
of value and away from canonical paradigms.
If Li Wa exists in the temporal gaps of literati biography, then in the follow-
ing tales, Changan is represented as the site for competing hierarchies. The sec-
ond tale I consider, Cherries and the Maidservant, takes a very different stance
regarding the efficacy of the dragons gate in Changan. It negates the literati
biographyfilled with posts and accomplishmentsby inserting such a life tra-
jectory inside the span of a dream. I have already cited the beginning of this tale
earlier in this chapter: in it, a perennially failing examinee, riding his donkey in
Changan at dusk, sits down at a Buddhist sermon and falls asleep. He subsequently
enters a dreamscape in which an ideal career unfolds: a maidservant, who offers
him a basket of cherries, takes him to her mistress, and in due course he marries
into an influential family, obtains the jinshi degree, is assigned a series of coveted
metropolitan posts, and sires many children. This dream career eventually ends
after twenty years, at which point the protagonist finds himself at the same Bud-
dhist temple where his dream began:

Later, on an outing, he ended up at the gate of the same temple where years
before he encountered the maidservant carrying cherries. Once again he
saw that there was seating for a lecture, so he dismounted and paid a visit
with propriety. As a former chief minister, he was dignified and splendidly
powerful with his entourage, and ascended the hall to pay respect to the
Buddha. There, he suddenly fell into an unconscious stupor and did not
get up for a long while. He heard the lecturing monk call out to him: Why
does our patron still not get up? He suddenly woke from his dream and
saw that he was wearing a white robe, and his accessories were as before;
his retinue had also disappeared. Bemused and lost, he went out the gate
slowly, and saw that his servant boy was standing outside holding the don-
key and his hat. The boy said to Lu: The donkey and I are both starving.
What has been holding you, good sir? Lu asked for the time and the boy
said it was almost noon. Lu sighed, dejected: The ups and downs of the
human world, affluence and destitution, are all but like so. From now on
I will not seek office anymore. After this, he sought out the ways of Tao-
ist transcendents, and left the mortal world for good.48
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 37

The plot of Cherries is structured as a sequence of desire, dream experience,

and an awakening from said desire. In this it is structurally analogous to two other
Tang narratives, Tale of the Governor of the Southern Branch (Nanke Taishou
zhuan) by Li Gongzuo, and Record within a Pillow (Zhen zhong ji) by Shen Jiji.
Because both of these stories have been well studied,49 I focus on the similarity
among them. All three tales describe protagonists whose dreamscapes trace out
the arc of a bureaucratic career, followed by an awakening and renunciation. All
three tales share a temporality that miniaturizes the span of an entire official career
in order to scrutinize it at a remove. This is accomplished either through dream
as an alternative world, or, in the case of Southern Branch, through the minia-
ture otherness of an ant colony. In all three, the sought-after ideal official career
is depicted as a brief detour from reality. The return to reality is signified by phys-
ical anchorsan emptied sermon hall, a pot of millet gruel being cooked, and so
onthat show how little (mundane) time has passed in contrast to the fantasized
life and career.
In Li Wa, the protagonists jaunt in Changan constitutes a brief detour from
his (ordained) path of success. Cherries serves as a counterpoint, as the dream
becomes a brief detour to experience the most coveted career. Looking at these
two tales side by side, we see that Li Was story has been turned inside out: the
frame story of an idealized career becomes the other three tales internal story of
ethereal success.
I use these tales to show that the liminal examinee-sojourner is not a teleo-
logical figure with a singular destination. Here I part ways with scholars who be-
lieve that tales of the disillusioned examinee, such as ones just cited, reflect the
corrupt practices of late-Tang examination recruitment. Whether the protagonist
abandons the examination completely (in the case of Cherries) or neglects it for a
few years (in the case of Li Wa), the Tang narrative imagination explores a range
of possibilities for both official and unofficial forms of social transformation.
Our third story to consider, Lu Yong, similarly questions the validity of the
examination as a route into meaning, and offers yet another alternative paradigm
of value. It, too, begins in examination chronotope, and features an examinee who
comes to Changan from the provinces, and who is otherwise unremarkable, ex-
cept for one unusual eating habit:

Lu Yong of the Wu prefecture had his home in Changcheng. For genera-

tions, his family held official positions through [success in] the mingjing
[degree examination]. Lu Yong had since childhood loved to eat flour-
based foods [mian], yet the more he ate, the thinner he became. When he
came of age, he became a tribute scholar from his home prefecture for [the
38Chapter 1

examination administered by] the Ministry of Rites. After failing the ex-
amination, he registered to be a student in the Imperial Academy.50

As the tale continues, Lu Yong is inexplicably singled out and feted by a group of
foreigners who first come to find him in the Imperial Academy:

A few months later, a few foreigners, bearing wine and food, came to his
door. When seated, they told Yong: We are from the Southern Yue and
have long dwelled among the barbarians. We heard that the academies of
the Son of Heaven of the Tang dynasty gather all the flourishing talents of
the realm, in order to transform the barbarians by way of its culture. This
is why we crossed oceans and climbed mountains to come to the Central
Kingdom, so that we could behold the cultural splendor in the Imperial
Academy. And you, sirwith your cap so towering, your robes so majes-
tic, your appearance and bearing so dignifiedwhy, you are a veritable
classical scholar of the Tang court! This is why we seek your friendship.
Lu Yong modestly replied: Im lucky to be registered in the Imperial Acad-
emy, but I have no other talent or skillhow could I possibly deserve
your favor? Thereupon they feasted and drank their fill, and the guests
left only after they had fully enjoyed themselves. Lu Yong was a trusting
gentleman and did not think the foreigners would deceive him. After over
ten days, the foreigners showed up again, this time bearing extravagant
gifts to celebrate Yongs birthday. Lu Yong came to suspect that there was
some other reason for this, and steadfastly refused. The foreigners said:
My good sir, you live in Changan, and yet you appear to be in want, suf-
fering from hunger and cold. We brought these gifts to defray the days
expense for your servant and mount, so that we may enjoy your company
what other reasons could there be? Do not be suspicious of us. Lu Yong
had no choice but to accept the gifts. After the foreigners left, the other
Imperial Academy students heard of this, and they all came to Lu Yong to
say, Those foreigners all love profit more than their lives. They wouldnt
think twice of murdering each other over trifling sums, so why would they
part with extravagant gifts for the birthday of a friend? Besides, the Impe-
rial Academy is full of students; why are they so generous to you and you
alone? You should hide out in the remote wild to avoid another visit. Lu
Yong duly moved away to live by the Wei River [north of Changan], and
sequestered himself inside.51

Here we have a protagonist who is disconcerted over being singled out for at-
tention. His own disquiet, and that of his peers, is telling, because it is the goal of
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 39

each and every examinee to attract the attention of the right patron, and ultimately
to be recognized by the examiner. Lu Yong finds himself attracting attention from
the foreigners for reasons that, although stated with reverence to Confucian learn-
ing and to Lus scholarly mien, do not seem to be the right kind. The foreigners
ardor creates suspicion because these men embody fervent commercialismthe
ostensible antithesis of learning.
The rest of the story, however, moves on to show that this strange form of rec-
ognition has its own logic as well as rewards. The foreigners persist in coming to
Lu Yong; eventually they explain why:

The foreigners asked him: Do you like eating flour-based foods? Lu Yong
said yes. They continued: Whats been eating the flour-made food is not you,
good sir, but rather, a creature in your stomach. Now we will give you a pill;
when you swallow it, you will disgorge the creature. Then we will pay you a
high price for itwould that be permissible? Lu Yong said, If thats really
the case, how could I refuse? The foreigners promptly gave him a shiny
purple pellet to ingest. Before long, Lu Yong disgorged a green creature two
cun in length that resembled a frog. The foreigners said, This is called the
flour-devouring crawler [xiao mian chong], a thing of rare treasure.

The large sum the foreigners offer Lu Yong in exchange for the creature allows
him to live in luxury in Changan. The tale, however, continues to its second cli-
max, as the full potential of Lu Yongs parasite is finally revealed:

After just over a year, the foreigners came again. They asked Lu Yong: Will
you accompany us to roam the sea? We want to hunt for marvelous trea
sures there and make them illuminate the world. Are you not a gentleman
whos fond of the unusual [haoqi zhi shi]? Since Lu Yong was already rich,
and had the leisure to indulge his whims, he went with the foreigners to
the sea. The foreigners built shelters and lodged there. From there they set
up a silver tripod and filled it with oil, heated it underneath with fire, and
threw the [flour-devouring] creature into the tripod to be refined. For
seven days they kept the fire going. Suddenly, a boy with parted hair and
wearing a green jacket emerged from the sea. He held a moon-shaped plat-
ter, and on the platter were many pearls about a cun in width. He came
and presented them to the foreigners. They berated him loudly. Looking
frightened, the boy left holding the platter. After about a meals interval, a
jade maiden of alluring appearance emerged from the sea, wearing a gauze
blouse and jade droplet earrings. She was holding a purple jade platter with
dozens of pearls; she came and presented them to the foreigners. The
40Chapter 1

foreigner also scolded her, and she too left holding the platter. Soon came
an immortal, wearing a hat of jasper and lapis lazuli and cloaked in a
jacket of sunrise cloud. He held a basket lined with a crimson kerchief, on
which was set a single pearl about three cun in diameter. It emitted a
marvelous light that illuminated the surroundings for dozens of paces all
around. The transcendent offered the pearl to the foreigners, who ac-
cepted it with a smile. They turned to Yong, delighted, and said: The su-
preme treasure has arrived. They then ordered the fire [beneath the tri-
pod] to be put out, retrieved the creature from the tripod and kept it in a
gold box. Despite having been refined for so long, the creature was still
hopping around as before. One of the foreigners swallowed the pearl,
and said to Lu Yong: Come with me into the seathere is nothing to
fear. Yong held on to the foreigners belt and followed him into the sea.
Wherever they went, seawater parted widely for tens of paces. The scaly
aquatic creatures did not come near them. They roamed the dragons pal-
ace, entered the krakens chamber, and had their pick of the rarest trea
sures and the most precious of pearls. After just one night, they had har-
vested their fill. The foreigner said to Yong: Just these are already worth
billions and billions. And when they were done, the foreigners gave Yong
a few more choice shells. Yong sold [all this] in Southern Yue, receiving a
thousand pounds of gold, and became even wealthier than before. In the
end, he never did enter officialdom, and spent the rest of his life in the
Min and Yue area.52

This tale of underwater adventures is the only Tang tale I am aware of that in-
volves a parasitic and revenue-generating creature. It collapses into one plot four
different types of fabulist encounters: (1) the skillful doctor who cures unusual
ailments; (2) the Taoist alchemist who takes an ingredient in its original state and
transforms it into something far more valuable; (3) extraordinary travel; and (4)
the foreign merchant as aficionado of uncommon treasures.
The tales imaginary romp through another temporality and, indeed, another
ecosystem may seem clumsy when compared to the more carefully rendered Tale
of Li Wa, yet it is founded upon an equally relentless drive to accommodate on-
tological possibilities one may encounter during an interval of life in which po-
tentiality trumps actuality. The young mans education in the provinces takes him
to the capital, but due to this encounter, his career ultimately ends in the remote
south. Changan in this case is neither a destabilizing site for transgression nor
the site of a fruitless pursuit of an official career. Rather, it is a launch pad, but not
of the kind envisioned by the architects of the examination system. In this tale, the
process of waiting for the Impartial One to confer recognition on the aspirant
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 41

is sidestepped. This alternative is possible because of the extracanonical, arcane

knowledge brought to bear by strangers from another realm. The process of ex-
amination recruitment is abandoned not because it is deemed unjust, but be-
cause the story takes up a perverse reading of what it means to ascend the drag-
ons gate: if one does not quite succeed by obtaining recognition through literary
talent (cai ), then ones innate makeup (cai ), even in the form of a parasitic
creature, may be just as efficacious in obtaining material successwhen put to
use under the right combination of connoisseurship, alchemy, and expedition.
Such stories featuring examinees at their center are peppered throughout the
five hundred fascicles of the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era.53 The most com-
mon examples include encounters leading to marriages with immortals, as well
as direct participation in occult magic. A close analogue, from Records of Origi-
nal Transformations, is titled The Foreign Pancake-Seller (Yu bing hu) and de-
scribes an examinee who kindly nurses a mortally ill neighbor, the titular pan-
cake seller. Before dying, the foreigner tells the examinee that a precious pearl has
been surgically embedded in his arm; he instructs the examinee to remove the
pearl after
his death. It is only years afterward, when the examinee meets a com-
patriot of his deceased neighbor, that he comes to understand the pearls true value:
it can be used to dispel water and enter the sea.54
If we trace Lu Yong back to its incarnation before its inclusion in Extensive
Records of the Taiping Era, we discover the ligatures that connect this story to a
contemporary network of literati storytellers. First and foremost, the story was
part and parcel of a larger trend of cultural production by men with shared expe-
riences as jinshi contenders. It was included in the collection whose very title ges-
tures to the unofficial, supramundane, and idiosyncratic. Chronicles from Xuan-
shi Hall (Xuanshi zhi) was compiled by Zhang Du, who received his jinshi degree
in 852 during the Dazhong Reign, when examination culture was at a height.55
Zhang became active in the capital in the next few decades and eventually served
as an examiner in the year 879.56 Zhang Dus work was not singular. The last few
decades of the ninth century produced collections like Records of Original Trans-
formations (Yuan hua ji, 840s), Missing Histories of the Tang (Tang que shi, 885),
Friendly Discourse at Yunxi (Yunxi youyi, 884), Poems Rooted in Events (Ben shi
shi, 886), and Records of Unfettered Conversation (Jutan lu, 894), many of which
cross-referenced each other.57 The preface of Zhang Dus collection was written
by one Miao Taifu (jinshi 852), his cohortsomeone who received his jinshi de-
gree the same year as Zhang Du.58 These nodes of sociality do not stop here, and
connect not only Zhang Dus peers but also his extended family. Miao Taifu and
Zhang Du, it turns out, shared a maternal grandfather.59 This grandfather was Niu
Sengru, the statesman-writer who himself authored Records of Mysterious
42Chapter 1

Anomalies (Xuanguai lu), a collection of supernatural tales. Zhang Dus father,

Zhang Xifu, was a good friend of Duan Chengshi, the author of the collection
Mixed Morsels from Youyang.60 Duan, in turn, was a good friend of Wen Tingyun,
the putative author of the collection Dry Snacks.61
I enumerate the warp and woof of this storys intellectual and social lineages
to show that like Li Wa, this story of the flour-addicted young man did not
emerge out of a cultural vacuum. And even though Li Wa features no unusual
creature or extramundane dream experience, it is no more realistic than the other
two tales in forging an amalgamated examinee-protagonist. Lu Yong, Li Wa,
and Cherries each attempts to make sense of the interval of liminality prior to
ones establishing a name, a designation newly created and distended by the in-
stitution of the civil service examinations. Lu Yongs flour fixation, the far-flung
origins of his visitors, the marvelous alchemy, oceanic exploration, and the eco-
nomic windfallall of these elements of the story attest to the combinatorial ca-
pabilities of one core story, one that explores the divergent possibilities facing the
examinee, who is situated between social institutions and affiliations. What these
tales have in common is a historically and spatially specific threshold in Changan:
they feature the extracurricular adventures of examinees awaiting transformation
in the crucible of the capital, whether these transformations are brought about by
a beguiling courtesan, a dream, or the relentless intervention of foreigners.
As previously mentioned, out of the five hundred fascicles of narratives col-
lected in the compendium Extensive Records of the Taiping Era where we find
Lu Yong, it is classified in fascicle 476 under the category Swarms of Crawlers
(Kunchong). It would have been just as plausibly categorized in fascicles 400 to
405, under Treasures (Bao). Yet all three stories discussed in this section fall more
appropriately under the category of Transformation (Bianhua). The fact that no
such category (or its equivalent) exists in the Extensive Records is, in fact, testa-
ment to how much this idea resonates across its entries.

Conclusion
This chapter looks at the changing social and intellectual structures that engen-
dered literati identities in the second half of the Tang. The cultural and aesthetic
consequences of these changes in turn shaped how literati conceived of the self as
an entity capable of initiation and advancement. As the institution of recruitment
began to mature in the second half of the Tang, a new notion of being established
was being worked out in the cultural imagination. Its metaphors of transforma-
tion were being deployed in poetic language, but the nature and temporality of
this process of transformation was more fully explored in narratives. In these nar-
 Narrating Liminality and Transformation 43

ratives of relocation and dislocation, a repeated figure emerges: the examinee-

protagonist, whose social indeterminacy and constant wandering are represented
as a rift in time. In Li Wa, we see this liminal life interval as a detour in the un-
derbelly of Changan and as a detailed depiction of living outside of literati biog-
raphy. In tales like Cherries and its analogues, we see a temporal detour of a
condensed, lifelong official career followed by return to predegree life, and a
negation of the recruitment system as a way to realize value. Finally, in Lu Yong
and its narrative variants, we find a fantastical elaboration on serendipitous en-
counters between the examinee and other outsidersencounters that eventually
become viable alternatives to the examinees quest for a sanctioned career path.
Against an emerging change in the institutional conception of the literatus,
these repeated literary figures point to a reconception of life between rungs on
the ladder of success. In this reconception, Changan as a city and space served as
much more than a mere backdrop to action; it was the site for and mechanism of
the transformations (real, imagined, or anticipated) at the center of a changing
literati identity. Chapter2 examines the ways in which literati hopefuls viewed
the capital not only as a destination for enhanced opportunities, as was the case
in the past, but increasingly as a destination for routinized travel.
c ha p t e r t wo

The Lure of Changan

Just as examination recruitment changed the collective discourse on the mean-

ing of becoming established for literati men, as detailed in chapter1, the capital
city of Changan shifted the configurations of how they thought about where to
go, where to prosper, and where to return to during the course of their careers.
For Tang literati, Changan became a coveted address, a discursive space, a bench-
mark for cultural and political success, and a touchstone for the senses, as well as
an indispensible narrative framework in Tang tales of travel and encounters. Their
changing relationship to the capital is the subject of this chapter.
Unlike examinations from the Song onward, when they were administered in
provincial centers and held in the capital only once every three years, throughout
the Tang all subjects of the examinations were held annually in the capital.1 This
regularity means that, for the first time in history, we see a large number of rou-
tine travelers for whom going to Changan was the first step on the ladder of suc-
cess. For example, the late-Tang poet Huang Tao (jinshi 895) spent twenty-three
years on the examination circuit as a tribute scholar. Looking back at these jour-
neys, he uses the metaphor of an annual migration to describe his experience:

I toil at the poems and rhapsodies, for a dispatch letter from the
province,
Twenty-four years, I pass through the Nine Avenues like the migratory
goose.2

Huangs characterizations of these journeys of aspiration and displacement was

not unusual for examinees in the late ninth century. Compared to the serving of-
ficials who also traveled regularly to the capital for performance assessment and
reassignment (xuan), the annual influx of examinees sought something different:
the promise of transformation that was qualitative in nature, in the midst of a
vaunted examination culture in the Tang. The drawing power of Changan con-
tinued to hold sway even though other regional cities and posts offered aspirants
competing forms of opportunity for service.3

44
 The Lure of Changan 45

Destination Changan
By the eighth and ninth centuries, the pattern of traveling to, sojourn in, and de-
parture from the capital had become recurring events in the lives of examinees.
In 803, when Emperor Dezong (r. 779805) wanted to suspend the examinations
due to a drought, Han Yu (768824) memorialized to the throne to dissuade him.
To cancel the examinations, Han Yu cautioned the emperor, would produce the
dual calamity of sparking panic near and far [in the empire], and leaving the li-
terati bereft of their occupation.4
Han Yu suggests in this argument that the annual examination cycle had
come to define men of letters. Indeed, the seasonality of the examinations had
become so deeply ingrained in the cultural consciousness that an interruption in
the seasonal rhythm was seen as anomalousand worrisome. In 870, for exam-
ple, it was not a drought, but the rebellion of Pang Xun (d. 869) in Xuzhou that
unexpectedly disrupted the examination proceedings. An anecdote captures the
reaction of one tribute scholar who had no choice but to turn around just as he
approached Changan: Lu Shangqing (jinshi 882) heard the news that examina-
tions had been suspended when he reached the strategic Tong Pass en route to
the capital. He wrote a poem in which the last couplet imagines how people he
passes on the road to Changan would laugh at him for turning back before the
twelfth month.5
Once in the capital, the examinees, when congregated together, became a
distinct sight. In an essay, Niu Xiji (b. 872) provides a striking image of the aspi-
rants thronging in the capital: [The tribute scholars] dispatched by the prefec-
tures number in the upper thousands. Beginning in the first month of winter
[tenth month], they gather in the capital, with their hempen robes the color of
snow, filling up the Nine Avenues.6 Both the defenders and critics of the exami-
nation recruitment system acknowledged the continued influx of examinees. In
his aforementioned memorial to urge that the examinations continue, Han Yu
notes that in a city of one million, examinees (not counting servants, horses and
other draft animals) numbered five to seven thousand and therefore amounted
to less than one person in a household of ten, a small fraction of the city.7 In an-
other piece of writing, he observes: Todays candidates do not take as their
root the village [home] and do not get taught in the schools. Instead they descend
in one day upon the examiner in one rush.8 Opponents of centralized examina-
tion recruitment saw this trend as an abandonment of examinees provincial affili-
ations. For example, Shen Jiji, who himself came into the capital from Wu County
in the lower Yangtze,9 criticized the process as leading to overcrowding in the
capital:
46Chapter 2

In the hundreds and thousands of years from antiquity to the Sui, the tasks
of selection and promotion had been divided among the prefectures. At
the time of the Han emperors Wendi, Jingdi and Wudi, the capital was so
prosperous that among the multitude of warehouses and markets, people
and carriages [were so crowded in the streets that they] could hardly turn
around. The overflowing extravagance was already at its zenithwhat do
we need of the examinees to add to it? Besides, each person has his allot-
ted land, and the amount of land will never exceed the number of people,
so the vagabond multitudes are many, whereas those affixed to the land
are few. Ever since the Sui eliminated selections from the outside [in the
prefectures], it attracted people far and wide to converge in the capital; they
return [home] in the spring and set off [again] in the fall, clustering to-
gether like birds and clouds. All of the agricultural products from Within
the Pass are used to meet the needs of those traveling from afar. In this
manner, the core strength [of the country] is expended on canal transport,
driving up the prices for grain and fuel.10

The capital was already a popular destination for the literati, Shen says, and
the centralized recruitment system made it even more so, to the detriment of
available resources. Shens memorial argues for stability vis--vis ancestral lands
and against what he saw as a detrimental form of mobility. It was not the first of
its kind to make this point. In a memorial submitted centuries earlier by Shen Yue
(441513), preserved in the Comprehensive History of Institutions (Tong dian), Shen
Yue observes that elite men of his day gathered in the capital city (jingyi) in search
of opportunities for official appointment, hoarding land and refusing to leave, even
though a more ideal system would have encouraged people to stay in their respec-
tive villages and towns.11
By echoing these sentiments from centuries before, Shen Jiji was tapping into
an age-old discussion about the nature of rootedness for men of service. Inherent
in this debate was the tension over the emotional displacement of being in the cap-
ital versus staying in ones hometown (guxiang, xiangli, or xiangyi).12 But what if
the selfsame capital were to slowly become ones hometown?
Shen Jijis memorial was responding to changes visible in the late eighth century,
which were in turn related to shifts in elite migration patterns. Scholarly evidence
for this shift is worth enumerating here, and it ranges from large-scale changes
to changes evident in case studies of families.
As a place to serve, Changan beckoned to Tang literati with a grandeur and
exclusivity not seen in the Song and late-imperial eras.13 When deciding among
 The Lure of Changan 47

different kinds of posts at this time, Tang officials overwhelmingly preferred to

take appointments in or near the metropolitan areas; they were seen as the gold
standard in a political career.14 Decrees triedand failedto induce officials to
forgo the sought-after metropolitan posts and to take provincial posts instead.15
In a case study, Ta-ko Chen compared in detail the career trajectories of two of-
ficials in the eighth century, with one man serving mostly in local government
away from the capital and the other serving in central government in and near
the two capitals. The case illustrates clearly that for the capital-dwelling official,
there were more abundant opportunities for promotion, despite the superior com-
petence of the official serving in the provinces.16
Mao Hanguang traced the history of ten aristocratic clans of different sur-
names, and observes in an influential study that the clans geographical distribution
had become noticeably centralized in the Tang compared to the Six Dynasties.
Whereas before the Tang they were distributed in a large triangular area, in the
Tang the families became more concentrated in the area between Changan and
the auxiliary capital Luoyang.17 In the context of a larger change during the
TangSong transition, David Johnson shows that, by the late Tang, illustrious clans
such as the Li clan of Zhaojun had uprooted themselves from their native regions
and relocated to the capital.18
The Tang elite, fledgling officials and established families alike voted with their
feet to stay close to the capital. They also voted with their tombstonesby bury-
ing family members near the capitals. In a study of the epitaphs at burial sites of
aristocratic families during the ninth century, Nicolas Tackett shows that the cap-
itals had an overarching significance as the center of elite culturein stark con-
trast to the shift to a localist strategy in the twelfth century.19 Even the informal
recruitment of provincial government staff, which sometimes drew eligible men
away from the examination system, was founded on strong ties to a capital-
centered social network.20
These larger-scale studies of the Tang elite are corroborated by smaller case
studies. The historian Wang Jing shows persuasively that the growing political in-
fluence of one clan in Changan, combined with their real estate stronghold in
the capital, gradually came to replace even their choronym (native region associ-
ated with their surname)the hitherto traditional identifier for aristocratic clans.
For the Yang clan from Hongnong, beginning with clan member Yang Ning (744
817), who entered officialdom by receiving the mingjing degree, the clan came to
thrive in multigenerational homes in the Jinggong Ward, and became known as
the Yangs of Jinggong.21 This case study suggests that Tang elite identity was be-
ing reshaped by putting down new roots in the capital.
48Chapter 2

Indeed, already by Shen Jijis time in the late eighth century, literati men fo-
cused their attention on what to do once in the capital, rather than whether to go
there at all. The nature of the capital-bound trip, compared to the time of Shen
Yue in the Six Dynasties, was far more systematic and regular, and the rewards
for being successful in the capital became more tangible. Since Shen Jiji came from
a prominent family south of the Yangtze, his own career trajectory depended on
the patronage of a well-placed capital network and possibly on his success with
the mingjing degree.22 Importantly, for the next two generations, Shen Jijis own
descendants seemed to have thrived on the very capital-seeking tendency their
forefather deplored. Shen Jijis son, Shen Chuanshi (769827), received the jinshi
degree in 806, as probably did a brother of his.23 Shen Chuanshi was at one time
the superior of Du Mu, and had a career that was more visible and better docu-
mented than that of his father. His house in the Kaihua Ward, just south of the
Imperial City, was reportedly worth three million in cash.24 A generation later,
Shen Chuanshis son, Shen Xun (d. 863), surpassed both his father and grandfather
in his official career: he not only received his jinshi degree but also twice served
as chief examiner, a highly prestigious position and one of the most important
gatekeepers of the cultural elite.25
Given this trajectory of three generations of men beginning with Shen Jiji, the
familys office-holding pattern became increasingly consistent with that of families
Nicolas Tackett calls the capital elitesthose who served in nationally prominent
offices with strong capital-based networks.26 In other words, Shen Jijis criticism
of the examination procedures notwithstanding, by the ninth century, these gen-
erations of the Shen family were unambiguously reaping the rewards of leaving
their ancestors allotted land.27
In a body of writing very different from the memorial cited above, Shen Jiji
authored two well-known Tang tales that explore with vivid detail the complexi-
ties and pitfalls of capital life. These tales implicitly engage with questions of the
permanence of events, whether such an event is an official career or the devotion
of a beautiful, otherworldly woman. As mentioned in chapter1, Record within
a Pillow depicts an examinee who falls asleep and enters a dream that takes him
through the full arc of a resplendent career, only to see it come to naught when he
wakes up. The dream career consists of prestigious metropolitan posts and reflects
contemporary perception of the desirability of serving in the capitals. Already
cited by works such as the Supplements to State Histories of the Tang during the
ninth century,
Shen Jijis tale joins a number of other tales that sought to explore
the limits of transformationboth personal and politicalin the capital.
The second of Shen Jijis tales, Story of Miss Ren, examines a different kind
of encounter in the capital. It depicts one young mans infatuation with a Changan
 The Lure of Changan 49

beauty who reveals early on that she is a fox spirit. Details of this courtship take
place in the marketplace, the residence of a Changan-based cousin, and Miss Rens
own residence in the Shengping Ward south of the Eastern Market. As many
scholars have already pointed out, details such as waiting for the ward gate to
open at dawn, descriptions of Rens marked business savvy, and even her affilia-
tion with the Imperial Music Bureau show that each twist and turn of the story is
evocatively enmeshed within the capitals social space.28
The draw of Changan for those eager to become men of service, then, left very
tangible traces not only in policy debates but also as literary imprints in informal
narratives. Just a few years after Shen Jijis son Chuanshi received the jinshi de-
gree, a cousin from their ancestral home, Shen Yazhi (781832), also set out for
Changan for his own pursuit of the degree. Yazhi would become known as the
author of Tang tales such as The Story of Feng Yan (Feng Yan zhuan) and A
Record of Dreams in Qin (Qin meng ji). In a letter to an examination official three
years prior to receiving his degree (in 815), Shen Yazhi describes a practical mo-
tivation in setting out for Changan: From time to time people encouraged me to
pursue the jinshi degree, saying that if I obtained an official position, it could feed
three generations [of my family]. Beginning with last year, I came into the capi-
tal, seeking advancement [qiu jin] with the other candidates.29 Shen Yazhi un-
abashedly links the jinshi degree to a mtier, a livelihood, that was available to
the collective shi class. Although in the second half of the Tang, employment in
provincial government created increased social mobility in the literati class,30
many examinees served in such governments as a means to obtain the resources
and recommendations necessary to advance their candidacy in the examinations
in Changan,31 and the idea of the capital as the place where literary men could
make a living developed to an unprecedented degree.
Shen Jiji and Shen Yazhi hailed from south of the Yangtze, but the siren call
of Changan also reached those north of the Yellow River. The following epitaph,
written by Du Mu in 839 for a young man from the northeast, tries to explain why
a well-heeled scion might undergo voluntary displacement from his ancestral
home to seek his fortune in the capital. It features a jinshi candidate, Lu Pei, whom
Du Mu had recommended to men of influence. In the first half of the epitaph, Du
recaptures Lus life in the northeast as a stage of decadent indulgence, followed
by an epiphany, which is in turn followed by a journey to seek a wider world-
view:

The Cultivated Talent was named Lu Pei, courtesy name Zizhong. From
the Tianbao [Reign] onward, his ancestors served as officials in the Yan or
Zhao regions, where there was plenty of good land, livestock and horses.
50Chapter 2

By the time he was twenty, he had not yet heard of the Duke of Zhou or
Confucius. Instead he played kickball, drank wine, and hunted hares on
horseback. His talk and habits were concerned only with military strate-
gies and conquests. In Zhenzhou there was a scholar named Huang Jian,
much revered by locals; they called him teacher. Huang Jian told Lu Pei
about the ways of the former kings and scholarly learning. He also told
Lu: South of the Yellow River there is land myriad li in scope; there are
over a hundred places comparable to Yan and Zhao. There are both a
Western Capital and Eastern Capital. In the Western Capital resides the Son
of Heaven; his court officials and men of the shi class live neatly between the
two capitals, numbering in the trillions of households. The myriad states
bring their local products and sumptuous treasures to the court as sea-
sonal tribute, and swear an oath of allegiance. [In the capital] there is no
need for suspicion and constraints; all day long one can roam at leisure in
a generous state of mind. If you mastered the ways of the former kings
and scholarly learning, you can obtain a high office in court. By then your
prominence, wealth and honor will carry on down to your children and
grandchildren, such that you can live for the rest of your life without see-
ing war or mayhem.32

The description of the early Lu Pei is the stock image of the dissolute young
man, engaging in wanton martial pastimes rather than more productive literary
pursuits. Although this biographical arc is by no means unusual, in this particu
lar case, the external nudge (in the form of a teacher figure) touches on a spatial
scheme of the world. The moment of epiphany for Lu Pei is, at its heart, a geogra-
phy lesson. It replaces the young mans regional spatial awareness with the geog-
raphy of the empire at large: it shifts his local-centered self-conception into an
empire-centered one.
Embedded in this before-and-after biography of a young man is the contrast
albeit a clichd onebetween the peripheral lands and the civilizing influence of
the capital as a cultural paradigm. The incentives out yonder the teacher extols
include various glimpses of infinity: in the vastness of the land (myriad leagues
in scope), the convergence of all riches (local products and sumptuous trea
sures), and the means to obtain peace and security indefinitely (to your chil-
dren and grandchildren). Lus departure from home, then, is shown as moving
from the finite to the potentially infinite. Although this epitaph has been taken
as an exaggerated statement of the barbarism of the Yan-Zhao regions,33 its dis-
cursive claims to the capitals attractions also fall into a larger discourse. It makes
setting out for Changan a necessity in the formative process of a man of cultiva-
tion, seeking the kind of ambition that his local home could no longer provide.
 The Lure of Changan 51

The epitaph continues with the young mans journey toward a disciplined ed-
ucation, as he leaves home to pursue a rigorous self-enforced curriculum:

The young man instantly grasped the meaning of [his teachers] words. He
secretly summoned his younger brother Yun to steal a strong steed from
his house. He galloped three hundred li in one day and reached the bound-
ary of Xiangguo at night. There he abandoned his horse and walked,
heading straight into the Wangwu Mountains [north of Luoyang]. He
asked for permission to stay at a Daoist temple, where the Daoist monks
took pity on him and set him up in the stable outside the gate. He slept on
a mat on the ground, and began to turn to the Classic of Filial Piety and
the Analects. Barefoot and in hempen clothing, he foraged grass for food;
some days he did not have anything to eat at all. In this way he spent a
total of ten years. By age thirty, he acquired both manners and erudition;
in leisure, he was cognizant of human affairs, and was sincere and under-
standing; he began to be somewhat well known among learned men in the
Ru and Luo regions. In the third year of the Kaicheng Reign [838], he ar-
rived in Changan for the jinshi degree, and stood out among his peers.
Those who had some reputation among examination candidates often
came to him and sought out his friendship.34

Here, once again, is someone who uprooted himself from his ancestors al-
lotted land. Lus abandonment of his familys local stronghold in the north is as-
sociated with a shift in self-awareness. His former self is described almost in eth-
nographic terms; his decade-long education in the Wangwu Mountains is carried
out in abject reclusion.35 His stint in Changan, which brought him into the net-
work of Du Mu, is described as a mode of existence that ultimately completes his
years of cultivation.
Changan, in other words, is depicted as promising cultural capital as well as
capital culture. The former existed as the coveted jinshi degree and the official post
that would follow; the latter consisted of the belief that the capital encompassed
learning and all that was civilized. For the white-clad throng of tribute scholars,
this epitaph suggests, traveling to the capital was an ontological threshold: it sig-
naled a transition from the family-based social units in which they were raised to
the official, bureaucratic, and empire-based political units, of which they aspired
to be a part.
When we try to understand the draw of Changan through the retrospective
lens of midcareer officials, we see that to these writers, Changan bore the hall-
mark of their careers beginnings; they saw an important part of their literati per-
sonhood as being minted in Changan. This was where they roamed the Serpentine
52Chapter 2

in the spring, and where imperial banquets changed the meaning associated
with the taste of cherries. Conversely, being away from the smithy of their careers
could potentially be their unmaking, and the rich corpus of exile literature, penned
by writers like Liu Yuxi (772842), attests to this conceptuala nd emotional
attachment. While a full examination of exile literature is beyond the scope of
this book, here
I want to turn to the occasional poetry of Liu Yuxi after he once
again set foot in Changan in the spring of 828, having returned from exile in the
south and having served in provincial posts for over two decades.36 A number of
poems written during this time recall his preexile years in Changan, a time, in his
words, when he was young and triumphant.37 In what must have been a wistful
spring outing to the Apricot Garden and the nearby Serpentine Pond, Liu Yuxi
wrote:

For over twenty years I was an exiled official,

Upon my return, I again face the spring in the Serpentine.
Fellow roamers, laugh not at the hoary head besotted with drink,
To be old and tipsy among the flowersfew are so fortunate.38

This poem was a response to one written to him by Bai Juyi, whose poem re-
minds Liu that the returnee had been feted under the flowers in the springtime
celebration of new degree holders in 793:

No need to brood holding wine, my friend,

You were once a Man under the Flowers in the Zhenyuan Reign.
Since your farewell to the flowers, much has happened:
The east wind has brought about spring two dozen times over.39

After all, the poem affirms, it had been here, in the very same garden, that Liu
was minted as a jinshi degree holder.
Yuan Zhen (779831), who was not present at the outing, wrote a matching
poem that concurs with Bai Juyis assessment and classifies Liu Yuxi as a former
courtier of the Zhenyuan Reign.40 Both poems, in a sense, are rebuilding Liu Yuxis
literary identity after the ravages of exile. To do so, they begin at the originating site
of Lius literary identities, by reaffirming the importance of his jinshi degree in 793,
by re-creating in poetry this moment of cultural and psychic homecoming, and by
restoring the returnee to the social and cultural matrix of Changan.41
With his preexile identity thus restored, Liu Yuxi was loathe to imagine
leavingfor himself or for others. Soon after his return to Changan, Liu Yuxi
wrote a quatrain to send off another friend. This poems last couplet reflects Liu
 The Lure of Changan 53

Yuxis feelings about having returned to, for all intents and purposes, the center
of the known world:

Say not that the two capitals are not far,

Outside the Chunming Gate, yonder, is the edge of the earth.42

Liu Yuxi has taken his poetic license to exaggerate, to be sure, since the friend in
question was only going to the eastern capital, Luoyang, 850 li away and connected
to Changan via thoroughfares. But there are enough of these examples to show
that midcareer officials shared a collective memory of a spatially specific initiation
into their literati identity.

Benchmark of the Senses

Tang officials in exile seem to have carried with them the memory of their initia-
tion in Changan, and wrote about such formative memories when they were away.
They wrote about Changan in terms of its distance from them, and often evoked
frustration over their demotion by conjuring up images such as emperors city
(dicheng) and city pylons (que).43 For established officials in the ninth century,
Changan seemed to embody not only a place to realize ones political ambition
but also one where the highest levels of achievement could be found in culture
broadly defined. More specifically, Changan served as a benchmark for sensory
experiences including sound, taste, awareness of space (proprioception), and the
passage of time.
From a distance, Changan beckoned to educated men with sensory memo-
ries: of its music and entertainment, described as the sound of the capital (jingdu
sheng) and strummed by lute (pipa) players. In the preface to his highly popular
Ballad of the Pipa Player (Pipaxing), Bai Juyi writes that while serving in his
demoted post in Jiangzhou in 816, he met a retired courtesan on a river boat; she
had learned her skills from a palace maestro surnamed Cao (Cao shancai).44 In
the preface, Bai Juyi adds that he had not been in the capital for two years and
though he had become adjusted and content in the remote post, the story of the
lute players youth in Changan left him feeling, for the first time, that he was in
fact living as an exile.45 The sound of pipa playing, passed from master to ap-
prentice over the years, traveled out of the capital and met a receptive listener in
Jiangzhou, where the sound initiated in his mind an imaginary journey back
toward the capital.
Even a decade later, after Maestro Cao died, his musicianship continued to
beckon other exiles to think about the capital. When serving as the governor of
54Chapter 2

Chuzhou in 828, Li Shen (772846) heard a pipa performance and learned that
the unnamed performer had been a disciple of Cao.46 This connection immedi-
ately conjured up memories of Li Shens own initiation into public life in the
capital. In the preface of a poem mourning this virtuoso, Li Shen describes how
the disciples skill transported him back to that other place-time:

In the days when I served as a prefect, there was a traveler skilled at the
pipa. I heard that his skills were learned from Maestro [Cao]. Not long ago
when I was in the inner court, under distinguished imperial favor we ban-
queted at the Serpentine Pond. The Maestro and twenty others were com-
manded to provide the music. After my move here
[for my post], Maestro
has since passed away. For this reason I revisit the events of the past, by
way of mourning the Maestro.47

Li Shen tells the reader that his first exposure to Maestro Caos music was at a
Serpentine Pond banquet, so it was likely to have been one given by Emperor Mu-
zong (r. 821825) in 823, or one year before Li Shen was demoted and sent to the
south.48 The artistic lineages Li Shen and Bai Juyi trace in their poems radiate out-
ward from the capitalthe ground zero for musical virtuosity and, by extension,
cultural plenitude. Encounters with reminders of such melodies, scattered across
the empire, could in turn be traced back to this epicenter.
Although Maestro Cao had become a memory of Li Shens capital-dwelling
days, his son Cao Gang was, at that time, still active in Changan as a player known
for his unrivaled plucking skills.49 Having returned to the capital in 828, Liu Yuxi
listened to the younger Cao perform and wrote a poem that begins with a descrip-
tion of the performance and ends by declaring that Caos virtuosity is one reason
one ought to never leave the capital:

The major string clamors, all aflutter, while the minor string is un-
clouded;
Conjuring forth snow, catching the winds, there is much flavor gener-
ated.
Once you listen to Cao Gang pluck the tune of Bo Mei,50
You know that one ought to never set foot outside the capital.51

The musical performance here signifies the best in the realm and, in turn, the en-
tertainment nucleus of the empire.
Just as the sound from the capital was a benchmark for experiences, so did
the flavors of the capital serve as a kind of tastemaker. Serving in a demoted posi-
 The Lure of Changan 55

tion in Zhongzhou in 819, Bai Juyi sent to a friend some foreign pancakes (hu
bing) he describes as made in the capital style.52 At the end of the accompany-
ing poem, Sending Foreign Pancakes to [Governor] Yang of Wanzhou, Bai in-
vites his friend to judge whether these scrumptious cakes are indeed reminiscent
of those sold in the Fuxing Ward in the northwest of Changan.53 Instead of pin-
ing for a Changan represented by its pylons, palaces, and cosmic centrality, here
Bai Juyi produces a gustatory, spatially specific memory of the capital.
In addition to sounds and tastes, such memories of the senses included sight,
and in particular, seasonal spectacles of festivals. Lantern viewing on the night
of the fifteenth of the first month was an occasion that suspended the usual night
curfew, when merriment continued into the night.54 Its festive atmosphere spoke
powerfully of the vitality and stability of the empire. When Li Shangyin (813858)
was on sick leave in Zhengzhou, he wrote plaintively about missing the luminous
spectacle, which he reconstructed in his minds eye:

Both moonlight and lantern light would now flood the Emperors City,
Perfumed carriages and adorned palanquins must be clogging up the
avenues.
Not serving, I cannot see the flourishing of the restoration,
In shame, I follow the country folks in their festival of the Purple
Maiden.55

In the minds of these writers, the evocative sight of the capital lit up at night
created an awareness of being in an elsewhere. This idea of an elsewhere is a power
ful one, and I explore its role in narratives shortly. In poems, the spatial aware-
ness is made visible through a sight linereal or imaginedthat connects the dis-
located self to the capital at a distance. According to Li Dehui, even though in
earlier eras tall pavilions had already attracted literati tourists with their pan-
oramic views, structures called capital-gazing pavilions (wang jing lou) first ap-
peared in the high Tang, and it was during this time when records began to men-
tion Xuanzong (r. 713756) building roads to Mount Li (Lishan) in order to
access such pavilions. Poems by Li Yi (748827), Li Fengji (758835), WuYuan
heng (758815), and Xu Hun (ca. 791ca. 858) mention other examples of capital-
gazing pavilions built in places like Bianzhou, Youzhou, Zizhou, Yizhou, and
Suzhou.56
Because the Zhongnan Mountains are located just south of Changan, their
peaks became de facto capital-gazing pavilions. This role came about not only be-
cause the mountains topography was conducive to surveying the surroundings,
but also because they had long been home to both genuine recluses shunning
56Chapter 2

government service and ersatz recluses waiting to be discovered by the court.57

In the year 827, it was from the Zhongnan Mountains that Bai Juyi wrote the fol-
lowing lines, tracing out a sight line from one of its peaks to the very gate of the
imperial palace in Changan:

Upon Ascending Guanyin Terrace, Looking toward the City

The myriad houses resemble the chessboard,
The dozen avenues like planted furrows.
From far off, pinprick torchlights going to court can be discerned,
A stringed constellation west of the Five Gates.58

Households, wide avenues, the Daming Palace opening its gates to the courtiers
at dawn: in just two couplets the poet enumerates the population and infrastruc-
ture count of the city. At the root of this is the grid, a spatial mechanism that
thrives on its regularity and which can extrapolate small units into infinity.59 Bai
Juyis vision of Changanrule governed, panoramic in its totality, and keyed into
worldly affairsis reminiscent of Du Fus lines sixty years earlier from his Au-
tumn Meditations series: Its been said that Changan resembles chess/a hundred
years of worldly affairs more than grief can bear.60
In Bai Juyis case, when read in the context of poems composed in the capital-
gazing tradition, his poem from the Zhongnan Mountains imparts less about
Changan itself than it does about the mindscape of the gazer. If Bai Juyi were in
fact observing the city in the predawn hours approximately thirty kilometers away,
then it is doubtful that he could have been able to discern the Five Gates south of
the Daming Palace.61 But this is beside the point. In this poem, empirical obser-
vation plays second fiddle to an idealized view of the capital. This view, as Bai Juyi
articulates elsewhere, equates the geometric regularity of the capital with its proper
governance: The capital is of four sides square/Such is the root of the kingly in-
fluences.62 The idealized vista Bai Juyi describes has been assimilated into what
he already knows to be the order and rhythm of the capital. As someone who was
in the past frequently among the torchlights going to court, the fifty-six-year-
old poet also maps his own identity onto the functioning mechanism of the state
bureaucracy.
Changan shaped the production of text not only through its perceived spa-
tial centrality, but also through its temporal rhythms. In the case of Bai Juyis
poem, this perceived rhythm was circadian. In the case of Li Shangyins poem, the
rhythm was seasonal, and events such as the lantern festival shaped its residents
sense of time. To a man of letters in the ninth century, springtime in Changan
 The Lure of Changan 57

was redolent with reminders of celebrations of jinshi degree successwhether

remembered in his past or anticipated in his future. Just as the blossoming of
sephora flowers in autumn signaled the beginning of the examination season, the
onset of spring blooms signaled the end of that season, which culminated in a
new crop of degree holders for that year. Spring and its burgeoning life forms
became metaphors for the newly transformed status of these men, who were seen
to be in the spring of their powers. These celebrations spilling out into the larger
city was, similarly, the focus of Wang Dingbaos attention in his collection on
examination memories.63
In 817 when Bai Juyi was in Jiangzhou, he opined in a poem that the coming
of spring suddenly evoked his feelings for the capital, in particular, a recollection
of driving on the grass in spring outings to the Serpentine.64 The ripening of cher-
ries was also highly evocative for examinees: the cherry banquet (yingtao yan)
was one of many celebratory activities for the degree winners, and Tang Glean-
ings notes that the new jinshi holders took the cherry banquet especially seri-
ously.65 One anecdote describes a cherry feast sponsored in 877 by Liu Tan (jinshi
877), a son of a former minister who spared no expense.66 In this display of sea-
sonal plenitude aided by deep pockets, a lavish quantity of cherries mixed with
sweet kumis (tang lao) was doled out to all attendees, even the carriage drivers.67
In fact we have already seen the image of the prized fruit playing an important
role in the aforementioned tale Cherries and the Maidservant, in which the ex-
aminees first encounter with the new dispensation is meeting a maidservant
who proffers a basket of cherries.68
The perception of seasonal rhythms reinforces spatial identity, because it is
only through prolonged observation in one locationrather than passing
glimpsesthat such rhythms become first visible, then memorable, and, finally,
evocative of nostalgia. In one poem written before he obtained his own degree
(in 894), Wei Zhuang observes that new degree holders (men from the Apricot
Garden) have gradually claimed the primary focus of attention during the
season:

Spring in Changan
In the second month Changan is full of fragrant dust,
Carriages and horses rumble and roll through the Six Avenues.
In every mansion are women resembling flowers,
Decking the myriad branches with red blooms new.
From among the curtains, they ask each other with glee,
Who is it to have taken over the spring of Changan?
58Chapter 2

The spring of Changan did not have a master, before;

In the olden times it belonged only to the red-mansion belles.
But, today, alas, men from the Apricot Garden,
Snatched it away on horses fine and carriages light.69

Here Wei Zhuang documents a shift in collective consciousness, from a spring

celebration that focused on beauty and the efflorescence of naturewomen of
the red mansions (honglou n)to a new conception that associated spring with
a burgeoning literati identity, the men of the Apricot Garden (xingyuan ren). This
identity merged literary talent, political promise, and the examination chrono-
tope. Its power here is consistent with the cultish status of the new jinshi degree
holders recorded in other sources. In a city that was already full of pageantry
and razzle-dazzle, the men of the Apricot Garden were not only literati, but also
glitterati.
The lure of this emergent and particularly metropolitan concept of spring was
the promise of personal and political transformation. The celebration of new de-
gree holders singled out the newness of these men. Although not all degree hold-
ers were
young, in the celebrations they were represented as coveted bachelors who
were at the apex of their powers because of their newly acquired status. In this
respect and in the context of urban celebration, the allure of the newly transformed
jinshi holder was stronger, in fact, than the practical allure of office holding. In a
particularly telling episode in Tang Gleanings, an official down on his luck is told
to move out of the way for new degree holders on the city street: Xue [Feng], who
met ill fortune late in his official career, was riding a donkey to court when he
came upon the register announcing the names of the new jinshi degree holders,
who were just then filing out. When the dozens of associates of the jinshi club saw
that Xues attendants were scanty, they came up to steer him away, saying, Make
way for the new jinshi lords!70
Making way (huibi) for oncoming high officials was a recurrent necessity for
pedestrians, and claiming right-of-way on the road was a frequent reason for legal
dispute, court strife, or flaunting of power.71 In this anecdote, the new degree hold-
ers (who were still at least one step away from holding an actual post) possess
sufficient pomp and status to commandeer someone like Xue Feng who, despite
shabby appearances, had an official post in hand. For the moment captured in
the anecdote, perceived potential trumps actual political position or seniority.
Xue Feng had received his jinshi degree in 841 (one of his cohorts from that year
was Shen Xun, the grandson of Shen Jiji), and must have experienced something
of similar pomp and circumstance in his own day, so his treatment amid the new
 The Lure of Changan 59

degree holders must have been bitterly ironic.72 The punchline of this anecdote is
Xues riposte: he points out to the road clearers that even a granny is someone
who had once put on fetching makeup in her youth.73
This anecdote illustrates the underlying cultural logic that elevated the status
of the new degree holders: the newfangled entourage that accreted around the new
degree holders was drawn to the glitter of the newly transformed, rather than the
already-changed. The metaphors and perceptions registered in poems and prose
in the ninth century show that the youthful potential enacted by the pageantry of
the examination was powerful enough to make educated men overlook the vul-
nerability of the capital. Wei Zhuang, who fled Huang Chaos army of rebels in
881, is perhaps best known to posterity as the author of the narrative poem Song
of the Lady of Qin (Qin fu yin), which describes the atrocities of the rebellion and
documents the cataclysmic blow it dealt the empire. Even so, after the devasta-
tion, Wei Zhuang returned to the capital to continue pursuit of his jinshi degree,
and received it, finally, in the year 894 when he was fifty-nine. That year, spring-
time in Changan gave him enough hope that he expressed some optimism when
he encountered a friend:

Might as well face a wine goblet and laugh out loud,

Before our old age we may yet see peace in the realm.74

Like many before him, when he passed the examinations Wei Zhuang tells us
in ebullient words how dramatically his world changed after learning of this good
news.75 Reading this couplet, one may dismiss it as giving in to poetic conven-
tion, or as capturing only a temporary paroxysm of optimism. Yet the attachment
to the idea of a springtime Changan, captured in this poem, seemed to have had
an effect that persisted for the cultural elite in spite of political realities. In the
years following the Tang dynastys collapse, Wang Dingbao, working in Lingnan
(modern-day Guangdong and Guangxi provinces), compiled a collection detail-
ing the examinations as an institution, which we know as Tang Gleanings. As Oli-
ver Moore points out, in documenting his own life through the lens of a vanished
age whose seat of power was in the distant north, Wang Dingbao made Changan
an important component in his reflections on his past. Because I delighted in
hearing just how fine the degree examinations were, he wrote, I constantly called
upon those who had obtained degrees before me [qian da].76 He even went as far
as situating his own sojourn in the capital by naming the Taiping Ward (just south
of the Imperial City) as the location of an old family residence (jiudi).77 Impor-
tantly, Wang Dingbao bolstered his own interpretive authority by highlighting his
60Chapter 2

most successful associations with examiners and fellow degree holders, with
whom, to borrow Moores words, he was vouchsafed a place in the final years of
Tang examination history.78 To a reading community on the southern edge of
the erstwhile Tang empire, Wang Dingbao chose to remember his role in the by-
gone empire through the personal and political networks of Changan examina-
tion culture. His choice shows how much of the cachet of Changan was above and
beyond mere political capital, and how much it shaped literati self-conception.

Center to Periphery, Then Back Again

Since it was unusual for an examinee to succeed on his first attempt, and since
the number of degree winners constituted a small fraction of the total candidates,
the three-season examination sojourn for most aspirants was a cycle of hope, ex-
ertion, expectation, and disappointment. Ironically, the inherent drawing power
of examination culture also stimulated travels and experiences on the periphery
of the empire. This was because a candidates route into Changan from where he
was first dispatched as a tribute scholar could be a circuitous one, complicated by
strategies to obtain examination eligibility and by the locations of prospective
patrons. For example, Shen Yazhi set out for Changan as a tribute scholar in 809
from his hometown of Wuxing. He failed in the spring of 811, and left Changan
to head northward to Xiazhou and Fuzhou to seek financial patronage from of-
ficials. The following autumn, he switched strategy and sought eligibility for the
following years examination from the Capital Prefecture (Jingzhao Fu), whence
a candidate stood a better chance of gaining a degree. At the end of the year,
he entered Changan for the examinations for the second time. He failed again the
following spring (812) and returned to Wuxing, visiting Luoyang and Pengcheng
along the way. The following autumn, he again sought to be dispatched from the
Capital Prefecture, and failed for the third time in the spring of 813. Between this
third failure and his eventual success in 815, he traveled to Jingzhou, Qizhou,
Longzhou, Luzhou, Shouzhou, Puzhou, Huazhou, and Handan.79 In his own
words, he switched his locations for dispatch in the same manner as would a seller
of gold, moving from market to market seeking a fair price from a fair buyer of
his wares.80
Shen Yazhis peregrinations were nothing out of the ordinary in the ninth
century. One candidate hailing from the more marginal region of Jingzhou (pre
sent-day Changsha), Liu Tui (jinshi 850), recalled bitterly that walking sixty li
per day, he spent half the year on the road traveling to and from Changan and
his home four thousand li away.81 In 865, Pi Rixiu (ca. 834ca. 883) began his
candidacy in Jiangzhou, and according to his own account, before he reached
 The Lure of Changan 61

Changan he had traveled twenty thousand li and sought out over ten potential
patrons.82
Often Tang travelers took to the network of rivers and canals, especially when
traveling long distances to the lower Yangtze (Jiangnan), or to the southern mar-
gins of the empire such as Lingnan. Taking up a post there, Li Ao (774836) doc-
umented his outbound itinerary in 808 from the eastern capital of Luoyang,
punctuated with many stops. Li Aos journey in reverse would have been similar
to what examinees from the Lingnan region would have taken to reach Luoyang
and, from there, to Changan. Such a person, perhaps hailing from Guangzhou as
Xuanzongs minister Zhang Jiuling (678740) did,83 would have passed the Great
Yu Range (Dayu Ling) on the frontier of Lingnan. From there northward, he would
have followed the Gan River system through what is today Jiangxi Province, then
northeast to Yangzhou through present-day Zhejiang. There he would have trav-
eled on the Bian Canal to reach Luoyang before proceeding to Changan on well-
traveled intercapital roadways.84 Seven years after
Li Ao set out, Liu Zongyuans
(773819) trip from Changan to Liuzhou in Lingnan took slightly over three
months.85
Earlier in the chapter I highlighted Shen Jijis critical stance toward the cen-
tralizing draw of Changan, as well as the malleable nature of what constitutes
home base for the literati elite. The idea of an elsewhere drawing an aspirant away
from his native place figures prominently in the following two narratives. They
debate, in their own way, the consequences of leaving home in search of a new
livelihood, and take up scenarios in which the travelers loyalties are divided be-
tween their birthplaces and the capital where they hope to set down new roots.
The first tale, from the collection Transmitted Marvels, is motivated by an ex-
aminees desire to travel quickly home from the capital. To do so, he borrows the
power of the tiger as a transporting device:

Wang Juzhen, a candidate for the mingjing degree, failed the examinations,
and was returning to Yingyang in the Luo region. As he left the capital, he
traveled together with a Taoist. During the day, the Taoist never ate any-
thing, saying, [Its because] I practice the art of swallowing qi. Each
night, after
Juzhen has gone to sleep and the lamp is put out, [the Taoist]
would open up a cloth sack and take out an animal pelt, put it on and go
out, returning at the fifth watch. One day, Juzhen pretended to be asleep
[as the Taoist did this] and snatched away the sack. The Taoist kowtowed
and begged for its return. Juzhen said: I will give it back to you if you tell
me [the truth]. Thereupon the Taoist said that he was not human, that
what he put on was a tiger pelt, and that with it he could forage for food in
62Chapter 2

the villages at night. He said that the pelt would allow its wearer to travel
five hundred li in one night. Because Juzhen hadnt been home for a long
time and was quite homesick, he asked: Could I put on the pelt? The Tao-
ist assented. Juzhen was still more than a hundred li from home, so he
wore the pelt for a quick visit. It was very late at night [when he arrived]
and he could not get into the gate of his home. He saw a pig standing out-
side the gate, so he caught it and ate it. He returned shortly and gave the
pelt back to the Taoist. By the time Juzhen reached home [by regular travel],
his family told him that his second son had gone out at night and was eaten
by a tiger. When Juzhen asked for the exact date, he found out that it was
the same day as he when returned [in the pelt]. He remained full for a
couple of days afterward and did not eat anything else.86

This tale, classified under the category Tigers in the Extensive Records of the
Taiping Era, is ostensibly about the nature and might of a formidable beast that
has long fascinated storytellers. However, the story gives us as much insight on
the human as it does the powerful feline. Like other stories in this category, it sug-
gests interchangeability between a tiger and a human, and that the tiger pelt
serves as the means for transformation. However, in this tale, an apparently ex-
pedient measure for returning home after an examination cycle in the capital goes
awry and exacts a terrible toll for the family of the aspirant. Inherent in the magic
of traveling as a tiger is the Faustian bargain of leaving home for ones ambitions:
the examinee cannot merely take on the tigers traveling speed without also tak-
ing on a beastly, rather than human, point of view. Although the story does not
go into psychological detail about the consequences, in its minimal plot, it uses
the fascination with tigers to set up the tension inherent in the necessity for going
to Changan and its inevitable, carnivorous cost.
If necessity indeed mothers inventive thinking about long-distance traveling,
then this necessity is again played out in the next tale, Chen Jiqing, from a mid-
ninth-century collection.87 From a distant reading, it is one of many variations
on the adventures of an unsuccessful examinee, which feature a protagonists
brush with the unorthodox, occult, and exotic. It is important for us to keep in
mind this larger narrative pattern, but the particulars in this tale also deserve our
attention. Here, what helps the examinee in his odyssey is the transporting effi-
caciousness of an empire-wide map (huan ying tu). The tale begins by describing
the eponymous candidate, who has repeatedly failed the examination. Rather than
returning home to Jiangnan each year, he stays in the capital year-round, eking
out a living by selling writing. In the Blue Dragon Temple (Qinglong Si) of
Changan, he meets an old man of the Zhongnan Mountainsthe same moun-
 The Lure of Changan 63

tains on which Bai Juyi had stood to gaze at the panorama of Changan. The old
man (who fits the profile of a Taoist magician) feeds the luckless examinee, and
when the latter notices a map on the wall of the temple, the old man finds a way
to cure his homesickness, as well:

On the eastern wall of [the temple quarter] was a Map of the Realm.
Chen Jiqing looked for the way to Jiangnan on the map, and let out a long
sigh: If I could only sail from the Wei River to the Yellow River, travel
upon the Luo River and the Huai, before riding the Yangtze River home,
then Id have no regrets over returning without having accomplished any-
thing. The old man smiled and said, This is not hard to do. He bade his
page boy break off a bamboo leaf at the front steps, fashioned it into a leaf
boat, and placed it on the Wei River on the map. He said, If you keep
your eyes on this boat, then you will get what youve always wished for.
When you reach home, take care to not tarry too long. Jiqing gazed at
[the boat] for a long while, and began to feel the undulating waves of the
Wei River. The leaf grew larger, and a sail was unfurled, as if he boarded a
boat.88

This tale takes a decidedly humanrather than animalapproach to the prob

lem of distance. In the same way that Shen Jijis Record within a Pillow con-
denses the span of an entire official career within the duration of a nap, this tale
similarly expedites and condenses a long journey through cartographythe min-
iaturizing representation of space.
The journey Chen takes is a reverse journey, going away from Changan rather
than toward it, a retreat from the quest for transformation. This is because he faces
a problem opposite to the exiled official at the margins of the empire: without a
degree, he remains an outsider in Changan, so that he is exiled, so to speak, in
the very center of the empire. The examinees displacement is twofold, for his
homecoming is also curtailedby the shame of returning without having estab-
lished ones name (chengming). This double displacement is born of the power
ful draw of the Changan-centered examination, and this tale captures that com-
plexity. It speeds up the outbound itinerary with the aid of the map, but it does
not elide the subjective experience of the examinee. Along the way, we watch the
traveler as he inscribes poems at key points on the journey:

He set off from the Wei River, reached the Yellow River, and, having
moored his boat at a Buddhist temple near the meditation caves, left the
following lines at the southern pillar: ... The next day, he reached the
64Chapter 2

Tong Pass, banked and left the following lines at the door of the Common
Cloister east of the gate: ... From east of Shanzhou onward, everything
was exactly as he would have wished. In umpteen days he reached home;
his wife, children and brothers received him at the door.89

The poems Chen Jiqing leaves along his path are in the familiar style of examina-
tion failure poems (xiadi shi), but they also function as itinerary markers and, later,
material verification of his physical journey. The first poem he inscribes on a
temples pillar depicts a gloomy night of mooring his boat near Hua Mountain:

The bell tolls in a frost, the evening wind brisk,

the cluster of crows converge again at the cold grove.
At this hour I stop my boat, chanting in a gloom,
standing alone toward the Lotus Peak.90

The second poem he inscribes at Tong Pass (Tongguan). The common clois-
ters (putong yuan) were places of lodging open to pilgrims and lay travelers alike.91
Here the poem offers more concrete reasons for his conflicted feelings about re-
turning home:

Going through the Pass, my ambition foiled,

Skeins of feelings wreak havoc in my heart.
Descending the slope, my horse is worn out,
Sweeping the gate on my arrival, my clothes gather dust.
My plans for the future bear no fruit,
my heart and my words are at war.
Im already planning to return in shame,
But it is better than being ashamed and not returning.92

Between returning in shame and being ashamed and not returning, then, is
the double displacement of the perennial examinee, which occasions narratives
that play out his liminality as well as mobility.
It is no accident that the traveler thinks about thwarted ambition, shame, and
return at this point in his journey. The Tong Pass was an extremely meaningful
geographic landmark for traveling aspirants, and not only because it was the last
strategic defense point for the capital from the east. As a gateway to the capital
along the Changan-Luoyang thoroughfare, it shaped the literatis experiential self
and subsequently, the production of writing. In his study of literature and trans-
portation, Li Dehui cites several mid-and late-Tang poets to demonstrate that, in
 The Lure of Changan 65

the mind of literati travelers with their seasonal migrations in and out of the
capital, this gateway to the Guanzhong region where Changan was located had
become the psychological gateway to the pursuit of career success. Poems with
the Pass as a spatial marker describe seeing old classmates and acquaintances
there, the perpetual cycles of journey in and out of the Pass, and conversing with
functionaries stationed there (guan li) about their examination successes and fail-
ures.93 These poems show us that examinees were highly conscious of the impli-
cation of moving across this geographical and experiential threshold.
We see this spatial awareness in numerous poems about going to and return-
ing from the examinations with the Pass as a setting. As discussed earlier, the
Apricot Garden in Changan was a prominent site celebrating jinshi success. In a
poem written after failing the examination, Du Xunhe (jinshi 891) explicitly jux-
taposes the simultaneity of new degree holders celebrating in the Apricot Garden
while failed candidates like himself were leaving Changan:

The day one gets drunk in the Apricot Garden,

Another traveler returns alone to the Pass.94

The contrast in the geography is clear: the Apricot Garden is at the center
and the site of vernal transformation, where ones literary prowess and office-
worthiness can be affirmed. The Pass, on the other hand, is the point from which
the outbound literatus (re)enters the periphery of the empire. In the tale of Chen
Jiqing the map traveler, we see that for the examinee hailing from Jiangnan, the
outbound journey, on multiple rivers and supplemented by poetry at geographi
cal thresholds along the way, is depicted as a struggle for an emerging literati
aspirant to reorient himself in the social, imperial, and cultural order. Can
Changan be, for him, a newhowever symbolichome, or a perpetual else-
where?
Two tales from the collection Transmitted Marvels have geographical partic-
ulars that demonstrate the ways in which a capital-bound journey begets subsid-
iary journeys that take the examinee to the periphery. One of them begins in a
region north of Changan: The jinshi [candidate] Zhao He was gentle of demeanor
and upright and noble in conduct. In the beginning of the Taihe Reign [827836],
he was traveling in the Five Plains. Passing by the desert, he was moved to sigh in
melancholy.95
The Five Plains occupy what is today Shanxi and Hebei Provinces. This pro-
tagonists route is comparable to what Shen Yazhi may have taken in the northwest
after his first failed examination. In the rest of this tale, the protagonist encounters
66Chapter 2

a female ghost who asks him to bury her bones. He does, and is rewarded by Tao-
ist scriptures. By the end of the tale, he leaves the examination circuit to become
a Taoist practitioner and eventually obtains immortality.
Another tale from this collection portrays a candidate as starting out from
the southern edge of the empire: During the Changqing Reign [821824], jinshi
candidate Zhang Wupo lived in Nankang and [was] about to go to take the
examinations, wandering and begging in Panyu. Just about that time the garri-
son commander had been transferred, so that he had no patron to turn to. Glum,
he fell ill at a hostel, and his servants all ran away.96
Panyu, or modern-day Guangzhou, is in the same area as Li Aos recorded itin-
erary in 808; by the latter half of the Tang it was a port city transporting a great
deal of foreign goods.97 In the rest of this tale, as in the previous example and
in parallel to the story of Lu Yong the flour addict cited in chapter1, the exam-
inee finds a way to obviate the need for climbing the ladder of success; he becomes
the son-in-law of a powerful family and eventually has no need for the examina-
tions in the distant north.
Narratives of experience involving prolonged examinee travel are not travel
accounts per se, defined as writing that was first-hand and diary-like accounts
of an excursion, with factual records but also subjective interpretation,98 which
would become popular in the Song and later imperial eras. However, these Tang
narratives persistently register the tension between prospective affiliation and
alienation. These tales register the tedium and dislocation of the journey, but they
also render in imaginary ways the sense of shared space with other travelers in
hostels and on boat rides, as well as a sense of wonder. Neither of the tales just
cited are set in Changan, but the capital nonetheless exerts its gravitational pull
on these protagonists in the form of what these tales repeatedly explorebetween
the center and periphery, between sanctioned roles and alternative loci of
meaning.

Conclusion
For the Tang cultural elite, their interval of liminality and social indeterminacy
(as described in chapter1) was also defined by a geographical mobility across the
empire and with Changan serving as a fulcrum. Driven by the prospect of offi-
cial posts and fame through the jinshi degree, and also by a more elusive sense of
cultural plenitude in the capital, literati aspirants during the Tang began to take
on routinized travel to Changan, through an annual cycle of examination sojourn
that spanned three seasons.
 The Lure of Changan 67

As Changan in the latter half of the Tang produced a centripetal pull on lite-
rati men both fledgling and established, this pull was evident not only in poems
of aspiration, longing, and regret, but also in Tang tales that follow examinee-
protagonists into the outer bounds of the empire. In these tales, the gravitational
pull of Changan is palpable even if, by their end, the protagonists exit its orbit.
Instead of the anomalous encroaching upon the human world as in Six Dynas-
ties zhiguai tales, these Tang tales instead recount the intrusion of literati life and
values into realms of the unfamiliar.
Depictions of sojourn in the capital, made possible by itinerant living, regu-
lated by the seasonality of the examinations, and imbued with the valorization of
chance, are also conditioned by the examinees perception of the social spaces in-
side the capital. It is to this perception of Changan that I turn in chapter3.
c ha p t e r t h r e e

Navigating the City Interior

Experiences with space shape both the perception of the self and the production
of text by writing subjects. Even when the physical space in question has long van-
ished, as in the case of Tang Changan, the various ways in which Tang writers
have perceived the self in space remain historically retrievable. Let us begin with
a narrative from the ninth-century collection Records of the Rivers East, an entry
so short that it is really only a snapshotbut a delightful one. It takes place on
the eastern side of Changan in Xinchang Ward, and it begins with an early morn-
ing walk out of the ward gate, most likely just after the drums signal the lifting of
the night curfew:

In the winter of the fourth year of the Changqing Reign [824], the jinshi
candidate Lu Yan was living in the Xinchang Ward. One morning, he ex-
ited the ward through the avenue in the north end. The shadows of the
locust tree were luxuriant with branches, and a waning moon was still vis-
ible. There he saw a woman, about three zhang tall, dressed entirely in
black. She was herding something that looked like a ram, which was also
over a zhang tall. They were walking from the east toward the west. Lu Yan
was frightened and ran off. The woman called out after him: Lu the Fifth!
Dont you blather to other people. In the end he never found out what he
had seen.1

This is an encounter that, although obfuscating, is rich with the quotidian par-
ticulars of life in Changan. It places the pedestrian witness in a world that, on the
cusp of dawn, has not quite shaken itself out of the world of the night. The un-
identified giantess, who seems to belong to this (now-fading) nocturnal world, is
alien, yet not altogether malevolent: she seeks the protagonists complicity to keep
her presence a secret (dont blather), and her use of Lu Yans birth order (the
fifth) to address him shows, uncannily, that she is on familiar terms with him.
This vignette is too short to be considered a city story per se, but as we move
to more complex narratives set in Changan, it is useful to keep in mind the si-

68
 Navigating the City Interior 69

multaneity already present in this short vignette: the dual faces of Changan, which
is capacious enough to accommodate creatures that make rotating appearances,
depending on whether it is day or night, whether it is inside the human residences
of the ward or outside the protection of the walls.2 They do not uniformly include
ghosts or spirits, but all have a strong sense of emplacement in the residential con-
figurations of Changan.3
As one architectural historian reminds us, we can view a Chinese imperial
city both through its formal plan and through its actual space, which incorpo-
rates actual practice embedded in daily life but tends to be invisible from the level
of planning.4 This chapter takes a closer look at narratives that take place inside
the walls of Changan and which feature the liminal subject as he navigates the
streets and alleys, walls and partitions. These narratives are drawn from a variety
of tales and anecdotes from the ninth century, rather than from any single work
of metropology. This urban world as depicted lends itself to the art of disguise,
even roguery. It offers new domains of experience in which the neophyte is fre-
quently put to the test by the citys extraofficial and extrafamilial networks. These
new kinds of situational knowledge include the ability (1) to recognize the spatial
logic of a secular space, including the vertical dimension; (2) to see beyond the
artifice, even active deception, of strangers; and (3) to see beyond the surface of
spatial divisions that purportedly enforce hierarchy.
As narrative representations, these disparate texts articulate a vision of an
urban world with a density of spatially evocative particulars, and its social fabric
does not adhere to a neatly hierarchical organizational scheme. In contrast,
many traditional historical and geographical materials are hierarchically con-
structed: they begin with the heavens, the emperors, and the royal family, before
moving gradually through the ranks of bureaucracy, and eventually coming, at
last, to ethnographic and epistemological forms of the Other. Stephen West
playfully terms the authors of such arrangement Homo hierarchicus, u nder
whose supervision topics will always be ordered in terms of the ritual world
and politicomoral cosmology, for whom empresses, funerals, pigs, and pan-
cakes cannot be spoken of in a single breath.5 Indeed, if we limit ourselves to
the work of Homo hierarchicus, then it would be difficult to view Changan as
anything other than the ideological center of (a presumed immutable) imperial
authority. But we do not have to. What the map cuts up, Michel de Certeau
reminds us, the story cuts across.6 By allowing a more flexible conception
of how literary representation can merge social practice and spatial awareness,
we find texts that nonetheless attest to both the variety and inventiveness
of entering into a walled space, through meanderings, doubling back, and
transambulation.
70Chapter 3

Intermural Crossings
The Changan that would have greeted tribute scholars in the tenth month of each
year was one that by nature had a dual identityit stood simultaneously as an
official city and as a commoner city. While the high-walled palaces in the elevated
northern portion of the city declared the centrality and authority of imperial ad-
ministration, the residential space of Changan, which occupied seven-eighths of
the citys total area, contended with this palatial presence. It operated in accor-
dance to its own, often unplanned, spatial logic. It was not uncommon for a resi-
dential ward to house a variety of structures, ranging from multistory houses to
humbler abodes, from Buddhist and/or Taoist monasteries to private polo fields.
Decrees from the late eighth century
onward show that the authorities persistently
tried to restrain rampant building and repurposing of urban residential space.7
Examinees rented lodging and became dwellers in these residential wards, along
with other types of sojourners in Changan.8
In its capacity as a population enclave, Changan housed the production and
exchange of goods and services, and was home to commoners and travelers
who existed outside the normative social structures of the imperial city. It has
been estimated that in the first half of the Tang, as many as several tens of thou-
sands of Central Asians, including emissaries and officials, entered the capital ev-
ery year, and many of them stayed on after the traffic on the Silk Road was dis-
rupted as a result of the An Lushan rebellion.9 These denizens, who often took on
surnames linked to their country of origin, are featured in a limited extent in
official history and in tomb epitaphs, hinting at their larger (unrecorded) pres-
ence in Tang society.10 In Gazetteer of Changan (Changan zhi), compiled by
Song Minqiu (10191079), the presence of a floating population is briefly regis-
tered as the fact that in the Western Market there were countless indigents.11 We
get a more vivid sense of their presence in some Tang narratives, in which foreign
merchants make cameo appearances as part of a Changan that is home to a so-
phisticated commercial culture.12
In unofficial records, we find that denizens of Changan high and low have
been moving across walls designed to keep hierarchies distinct. For example, the
Palace City where the emperor and his family resided was separated from cen-
tral government agencies in the Imperial City (Huangcheng) to the south, and
both were walled off from residential areas in the rest of the city. This separation
was a feature of the capital the Gazetteer of Changan highlights with admiration.13
However, unofficial history recorded occasions when these partitions could not
keep the emperor from slipping into the rest of Changan, contrary to the basic
premise of the imperial capital. This was the case for the late-Tang emperor
 Navigating the City Interior 71

Xuanzong (r. 847859), who, according to an entry in a collection of anecdotes,

was fond of roaming outside the palace: The Emperor of the Dazhong Reign of-
ten went out into the lanes of the [capitals] wards in mufti. Astride a donkey and
wearing a double hat, he would cast his gaze about in all directions, and often did
not return to the imperial palace until dusk.14
Under the planned premise of the imperial capital, the ruler resided at the rit-
ual and cosmic center. Through ritualized display, gazes from his subjects toward
him maintained the stability of said center. Even when the imperial palanquin left
the palace, the emperor remained the embodiment of the culture of imperial dis-
play. Wherever the palanquin went, the destination became assimilated into such
displays of power. This scenario of the emperor amok, however, disrupts the or-
der: the emperor is both decentered and rendered invisible. By slipping out into
the city on a donkeythe conveyance of commonersXuanzong destabilizes the
hierarchical configuration of the imperial capital. Just as importantly, what is nor-
mally hidden from the emperor in the wards and lanes is now open to his unim-
peded scrutiny, as he casts his gaze about in all directions.
This destabilized (or inverted) scenario could take place only in social spaces
of sufficient complexity and fluidity to allow degrees of anonymity, artifice, and
complexity of identity. In Changan specifically, this was possible in temples, a var-
iegated public space in which religion, education, entertainment, and even com-
merce intermingled. The following anecdote about an emperors visit to a temple
tells a rather dramatic story in an imperial capital where the emperors jaunts out-
side the palace are not seen as anomalous but rather taken for granted. It involves
an audacious impersonator of the emperor and an elaborate scheme in a residen-
tial ward just south of the imperial palace:

Emperor Yizong [r. 859873] of the Tang governed the subcelestial realm
with cultured principles, so the world was peaceful and orderly. The em-
peror often changed his clothing and roamed among temples and abbeys
incognito. Some devious fellows among the populace got wind that offi-
cials submitting tribute from the southeast had stored over a thousand
bolts of damask silk from the Wu region in the cloister of the Da Anguo
Temple. Thereupon, they gathered secretly, picked someone among them
who resembled the emperor, dressed him as the emperor might for his dis-
guised travels, and generously infused the clothes with scent from cam-
phor wood and other fragrances. This person took along two or three ser-
vants and entered the cloister where the damask silk was stored. At that
moment, one or two beggars approached; the emperor gave them [some
alms], and they went away. Soon, all kinds of beggars arrived in droves
72Chapter 3

and there was not enough [alms] to go around. The emperor-impersonator

turned to a monk in the cloister and asked, Is there anything I could bor-
row from your cloister? Before the monk could answer, the [imperson-
ators] servant threw the monk a meaningful look. Startled, the monk re-
plied, Our coffers contain a few thousand bolts of silk temporarily stored
here, which can be made at your disposal. They opened the coffer, and
gave all [to the impersonator]. The [impersonators] servant told the monk:
Tomorrow morning, look for us at the palace gate; we will conduct you
inside the palace, and you will be rewarded plenty. The impersonator then
left with his retinue. The monk, from this point on, went daily to the pal-
ace gate, but never saw anyone. Only then did he realize that the flock of
beggars had been accomplices in the gang of fraudsters.15

This story, of course, does not have to be historically accurate to be useful to

us, as its value lies far beyond the mimetic.16 It depicts a scenario in which an ur-
ban temple ground can be used simultaneously by swindlers, beggars, monks,
and a rogue emperor. In this space, hierarchy is leveledhowever tenuouslyby
the Buddhist encoding of the world. This space is multipurpose: it doubles as stor-
age facility, site for philanthropy, and as a performance arena. Here, the emperor
may perform as a commoner, and the artifice of this performance can be re-
vealed by a meaningful look or divulged by the expensive scent of camphor on
his clothes. The conceivability of this artifice becomes appropriated by con art-
ists. Someone who resembled the emperor dressed in the fashion of the emperor
in disguise: the key act in this story is a disguise of a disguise. These fraudsters
succeed because they understand all too well the complexity of this space and
its users.
If an emperor in mufti could plausibly appear in a temple as a pious donor
because of the multivalence of its space and its users, then the spatial contiguities
of the capital city also allowed him to mingle among examination candidates, who
were simultaneously insiders and outsiders of the imperial bureaucracy, as offi-
cials in potentia. As previously mentioned, the glitter that surrounded examinees
had a metropolitan character, and Emperor Xuanzong (r. 846859) once styled
himself as a jinshi candidate and submitted his name card to the chief examiner.
In the preface of Anecdotes from the Northern Ward, we are told that Xuanzong
was also fond of socializing with examinees on their own turf: The emperor often
went into the city incognito, and he would speak on familiar terms with any ex-
amination candidate he encountered. Sometimes he made inquiries of the scholars
of the inner court and the imperial relatives concerning what he had heard. They
would be terrified, not knowing from where he had obtained his information.17
 Navigating the City Interior 73

Bypassing the usual, hierarchical channels for information, the emperor in dis-
guise does more than casting his gaze about in the citys wards, and converses
directly with aspiring members of the bureaucracy, short-circuiting the operat-
ing bureaucracy altogether and exposing blind spots otherwise outside imperial
purview. Such an act of intermingling is made possible by three components:
the now-mobile and anonymous emperor, the liminal role of the examinees, and
urban space in what we might call the commoner city, which creates alternative
hierarchies to allow such encounters.
It was not only the emperor who crossed walls to reach other kinds of social
spaces in the city. Serving officials, too, sometimes had to circumvent the ritual
proscriptions that barred them from parts of the city. High officials were, for ex-
ample, careful to separate themselves from the market and merchant activity. Early
in the dynasty, an edict from 627 forbade those of rank five and higher from going
into the markets.18 In the collection From the Court and Beyond (Chaoye qian-
zai), one anecdote from the time of Empress Wu recounts the story of a fourth-
rank official, Zhou Zhangheng, who lost his chance at a promotion after he was
seen buying a steamed pancake from a street vendor after court.19
The spirit of this edict was still palpable in the early ninth century; established
officials seem to have maintained a decorous distance from the city markets. In
the year 807, when Liu Yuxi observed the hurly-burly of market activities in Lang-
zhou, his essay opens by citing the locus classicus separating merchants and the
elite: Since [the writing of] The Rites of Zhou, it has been said that the shi class
and above never enters the market.20 An image-conscious official, Liu may have
been fascinated by commerce, but his investigation remained ethnographic. After
the Huang Chao rebellion sacked the capital in 881, Wei Zhuang wrote a poem
mocking the rebels uncouth attempt to pose as respectable court officials. After
deriding the rebel ministers for holding their ivory tablets upside down and hang-
ing their insignia the wrong way, one of the poems couplets describes another
conduct that exposes these men as imposters: In the morning they are heard an-
swering the emperor in the court halls/By evening they are seen making a
ruckus in the wineshop.21 In other words, their choice of off-duty pastimes ex-
posed them as laughable counterfeit versions of men of service.
In The Tale of Li Wa, we see echoes of proscriptions of this kind separating
official life and urban commoner life. After the young Zheng becomes a dirge
singer in the funeral parlor, he enters a singing competition staged in the capi-
tals thoroughfare, the East Gate Avenue (Dongmen Jie), which is wide enough to
accommodate large urban spectacles. We are told that when spectators gather for
this competition, Zhengs father is among the throngs of people: Now just be-
fore this the Emperor had issued an edict requiring prefects from the provinces
74Chapter 3

to attend at court once a year. This was termed rendering account. At the time it
so happened that the young scholars father was in the capital. He and his col-
leagues had changed out of their official insignia and had secretly gone to watch
the display.22
As this passage shows, official life and urban life are kept separate through
sumptuary markers. The father must change out of his insignia and watch se-
cretly. This pivotal turn of the plot also underscores the different degrees of mo-
bility that govern the father and son at this moment in their lives. As someone
who is without degree and office, wearing the unmarked hempen robes, the son
is able to weave with ease in and out of the citys more popular spectacles.
Examination candidates, then, had neither statutes nor social taboos to bar
them from wineshops or the market. The ninth-century collection of miscellany
Mixed Morsels from Youyang, for example, recalls two factions of examinees from
the Tianbao Reign, distinguished from each other as the east and west factions
respectively, whose less elegant members gathered in the wineshops of Changan
to eat biluo.23 This tidbit of oral history comes from an era (in the high Tang) when
the stream of examinees consisted of more students from the imperial academies
in the capital, but even as the composition of the examinees shifted toward mostly
tribute scholars in the ninth century, the candidates engagement with market life
continued, and was even heightened by the rise of entrepreneurial ventures target-
ing examinees. Another entry from Mixed Morsels describes an event from the
years when Liu Jing (jinshi 825) was the examiner (in 841 or 842): an examinee
dreams that a visitor comes to tell him that he would pass the examination the
following spring; thereupon he gathers a few companions to eat biluo at a shop in
Changxing Ward on the eastern side of the city.24
Many candidates lived and studied in monasteries in or near Changan, thereby
straddling secular and religious spaces. The poet Jia Dao (779843), who had been
a monk, returned to the laity to take the examinations under the patronage and
tutelage of Han Yu and Zhang Ji (ca. 768ca. 830). During his early examination
attempts, he lived in Yanshou Ward, situated just east of the Western Market, and
wrote a poem (circa 813) about living in what he calls a desolate hovel.25 At the
same time as Shen Yazhi was writing to examination officials in the capital pre-
fecture, in another poem, Jia Dao rejoiced at living close to his patron Zhang Ji,
whose residence was in Yankang Ward, two wards directly south.26 Jia Dao ended
up staying in the capital for more than twenty years with repeated attempts at the
jinshi examination.27 When his circumstances became more straitened, he moved
to the more remote Shengdao Ward near the eastern side of the city wall. This lo-
cation was near the southernmost third of Changanan area of mostly empty
fields and isolated households.28 Living there, Jia Dao has in effect moved away
 Navigating the City Interior 75

from the lively urban quarter of Chongren Ward near the imperial city, and closer
to the desolation of the citys southern extremean area frequently featured in
Tang tales of seduction and haunting.29
In short, in contrast to the transgressive jaunts of the emperor, an examinees
sojourn in the megalopolis during the examination season can be viewed as a se-
ries of seamless crossings between the official and unofficial parts of Changan:
he might rent lodging from a city resident, saunter through the markets, watch
public executions, or study in monasteries and hone his verses in the pleasure
quarters. Cases drawn from Tang tales demonstrate that, installed in the city each
year in an indefinitely temporary fashion, the examinees waiting to enter official
life must first of all enter a metropolitan world, in which spatial contiguities re-
cast social relations of class and power. This world, shared by merchants, foreign-
ers, and courtesans, called for examinees participation in hitherto unfamiliar ex-
periences.

The Spatial Logic of Tang Tales

Literary language sometimes refers to Changan by enumerating its major features,
with phrases such as twelve avenues (shi er jie), two markets (liang shi), nine-
fold walls (jiu chong cheng), or nine roads (jiu mo).30 Tales and anecdotes
highlight private memories and meanderings, as well as circulation across mor-
phological boundaries. In such narratives we see how Changan might have ap-
peared to a newcomer, and how he might have confronted its unintelligibility.
Let us consider the arrival of the protagonist Zheng at the beginning of The
Tale of Li Wa. As already discussed, in The Tale of Li Wa an internal narrative
of spectacular failure is contained within the framework of success. It is an ac-
count of launching an idealized career that is interrupted by a transgressive de-
tour that insinuates into everything that lies outside the purview of official life in
Changan: markets, brothels, and undulating city lanes. In the tale, we recall,
Zheng has come to the capital at age twenty, stocked with two years worth of pro-
visions and confident of his ability to succeed:

[His father] furnished a magnificent array of equipment and adornment,

carriages and horses. He estimated his expenses for fuel and provisions in
the capital with these words: As I view your talents, you should win su-
premacy in one battle. I am now providing expenses for two years and
seeing you richly supplied, so that you may achieve your ambition. The
young scholar...set out from Piling and in a month or more reached
Changan, where he lodged in Buzheng ward.31
76Chapter 3

In his new state as a tribute scholar detached from kith and kin, he is soon shown
to be unable to inhabit his status as examination hopeful. One of his first steps
toward this wayward transformation occurs early in the tale, when he is described
as someone who is not familiar with the capitals spatial logic. The encounter that
eventually sets the tales plot in motionhis first sighting of Li Wais insepa-
rable from a kind of first encounter with the citys streets and its intricate layout:
Once, on his way home from a visit to the East Market, he entered the east gate
of Pingkang Ward, meaning to call on a friend in the south-west part. When he
came to Jingling Chimes Lane he saw a residence with a modestly proportioned
entrance courtyard, but with buildings that were deep and impressive. One of its
double doors was closed.32
Rooted in the spatial configuration of Changan, this encounter begins with a
ride in the city streets, and with ample particulars.33 Pingkang Ward was 500 by
1,022 meters in dimension, dwarfing the modern city block and large enough to
be a miniature residential world of its own.34 It was characteristic of wards in
Changan, surrounded by gated walls on all sides, and divided into four quadrants
by a major crossroad. The quadrants were further divided into smaller sections
and into lanes and alleys called xiang and qu, the latter of which means, literaly,
swerving or undulating.35 The Jingling Chimes Lane mentioned in Li Wa is
not referenced elsewhere, but this is not unusual. The names of alleyways are rarely
mentioned in literary sources, but when they do appear, they are described with
palpable details that bring to mind a different scale of navigation: a certain Jujube
Alley (Zao Xiang) and Willow Alley (Liu Xiang) are mentioned in Quan Deyus
(761818) and Bai Juyis poems; another Xue Alley is mentioned in the Gazetteer
of Changan.36
The tales pivotal encounter with the titular creature takes the form of direc-
tional space. It unfolds from the Eastern Market through a series of partitions
within partitions: the ward gate, and Jingling Chimes Lane, and finally, the gate
to Li Was house. The trajectory moves from a very public locale to a partitioned
area and finally to a courtyard that looks half inviting yet half prohibitive. This
tale suggests to us that it is the young protagonists itineraryhis movement
that defines the narrative scope of the tale and its epistemological borders.
Where the protagonist travels within the city, a frontier and a bridge (to use de
Certeaus language) are simultaneously opened up; what is beyond his last step
(in this case, the bewitching woman) is both what he does not yet know and what
he desires to know. The description of the lane, the residence, and its front entrance
culminates in Zhengs first sighting of the eponymous courtesan by the door:
Standing there, supported by a maid with hair in double coils, was a woman
whose bewitching looks were exquisite beyond any compare.37
 Navigating the City Interior 77

Zhengs increasing proximity to Li Wa shows the increasing degree of spatial

complexity created by small paths and networks inside the ward. At this scale, it
is no longer sufficient to identify the name of the ward; the name of a smaller al-
ley inside it is required. In the tale and through Zhengs eyes, the smallest unit of
spatial experience is measured by turns and paces rather than by the intersection
of wide avenues. Zhengs first glimpse of Li Was house betrays his ignorance of
the citys spatial logic. The dimensions of Li Was house are hidden from view, and
only the door, halfway between being open and closed, imparts a fleeting glimpse
of the scale and nature of its inner sanctum. The city, too, becomes mimetically
defamiliarized in literary representation. As a newcomer to Changan, Zheng only
knows what is immediately visible (a woman and maid), but cannot infer from it
what he does not see (the implications of approaching that woman). The subse-
quent passage, in which Zheng asks a friend about this creature, clearly points to
his ignorance of the spatial configuration in Pingkang Ward of Li Was dwelling;
he is told by that friend that she is a woman of the town.38 A more seasoned ur-
banite would have recognized right away the nature of this bewitching womans
trade. However, when applied to this urban encounter, Zhengs literary education
and his recently gained ritual adulthood (from the capping ceremony), as well as
his fathers
counsel are all shown to be inadequate in choosing the right course of
action.
For Zheng, navigation of inhabited space is through meandering, being lost,
doubling backin other words, movements and operations through the partially
obscured and partially obfuscating view of the city at eye level. To use Michel de
Certeaus concept of spatial practice and spatial stories, Zhengs knowledge of
the city as represented in The Tale of Li Wa is organized like a tourmade in
terms of operations and serial movementsand shielded by all kinds of obstruc-
tions and distractions. This itinerary view captured in the tale contrasts with
spatial perceptions organized through maps; they are aerial panoramas that flat-
ten out a totalizing observation abstracted from time.39
As a neophyte, the student Zheng embodies a narrative of spatial experience
that is distinctly unmaplike. Not included on maps, for example, are spatial prac-
tices that improvise or appropriate the planners view of space. Although Changan
might have been designed in a strictly linear fashion in its original incarnation,
its orderly plan had come to be modified by its later residents. For example, exca-
vation in Anding Ward, in the northwest portion of Changan, shows that as early
as the high Tang the perpendicular crossroads in the northwest corner had been
truncated by a wallprobably to accommodate building or enlarging a residential
house. There the wall stood until the end of the Tang.40 In this case, although the
streets in Anding Ward were originally designed with a rectilinear layout, for
78Chapter 3

most of its existence, it in fact had a less orderly appearance that resulted from
the residents alterations. Multiple edicts from the latter half of the Tang prohib-
ited encroachment of private households and businesses into the street; they at-
test to the durability of this inclination for ad hoc modifications of the cityscape.41
We can get a sense of how the denizens of Changan navigated space intra-
murally, from archaeological finds for Xinchang Ward, the same ward featured
in the short narrative at the beginning of this chapter. Paper pawnshop slips from
the early Tang record the names, ages, and living locations of residents there who
had pawned clothing and objects. The pawn slips identify the homes of these res-
idents as follows: the eastern end, the large alley of the west gate, the rear
alley of the Guanyin Temple, the southern ward, or the northern alley.42 Such
designations testify to a method of urban orientation that classifies space relation-
ally, rather than through cardinal directions. The dense social and spatial rela-
tions inside the ward are resistant to rectilinear mapping, in contrast to the wide
and large avenues outside.
It is precisely from spatial disorientationand its resistance to mappingthat
The Tale of Li Wa derives its force. Although Li Wa is the titular character and
takes on the role of the proverbial temptress,43 her seduction is but one of the dis-
tractions that derail Zheng from his career path. The middle section of the tale,
in which she is completely absent, takes on an impetus and logic all of its own, and
the opaque city presents itself as potential stumbling block for the naive new-
comer.
Because Li Wa explores directional urban space in a way that is detailed as
well as evocative, I want to focus on the turning point of the tale, a dramatic
reversal of fortune, and one that is contingent upon the urban space of Changan.
Through a premeditated disappearance, the members of Li Was household de-
ploy a complex series of maneuvers to shake off the young Zheng after he can no
longer afford the courtesans fees. At the brothel mothers behest, Li Wa and Zheng
go into a mountain temple outside the city, ostensibly to pray for an heir. Upon
the couples return from said temple, Zheng is asked to stop at another house in
nearby Xuanyang Ward said to belong to Li Was aunt. While the aunt receives
them at this house, a messenger comes to report that Li Was brothel mother is
mortally ill, and Li Wa leaves ahead of Zheng from the aunts house to tend to
her. Later that afternoon, Zheng leaves to follow Li Wa, only to find out that her
former residence in Pingkang Ward has been vacated. Because the night curfew
prevents further travel that day, he is detained overnight in Pingkang and has to
wait until the next morning to double back to Xuanyang Ward, at the second house
with the last-known connection to Li Wa. When he reaches Li Was aunts house,
however, he is greeted by strangers with no connections to Li Wa or her relations.
 Navigating the City Interior 79

They tell him that the house had been rented out the previous day, and know noth-
ing of the identity or whereabouts of the temporary tenants.44
What are we to make of this series of complex relocations? They seem at first
unnecessarily complex for their basic plot function. I argue that they demonstrate,
in fact, a series of failures on the young mans part to distinguish between artifice
and actuality in his relationship with Li Wa, which results in his being lost in the
city. From the perspective of the male protagonist and the unenlightened, Li Wa
and her household are in collusion with the citys walls and even its night curfew,
and their act implies an inherent opacity, even duplicity, lurking in the city that
holds pitfalls for the naive newcomer. This collusion is also reminiscent of Zhengs
first encounter with Li Wa, where partial glimpses of houses from the small lanes
obscure and mystify more than they inform and signify. The second house, of the
presumptive relative, described in its grandeur and splendor, proves to be discon-
certingly chameleon-like, belonging now to one person, now to another. This
rapid turnover in the rental property toys with Zhengs expectation that the
household should be at least as stable as the house; by renting a house as if put-
ting on borrowed robes, Li Wa and company boldly prove him wrong: if the house
cannot uproot and take off overnight, the people in it canand they do.45
In the context of the tale, it is worth examining how readers in later ages treated
this plot twist. The reworking of these details in subsequent eras demonstrates a
changing reception of this elaborate ruse in the context of Zhengs plight. In the
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Tale of Li Wa was adapted into a north-
ern drama (zaju), rewritten into a vernacular story attributed to Feng Men-
glong (15741645), and adapted into a well-known southern drama.46 These later
incarnations revisit the plight of the scholar-ingenue, reconstruct the theme of ro-
mance, and even riff on the idea of beggars as heroes. Tellingly, however, in these
adaptations, regardless of whether they were based on an abridged version of Li
Was tale or on the longer version from Extensive Records of the Taiping Era, the
house-switching element has been either downplayed or eliminated altogether.47
Taking the afterlife of a story as the transmission of ideas it has inspired, we
might say that Li Was macchinations once merited a prolonged and detailed treat-
ment because it had been both plausible and compelling for its author Bai Xingji-
ans contemporaries, but that it ceased to hold interestor plausibilityin later
renditions. In his lecture Lost Books of Medieval China, Glen Dudbridge as-
tutely observes that because the transmission of books from an earlier age reflects
a long series of positive value judgments about the books in question, when some
books failed to be transmitted, it means that they almost certainly had about them
something peculiar to their own age that distinguished them from the ages which
followed, during which they fell out of fashion and favor.48 Analogous to a book
80Chapter 3

that was not transmitted because it fell out of fashion, the idea of house-switch
trick was more noteworthy as an episode in the Tang; it shows us something about
how its contemporary dwellers may have navigated their city, incorporating night
curfews, gates, walls, and a fluid housing rental market. Contrary to the inten-
tions of Tang-era law enforcement, which assumed that walls and the night cur-
few would facilitate crime control,49 in The Tale of Li Wa neither walls nor cur-
fews impede Li Was disappearing act. Rather, they facilitate it. From the perspective
of the neophyte Zheng, the households calculated disappearance is abetted by
the city, whose extramural temples and intramural lodgings form selectively
permeable barriers to the newcomer. The imaginative truth behind Li Was
elaborate vanishing act helps us move beyond the functions of the citys architec-
tonic partitions in this tale. The tale pits the complexity of this aspect of the city
against the wide-eyed simplicity of the protagonist Zheng, who is depicted as
experiencing these stumbling blocks for the first time. In fact, our courtesan Li
Wa, who as a female character has puzzled many a reader because of her seem-
ingly capricious virtue,50 can be more plausibly thought of as the feminine face of
a city that first rejects the young Zheng because of his ignorance, then accepts him
after he has come to learn the workings of its bowels. Along with a larger corpus
of lesser-known narratives about supernatural encounters in the citys wards, 51
Zhengs plight in the streets of Changan belongs to a narrative paradigm that
brings into focus how the capital city was viewed through the mediation of its new-
est denizens.
The idea that an examinee can get lost in the variegated spaces of Changan is
not limited to Li Wa and its analogues. Just as the lanes of Li Was dwelling pre
sent a mystifying labyrinth for the neophyte, so, too, do the crowded festivals at
the heart of the capital, for those unaccustomed to the complexities of pageantry
and performance. The following anecdote from New Book from the South presents
a farcical picture of a bumpkin-like candidate who falls victim to the unfortunate
confluence of old age, disorientation, and the chaos of palace seasonal festivities:

On New Years eve, [it was the custom that] the Chief Minister for Impe-
rial Sacrifices led various officials and Music Bureau functionaries, along
with thousands of spirit-exorcising children, into the imperial palace in
the evening. Through the night, they presented a nuo expulsion perfor
mance in front of the inner palace halls.52 They burned candles and san-
dalwood torches such that it was bright as day. The emperor watched [the
performance] with the royal family members, and they gave out rewards
generously. On that day, many sons of official families found and put on
clothing of the child-performers, in order to sneak into the palace and
 Navigating the City Interior 81

watch. There was an elderly jinshi candidate named Zang Tong, who hap-
pened to be dragged along by someone and ended up together among [the
performers] by accident. He was driven [to walk] forth by the officials of
the Music Bureau, stumbled every now and then, but did not dare to look
up. He held oxtail dusters, was made to bow down and twirl, and sang
along with the troupe for a thousand rounds in the vast courtyard. He was
only able to get out near dawn, and, succumbing to exhaustion, went home
in a stretcher. After this he was bedridden for sixty days, and ended up
missing the examination.53

The examinee suffers the dire consequences of not being able to extricate him-
self from the systems of artifice and representation in the imperial palace. This
anecdote highlights the incongruity between the examinees old age and his pro-
bationary state (as a jinshi candidate), but most of all his inability to assume agency
in the capitals power-laden, ever-shifting social space. He becomes an unwilling
entrant upon a performance space he cannot properly navigate. If Changan is to
be the stage upon which Zang is to display his literary talent (detailed in chap-
ter4), and if proximity to the emperor is the coveted eventual outcome for a suc-
cessful degree holder, then here the hapless examinee stumbles onto the wrong
stage for the wrong performance. Regardless of whether the reader finds this epi-
sode pitiable or laughable, the price for the examinees disorientation is high, as
his misstep essentially forfeits another year in the examination calendar, and ren-
ders futile the very reason that he has come into the capital in the first place.

Crime and Anonymity

In the Gazetteer of Changan, the capital city is described as neatly divided and
laid out like a chessboard (qi fen qi bu), in which the ward walls and gates therein
make it easy to capture fugitives and knaves.54 The story of Li Wa, on the other
hand, suggests that ward walls in Changan can serve as conduits to movement
even as they are designed to act as constraints to the same behavior. Keyang Tang
further suggests that the story may be a product of a newly emerging spatial mo-
bility that increasingly challenged the rigid order as embodied in the initial de-
sign of Changan.55 The implication that a city dweller can obliterate his or her
traces through ruses such as Li Was house-switch speak to an anonymity fostered
by the citys nonlinear social space and its density of population.
This anonymity can easily engender other crimes, which can directly threaten
the examinee in his trajectory to seek social legitimacy. In the following anecdotes
from Northern Ward, the precareer examinee stands as an unwitting intercessor
82Chapter 3

between the world of recruitment and a world that operates outside the prevail-
ing social order.56 They feature examinees active about a generation prior to the
eyewitness accounts described. The author prefaces these accounts this way: I
once heard that before the Dazhong Reign [847860], the Northern Ward was an
unpredictable place. The Former Chamberlain for Imperial Insignia Wang Shi and
Erudite Linghu Hao [jinshi 860] both witnessed this personally, and almost be-
came victims of its pernicious dealings. I am putting down the exact records here
to extend warnings to future generations.57 At this point, having done justice to
the lessons of the past, the author takes a sharp turn in his prose to suggest that the
perils of bygone days may yet linger on: Besides, how are we to know if such things
do not exist today, but are simply not told by those like the Chamberlain for Im-
perial Insignia or the Grand Sacrificer?58
Juxtaposed with the protagonist in The Tale of Li Wa, a common thread
emerges from these accounts: a man of esteemed pedigree narrowly averts disas-
ter during his errant youth roaming in the lanes. Here the young man is the
son of Wang Qi (mentioned in chapter1 as a venerated examiner and forger of
dragons):

Mr.Wang [the Golden Mace Bearer] Shi was the son of Chief Minister
Wang Qi. In his youth he was wild and unfettered, and visited this lane
on intimate terms. He once encountered a drunkard who arrived after him
during one of his visits, and he avoided him by hiding underneath the bed.
Soon afterward, another man came bearing a sword. Thinking that the
drunkard was Wang Shi himself, he cut off the drunkards head and said,
Now, are they going to holler to clear your way to enter court? He then
took [the drunkards] place. Wang Shi was spared, and thereafter didnt
go into that lane again. The severed head was taken by the family and
buried.59

In this incident, even as the brothel stands as the antithesis of the ritual decorum
of the court, resentment from public life spills into the undulating lanes of Ping-
kang Ward.
The second incident Northern Ward describes also involves first a murder, then
an impromptu disposal of the body. Its subject is Linghu Hao (jinshi 860), the son
of a minister, who spent many years in Changan trying to pass the jinshi exami-
nation before he finally succeeded in 860:60

Erudite Linghu Hao, when his father was the minister, was a tribute scholar
and frequented this lane and had a spot that he was fond of for repeat vis-
 Navigating the City Interior 83

its. One day [the household] asked him to stay away due to a gathering of
relatives, and he was sent away. He went to a neighboring house and peeked
[back at the brothel], only to discover that the mot her and daughter killed
a drunk man and buried him in the backyard. When he visited the
household again and asked [about this incident] in the middle of the night,
the courtesan was startled, and, calling for her mother, tried to strangle
him. The mother stopped her from doing this. In the morning, [Linghu]
notified the Chief of Police to arrest them, but by then their entire
household had disappeared.61

The fleet-footedness of this fugitive household recalls the entourage of Li Wa. It

suggests the ward as a kind of underbelly of the city where both men and women
are capable of subterfuge and vigilantism. Violence is not unique to cities or cap-
itals, of course. What makes this episode arresting is the paradoxical combina-
tion of visual proximity and social distance: here, only an imperfectly sealed wall
divides the witness and the perpetrators.
With impromptu or premeditated murder followed by a hasty burial at the
scene of violence, both of these accounts direct readers attention to the subter-
ranean world of the pleasure quarters, where appearance and actuality diverge.
There is an uncanny parallel between this accidentally witnessed murder and a
criminal case involving the poetess Yu Xuanji (fl. 860s), a contemporary of the
author of Northern Ward. She served as a Taoist nun in the Xianyi Convent of
Qinren Ward. In a tale from Booklet from Sanshui, in the spring of 868, Yu Xu-
anji accuses her maid Lqiao of having a liaison with Yus own lover; she subse-
quently beats the maid to death and buries the body in the backyard. A guest in
her house later discovers the burial site when he spots a suspicious area where flies
cluster. Eventually the body of the maid is exhumed and Yu Xuanji is executed
for the murder.62
The accuracy of this incident may be debatable because of the lack of corrob-
orating sources pertaining to Yu. We do know, however, that the literary persona
of Yu Xuanji was closely associated with examinees and degree holders. She cor-
responded with high-profile capital poets such as Wen Tingyun (c. 812866), and
attended seasonal celebrations of jinshi success.63 This tale offers, then, another
tantalizing bridge between the world of examinees and that of urban Changan,
where there is a connection between promiscuity and raw, even gratuitous, vio
lence. The appendix of Northern Ward further suggests that violence in Pingkang
Ward is not only an occasional crime of passion, but also part of a network that
exists alongside licit occupations and lies beyond the reach of law enforcement
something that the young visitor must recognize during his forays into this social
84Chapter 3

space. These anecdotes reveal an undercurrent of anxiety and disorientation for

the newcomera scenario in which a literati scion falls victim to a network of
darker, wilier creatures outside his immediate grasp.

The Vertical Dimension

So far we have examined narratives of experience that capture the nonlinear na-
ture of Changan, contrary to the regularityand controllabilityof its initial de-
sign. Yet another aspect of Changan remains to be explored, and that is its verti-
cal dimension, which is also invisible on maps, whether in the illustrations (tu)
in the Gazetteer of Changan or on the reconstructed archaeological maps of the
modern era.
Changan was not a flat city. Its variation in height came from both its natural
topography and from its architecture ranging from houses and shops to the citys
watchtowers and palace compounds. The Annotated Tang Code (Tang l shuyi)
from the early Tang suggests that those concerned with maintaining law and or-
der in the imperial capital were concerned with threats from overhead. In a sec-
tion devoted to ensuring the safety of the emperor (Weijin), the most severe pun-
ishment, strangulation, is reserved for those who climb over the wall of an imperial
audience hall.64 This concern seems relatively reasonable, however, when com-
pared with another article geared toward a less-likely airborne threat. Article 66
stipulates that climbing up to a high place and looking down into the imperial
palace (denggao lin gongzhong) is punishable by one year of penal servitude; two
more degrees of punishment would be added if this act involved an imperial au-
dience hall. Scenarios of airborne threat are also anticipated in Article 73, which
forbids shooting in the direction of the imperial palace or an imperial audience
hall (xiang gongdian she).65
The skyline of Changan evolved throughout the Tang. This occurred not only
on the imperial scale with the building of the Daming Palace by the time of
Gaozong (r. 650683), but also in residential wards and on smaller streets. We can
get a sense of the extent of these infrastructural changes from a decree in 788,
which forbids the building of loft-towers [lou] by shop owners in the wards and
markets.66 The need for such regulations also testifies to active changes in the
cityscape, with new building projects competing for relative height.
Other textual evidence shows that Changan was conceived as well as experi-
enced in all three dimensions. Public lookout points atop hills and parks in
Changan provided spatial alternatives to a social hierarchy in which the emperor
sat at the apex.67 Tang depictions of the city, when read through the lens of the
newcomer, reveal the importance of the vertical dimension in facilitating visual
 Navigating the City Interior 85

and physical access to the city. As the Tang Code suggests with its prohibitions,
access to vertical space removes divisions designed to maintain hierarchies. If ones
gaze could rise high enough, distinctions between the inside and outside of a
walled space would disappear; if ones body could transcend walls, then distinc-
tion between the privileged and the ordinary would be challenged.
One mid-ninth-century tale, Woman in the Carriage (Chezhong nzi), il-
lustrates the precarious nature of a newcomers incomplete knowledge.68 I cite the
beginning of this tale in chapter1, in which an examination candidate arrives in
Changan from the lower Yangtze region, and gets swept up into a world of knight-
errantry led by a young woman, who excels at gravity-defying stunts. Like the
young Zheng in The Tale of Li Wa, the protagonist in this story finds that there
is more to the city and its denizens than first meets the eye. At the first meeting
with his hostess, she politely inquires about what she has heard to be his marvel-
ous skills (miao ji). He replies that in school he has learned to take several steps
on the wall wearing boots. Yet it turns out that even her subordinates surpass
him in their skills: [The woman] turned toward the other seated young men, and
asked them to show their respective skills....There were those who walked on
the wall; others moved about by gripping the rafters. Their deft and nimble per
formances resembled birds in flight. [The examinee] wrung his hands together in
astonishment, and did not know what to do.69 Analogous to Zheng in The Tale
of Li Wa, the examinee in this story is quickly outdone by a band of adroit strang-
ers. The significance of these gravity-defying stunts is not immediately apparent,
but later, when a burglary occurs in the inner court, the examinee is implicated
and arrested for having lent the group his horse. He is incarcerated in a jail cell, a
deep pit with only a small hole in the ceiling. Finally, the young woman rescues
him from this cell, demonstrating the kind of skills he has only glimpsed earlier
during his first encounter with her.
In this tale, the examination may have initially drawn the candidate to
Changan, but it is ultimately a failure of another kind that forces him to leave.
When he regains his freedom, he returns to his home province in the lower Yang-
tze and gives up all attempts at the civil service examinations, not daring to go
to the capital any more.70 More explicitly so than the story of Li Wa, this tale em-
phasizes an examinees failure to assimilate into the urban environmenthere
described as a three-dimensional labyrinth that requires agility in both the verti-
cal and horizontal. The protagonist stumbles not at the examination grounds,
but at apprehending the city and its dictates that lie outside the purview of law
and ritual.
Rather than curtailing the freedom of its residents, the walled wards selectively
conceal those who know how to get away. There are other stories of superhuman
86Chapter 3

leaps over walls and the scaling of tall pagodas in Changan, of course.71 When
viewed together with these other knight-errant tales, walls in Woman in the Car-
riage call attention to the promise of proximitythat one can get closer by
moving highera peculiar condition revealed by urban life. The female protago-
nist of the tale needs not destroy the spatial barrier; instead, she leaves the walls
intact while rendering them irrelevant as enforcers of spatial hierarchy. Just like
the section of The Tale of Li Wa that details Li Was house-switch ruse, Woman
in the Carriage delights in describing the unfathomable permutations of social
roles in the city as viewed through the eyes of a neophyte. In its juxtaposition of
the newcomer with the seasoned Changan resident, this story creates a herme-
neutics of space, which offers privileges to those in the know, while keeping out
the uninitiated.
In the context that examinees from the Wu region were the least familiar with
capital customs and were also less likely to be well connected or have support net-
works, this tale suggests a country-bumpkin syndrome: the city and its dwellers
taunt and test the newcomer with its intricacies and labyrinthine knowledge.
Analogous to Li Was grounded yet equally effective ability to slip away unnoticed
from an undesirable client, the knight-errants ability to scale walls is an undis-
putable asset in a city that has partitioned wards and a night curfew, and where
gaining the upper hand means gaining the upper ground.

Conclusion
By reading narratives that expand what constitutes traces of the city, we find that
the liminal status of the protagonists is profoundly colored and inflected by the
distinctive and unruly configuration of space and social alliances found in mid-
to late-Tang Changan. Mastering its hitherto unfamiliar urban space and its dis-
cursive logic was foremost on the minds of storytellers. When Tang narratives fol-
low their examinee-protagonists inside the city walls of Changan, the liminal
status of the protagonists becomes profoundly imbricated with Changans urban
space, and the itineraries traced out by their wanderings defy panoramic map-
ping. They depart from descriptions of the capital as neatly laid-out avenues and
well-regulated gates. Viewed from descriptions of imperial city planning, Changan
appears unerringly orthogonal and prescriptive of hierarchy; yet, when viewed
through the eyes of a sojourner, this urban space reveals a distinctive and often
unruly spatial logic. This spatialized narrative logic brings together points of un-
even contact between the visible and invisible, the known and unknown, as well
as between elite and nonelite worlds.
 Navigating the City Interior 87

Faced with a terra incognita, the protagonists in The Tale of Li Wa and

Woman in the Carriage see a constantly changing and partially obscured real-
ity in the urban matrix, where identities and emplacement are both in flux. To-
gether with anecdotes about brushes with violence and disaster (bu ce), these
narratives explore the consequences of becoming lost in the city for a predegree
literatus. They share a preoccupation with social and spatial disorientation, and
imply that successfully navigating the capitals variegated social space is part of
what it means to become a literatus fully formed and completedone who is
capital-worthy as well as degree-worthy.
These and other tales suggest that the formation of literati personhood does
not stop at the literary education the examinees previously received, but must ex-
ist in conjunction with an awareness of the nonlinear spatial logic of a double
city. In this way, Changan presented an experiential threshold separate from that
of the examination proper, and complicated the meaning of completion in lite-
rati education. Through lingering in the capital, a different kind of induction took
place for the aspirant: it privileged a kind of metropolitan knowledge that was not
easily measured in terms of the fame or reputation implied in the threshold sta-
tus of establishing a name (chengming). As represented in narratives concerned
with the varieties of failure, for the aspiring literati elite, gaining cultural capital
meant being at home in capital culture. This intimate connection between the
cityscape and a burgeoning selfhood shows that literati personhood in the latter
half of the Tang was a distinctly metropolitan one. The examinees first foray into
the city, along with their stumbles and misrecognition, can be viewed as the first
step toward
acquiring a coveted urban literati identity.
c ha p t e r f ou r

Staging Talent in Urban Arenas

For an aspirant, Changan brought together ones social betters, ones peers, and
networks of appraisers and arbiters in examination culture at large. From recorded
anecdotes of degree seekers active during the last decades of the ninth century,
we get a sense that an important aspect of establishing oneself (chengming) con-
sisted of something that might be called theatricality of talent. By theatricality I
mean an extroverted displayto showcase poetic mastery and the requisite sen-
sibilities that made it possible to advance oneself by means of literary skill (yi
wen jin qu). To this end, building surfaces in Changan doubled as bulletin boards
and blank canvases, and public arenas became impromptu stages. These venues
drew an audience consisting of a community of beholders frequently referred to
in contemporary texts as haoshi zhe, which meant variously newsmongers, enthu-
siasts, or interested onlookers. These venues and onlookers transformed not only
literary production and circulation, but also how literary aspirants thought of
themselves and each other. In this context, it was necessary but insufficient to
merely possess talent. One needed to deploy it publicly, as well.

Talent as Spectator Sport

Even by the late Tang, examination procedures were far from codified to the ex-
tent seen in later dynasties. Candidates submitted test papers with their names
and in their own handwriting, making their identities transparent. The sole pre-
siding examiner (rather than a small team of them) was never isolated from the
public during the examination period, as in later ages, leaving him open for lob-
bying on behalf of candidates. As already mentioned, it was commonplace for
Tang examinees to seek advance notice by established literati men and even the
examiner himself, by presenting a portfolio of their poems and prose. As recruit-
ment procedures took on more stringent requirements that emphasized anonym-
ity from the Song onward, patronage seeking (ganye) would become a historical
curiosity.1 The relatively permissive structure in the Tang recruitment mechanism
created an emphasis on a pageantry of talent rather than controlled, anonymous

88
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 89

procedures. The physical space of Changan, in the forms of monuments and wall
spaces on which the self could be presented, updated, and reevaluated, provided
important outlets for this pageantry.
From what we see in examination anecdotes, an examinee in the ninth century
understood the audience for his talent as three concentric circles: at its center was
the examiner who finalized the list of degree winners; further out was a small cir-
cle of eminent men who, through their reputation or political wherewithal, could
influence the examiner. Beyond both was the third, largest circle, encompassing
the far more numerous arbiters who also voiced opinions over whether an aspi-
rant was worthy of becoming a jinshi degree holder.
Vignettes from Northern Ward and Tang Gleanings in particular emphasize
the maintenance of such networks of approval. A terse admonition of the day, as
recorded in Tang Gleanings, articulates the relative merit of having a single power
ful patron versus a large base of peer admirers. The first-rate examinee is recom-
mended by his peers, it says, in contrast to the third-rate examinee, who is rec-
ommended by the minister.2 In other words, it counsels for the recognition of
the many rather than the political clout of the few, and argues that collective ad-
miration is far more valued for a degree seeker.
In their concerns with acts of appraisal, Tang examination lore shares certain
qualities with the discursive world of the fifth-century anecdotal collection A New
Account of Tales of the World (Shishuo xinyu). The collection depicts a network of
men who derive pleasure from knowing and recognizing some essential charac-
teristic in a persona form of social discernment referred to in its anecdotes as
knowing men (zhiren).3 As scholars point out, this preoccupation with the study
of human nature and a creation of a personal reputation has epistemological roots
in character appraisal first implemented through the Han selection systemthe
precursor to examinations as a recruitment system.4 In three of the chapters of
Tales of the World, devoted to discernment and judgment (shi jian), appreciation
and praise (shang yu), and classification of talent (pin zao) respectively, a frequently
used verb is mu, meaning at the most literal level to eye another and by exten-
sion, to appraise another. The prominence of this verb led one scholar to point
out that this action implies visual focus, deliberation, and felicitous verbal ex-
pressions that capture the essence of a person or spectacle.5
In the Tang context, the presence of a public sphere that meted out such ap-
praisals retained some of the aesthetic fascination depicted in Tales of the World,
but both the composition of the beholders and the nature of the appraisal have
changed; both have by now expanded around the armatures of recruitment and
its metropolitan context. In his study of cover letters that accompanied candidates
portfolios of writing samples submitted to prospective patrons, Alexei Ditter
90Chapter 4

observes that candidates without political connections sometimes used public

exposure as leverage to their advantage. Because in the ideal cultural discourse of
the examination as recruitment for talent, the examiner was associated with fair-
ness and impartiality (yousi zhi gong), popular opinion regarding literary worth
could, at times, outmuscle interventions of the powerful. For example, candidates
suggested in their cover letters that their addressees reputation as literati men
would suffer should the addressees fail to appropriately endorse undiscovered tal-
ents like themselves.6 As Li Guan (766794) declared in a cover letter addressed
to an official in 790: The chief examiner possesses the greatest degree of impar-
tiality yet I am known by no one. It is not I alone who should feel ashamed of this;
you, Supernumerary Zhao, should also feel ashamed of this.7 The examinee issues
the prospective patron a bold challenge: does he dare to pass over the talent of Li
Guan under the scrutiny of the public, and face the consequences?
The brashness of this self-promotion may seem at odds with our idea of the
Confucian scholar that serves as the forerunner of Chinese intellectuals, but it is
a good reminder that we must not view aspects of the Tang through the lens of
late-imperial habits of mind. In Tang examination lore, there are other examples
of such strategies of self-presentationpetitions that were often circulated more
broadly beyond the addressee. Li Guans petition, and others like it, thrived in a
cultural context in which the candidates solicitation as well as the patrons per-
ceived fairness were made visible to an urban community of beholders. This wider,
less official, yet nonetheless powerful community of arbiters makes it possible for
us to speak of literary talent (cai) as a spectator sport.
In one account, the early Tang poet Chen Ziang (661702), having lingered
in Changan for ten years without receiving the jinshi degree, resorts to a different
tactic for getting noticed. He buys a very expensive Central Asian zither (hu qin)
from the Eastern Market and invites all to hear him play it at his house. The ac-
count continues:

The next morning, over a hundred people gathered there, and all were em-
inent literati men of the time. Ziang set out a lavish banquet feast. After
they finished eating, he stood up holding the zither, and said to those be-
fore him: I, Chen Ziang from the Shu region, have one hundred scrolls
of literary compositions. I have trekked all over the capital, covered in road
dust, and yet I remain unknown. This music here is the trade of base
artisanshardly anything worth my attention! He lifted up the zither and
tossed it away, then took two large piles of his writing scrolls and distrib-
uted them to all the banquet attendees. After the banquet ended, within a
day his reputation was spread far and wide throughout the capital.8
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 91

Here, then, are the components of a literati publicity campaign. First, an ex-
travagant purchase at the market attracts curious onlookers (haoshi zhe) who want
to see the value of the zither rendered in performance. Next, an invitation gath-
ers an even larger crowd around the promise of such a performance (and a ban-
quet). This is followed by the real performance, in which Chen Ziang denigrates
the expensive instrument as just thata thing of amusementwhile he extols the
transcendent value of his own literary skill. Last but not least, he mobilizes the
gathered crowd to disseminate his portfolio. Far from focusing on a single arbiter
of talent such as an examiner or a patron, this anecdote allows us to become at-
tuned to the presence of a crowd that can be conjured with the right tactics, and
which, under the right conditions, can be made to recognize talent and spread
news of its discovery.
The existence of a popularly shared standard for literary worth, parallel to
but also apart from the examination criteria proper, is indispensable to our under-
standing of literati culture in the second half of the Tang. The following epi-
taph, written by Du Mu, describes someone whose reputation was built up
i ndependently fromor one may even say in opposition toobtaining the jinshi
degree. Its subject, Li Kan, publicly scorned the jinshi examination on the basis
that its procedures crassly mistreated men of learning. Rather than sinking into
obscurity, Lis defiant act seems to have become well known in his time. Du Mu
professed admiration of this man whom he had never met, and points to an alter-
native circuit of fame that made this connection possible:

I [Du Mu] sat for the jinshi examination in the first year of the Taihe Reign
[827] and received the degree. I had been a tribute scholar in Changan, and
the examination that year was held in the Eastern Capital [Luoyang].
Among the degree candidates from the two capitals, from time to time,
there was mention that fifteen years ago, a candidate named Li Fei came
from Jiangxi. His physiognomy was in the manner of the ancients, and he
was highly skilled in letters. When he first sat for the fu portion of the ex-
aminations in the Ministry of Rites, the presiding clerk shouted out his
name, and inspected his documents for a long time before finally admit-
ting him. Li Fei said, Is this the way to select worthies? To seek a degree,
does this make one feel like a worthy? Thereupon, he kept his hands in
his sleeves and refused to proceed. The following day he returned to the
south. Someone said: There is indeed such a person, but we will not get
to make his acquaintance. Two years later, I served as a headquarters func-
tionary under
Master Shen [Chuanshi] of the Ministry of Personnel at
Zhongling and Xuancheng, and spent a total of five years there. I roomed
92Chapter 4

with Xiao Zhi of Lanling, Han Yi of the Capital Prefecture, and Cui Shou
of Boling, who, whenever they evaluated and ranked men, always said,
There are very few who possess the Way, wield erudition and possess lit-
erary skill as much as Li Kanthis is the same man who held the jinshi
degree in contempt and did not seek the degree, formerly named Li Fei.
I regretted never having met him in person, and was glad he was still
alive then.9

Li Kan rejects the callous bureaucracy of the jinshi selection process on moral
and ritualistic grounds. This account is analogous to Chen Ziangs smashing the
expensive zither in front of a gathering, in that both are emphatic acts of defining
oneself against something. Li Kan achieved unofficial literary distinction with-
out having received a degree; the spread of his alternative fame, however, was con-
tingent on a capital-based literati audience. The epitaph makes it clear that Li
Kans public act was remembered, admired, and repeatedly recounted by a large
number of people who, as officeholders or degree holders like Du Mu himself, have
benefited from the very institution Li rejected.
There were other late-Tang men of letters who made a name for themselves in
the literati community while trying, and failing, to obtain the jinshi degree. In
900, Wei Zhuang submitted a memorial to the throne requesting posthumous
honors for men who had not gained degrees in their lifetime, stating, occasion-
ally, among the poets and talented men, some become neglected worthies.10 The
petition essentially requests a revisiting of examination criteria, even if in theory,
by taking into account the public perception of talent. The fifteen men listed in
this request were mostly deceased, and includes Li He (790816), Wen Tingyun,
and Jia Dao. These are men for whom there exists a rich body of anecdotes attest-
ing to their literary prowess and antics. In Tang Gleanings, Wei Zhuangs petition
appears at the end of a section devoted to biographies of men who did not meet
the appropriate time (bu yu).11 Although poetic talent and jinshi success were
thought to overlap, at least by the late Tang, a shared public perception of talent
diverged sufficiently from the conferral of jinshi degrees to make this request ap-
posite and viable.
While Wei Zhuangs petition exposed the discord between two channels of
recognition, anecdotes about failed candidates also sought to identify lost oppor-
tunities for talent to find recognition. An anecdote about Jia Dao from the ninth-
century collection Poems Rooted in Events (Ben shi shi) offers a reason for the poets
perennial failure: he did not know how to manage his feelings of antagonism and
bitterness. According to this anecdote, when informed that he has failed because
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 93

the examiner Pei Du (765839) despises him, Jia Dao becomes indignant and
writes a poem inside Peis home in Xinghua Ward:12

You have smashed a thousand homes to make a pond,

And planted roses instead of peaches and pears.
When the rose blossoms have fallen in the autumn breeze,
You shall at last realize that your courtyard is filled with thorns.13

Instead of withdrawing indignantly from the recruitment system, as Li Kan

did, Jia Dao instead makes a pointed rebuke. He turns against the discourse of
discovering talent, by inverting the familiar metaphors into their poisonous anti
theses. The examiner is portrayed as an anti-Confucius; the newly chosen degree
holders are depicted not as fruitful crops but as superficial ornamentals, and haz-
ardous ones at that. This kind of poem is the exact opposite of the kind new de-
gree holders wrote to their examiners after the results were announced, in which
the chosen men referred to the examiner reverentially as teacher, using poetic
images of fruit crops to emphasize their roles as cultivated seedlings.14 The anec-
dote concludes that as a result, everyone scorned Jia Daos open contempt and
lack of deference (huiman bu bi), and he died without ever gaining the jinshi de-
gree.15
In the context of a larger lore surrounding Jia Daos examination plight, this
anecdote tries to explain the apparent incongruity between Jia Daos literary prow-
ess and his repeated failure in winning a degree. It comes to the conclusion that
it was Jia Daos graceless attack of the examineras an instrument of a faulty
systemthat ultimately led to his continued failure. Here, Johan Huizingas analy
sis of contest and play is particularly apposite: It is curious to note how much
more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the
spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he re-
veals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut
himself with others.16
How then did Tang literati men understand the rules of engagement for the
theatricality of talent? As I show below, the zeitgeist of publicly vying for recog-
nition was the product of the contemporary perception of talent, and the manner
in which talent was vetted under the jinshi degree. Historians have long pointed
out that the examination system was far from a meritocracy. Even so, during the
Tang, the examination results were not manipulated simply and directly by the
powerf ul, either. The perception of fairness in recruiting talent, along with a pub-
lic veneration of literary skill, mediated between the political wherewithal of the
94Chapter 4

powerful and the ideal vision of selecting talent. As historians note, during the
Tang an examinee could well be accepted for the jinshi degree months ahead
ofthe examination session proper, as a result of a series of interventions and ne-
gotiations among the examiner and other parties who sought to sway the re-
sults through both compulsive and persuasive pressures.17 Jockeying for spots on
the pass list was a balance between political influence and genuine interest in
promoting the worthy, and both sides were checked by popular perceptions.18
Brazen moves to place the scions of the powerful were roundly condemned and
ridiculed (as we will see in later examples). Biographies of prominent statesmen
often took pains to clarify that their descendants received the jinshi degree with-
out their intervention.
This counterpoising between political power and public perception is partic-
ularly evident in the following tale, in which an office-holding father is anxious
to find ways to ensure his own sons jinshi success. What is at stake here is not
obtaining an official post for the son (for hereditary privilege allows the son that
access), but rather gaining public recognition for the son through the prestige of
the jinshi degree as certification of talent. I translate the tale in full because it con-
tains rich details about the different ways reputation was created in the context of
examination culture. In Yang Jingzhi, from the ninth-century collection Miss-
ing Histories of the Tang, a father sees in a dream the list of degree holders with
his sons name on it. Rather than taking this dream as a prophecy, he (perhaps
not unreasonably) takes it as guideline for action. The rest of the tale is about the
fathers zealous efforts to make real-life events conform to those of his dream:

Yang Jingzhi sired Yang Dai the Surveillance Commissioner of Jiangxi.

When [Dai] was taking the examinations, his father
Jingzhi was getting
on in years, and his temperament was especially impatient. It was late au-
tumn, and Jingzhi suddenly dreamed that a list for new jinshi was posted
up containing forty names, each clearly visible. He ran his eyes halfway
down the list and spotted his sons name. The name next to it had a sur-
name of Puyang, but he could not make out the given name.
Jingzhi woke up greatly delighted. He asked around the literary cir-
cles, and was told that there was indeed someone named Puyang Yuan,
who had good literary talent and a reputation. He searched the wider pool
of [examinees] with great urgency, and found out this person had indeed
been recommended. He inquired after [Puyangs] home, and was told that
he was a man of the Min region [from the remote south] and had not yet
made his way into the capital. To tally reality with his dream, Yang Jing-
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 95

zhi bade his son to follow his instructions, to wait for Puyang to arrive in
the capital, and to make Puyangs acquaintance.
One day, Yang was giving a banquet for a traveler near the Ba River,
and stayed at a hostel while waiting for his guest to arrive. Yang saw that
a traveler arrived from afar, so he sent out word to inquire after him, and
found out he was a tribute scholar. Yang asked after his origin and name.
The response came back that the traveler was from Min and named Puy-
ang Yuan. Yang Jingzhi said: Why, this was heavens instruction! How else
is it possible for me to meet him like this, after that dream of mine! He
asked to meet with him. Puyang, who was diffident and could not refuse,
came forth to see Yang and brought along his portfolio of writing. First,
Yang looked him over and saw that he was elegant in appearance; then he
spoke with him and saw that his words and manners were serene and mea
sured; last, Yang read his writing and found it refined in style and reason-
ing. When Yang asked about Puyangs destination, he said he was about
to rent lodging. Yang summoned all his means to settle Puyang at a school.
He ordered his son to accompany Puyang day and night. That winter, Yang
spoke highly of Puyangs learning among high officials, and because opin-
ions of him were uniformly high, it seemed as if Puyang would certainly
obtain a degree.19

For the tribute scholar with all the qualifications (appearance, manner, writ-
ing), the father vigorously generates good publicity in Changan for the newcomer.
For his own son, however, the nature of the kind of intercession needed on his
behalf is far from clear, and the father misreads the vision in the dream:

Within days of the examination, however, the young man died suddenly
one night. Yang was shocked and full of regret. Since Puyang was poor and
his home far off, Yang arranged his affairs and, after great effort, sent Puy-
angs remains back to Min. He told his son: My dream is not manifesting
in reality, so it looks like your degree [ming], too, will slip away. The fol-
lowing year, his son did receive the jinshi degree, and among his cohort of
degree winners there was in fact no one surnamed Puyang. By the begin-
ning of summer, when [the new degree holders] were about to be turned
over to the Ministry of Personnel [for the selection exam], the chief min-
ister made the following announcement: People of yore emphasized ones
clan name and made light of ones official titles. Thus the Seven Sages of
the Bamboo Grove were called Ruan Zhao of Chenliu, Liu Ling of Peiguo,
and Xiang Xiu from Between the Riversthis was indeed the way to speak
96Chapter 4

of lofty gentlemen. [As a result], that year, everyone who participated in

the name-signing ritual at the Cien Temple Pagoda included his clan
origin. When this was done and Yang paced underneath the Cien Pagoda
and looked upward, he saw the following writing: Yang Dai from Hong-
nong; Wu Dang from Puyang. These words, in fact, were exactly what he
had seen in his dream.20

This account contains points of contact with people and events that can be
verified elsewhere. The historical Yang Jingzhi received his degree in 807 and was
in the same cohort as Bai Xingjian, the author of The Tale of Li Wa; the son,
Yang Dai, received his in 837, and was in the same cohort as Li Shangyin, who
wrote about his candidacy as a series of trial-and-error attempts to become
known.21 Earlier, in chapter2, we saw that a Yang clan with the choronym Hong
nong had by the mid-ninth century become established in one particular ward
of Changan as the Yang clan of Jinggong [Ward], sustaining their power and
prestige through multiple sons success with the jinshi degree.22 Yang Jingzhi seems
to have belonged to this clan, and this tale seems to corroborate the clans capital-
bound relocation and their gradual entrenchment in its social space, as well as
their need, across the generations, to sustain their new stronghold through ac-
cruing the cultural capital of the jinshi degree. Furthermore, the historical Yang
Jingzhi is known in his Xin Tang shu biography as someone fond of literature. At
the very end of his biography, there is a synoptic version of this account in which
the greater portion about the dream was excised, most likely in the interest of
maintaining historiographic credibility.23
As with other narratives, the events recounted here need not be historically
exact to reflect the central concernthe ingredients for transforming a candidate
into a degree holder, whether he is a scion of a successful clan or someone who
has arrived from the southern fringe of the empire. This tale follows these two
kinds of candidates in parallel: the capital-based candidate is exemplified by
Yang Dai, the son of an official; the tribute scholar is exemplified by Puyang
Yuan, whose talent and good manners combined with the older Yangs patronage
in the capital seem to make his success inevitable until his abrupt death nullifies
all advantages.
This tale suggests that without a favorable public reputation in the capital, a
capital-based familial network, a fathers political wherewithal, or an unknown
tribute scholars plentiful qualifications, in and of themselves, cannot guarantee
success. For those without connections, like Puyang, a literary reputation would
be their best and perhaps only asset; for those with connections, like Yang Dai,
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 97

such reputation or public sympathy was also needed to counteract any suspicions
(or reality) of nepotism.
The hermeneutic key to the dream is the correct reading of the image that first
appears in the fathers dream, and it takes three seasons to reveal itself to the father.
Between the dream vision in late autumn and its final revelation in the following
summer, one full examination cycle has unfolded. Having lifted his head to see
on the Cien Pagoda the newly inscribed names of that years degree holders, the
father finally understands how he has misread his earlier dream: he has mistaken
a degree holders choronym (Puyang) for his surname, leading to his misidenti-
fying Puyang Yuan as someone who would be his sons cohort.
The Cien Pagoda, as detailed in the next section, was a monument that played
a significant role in Tang examination culture as a site of pageantry and display.
Anecdotal literature suggests that even on more ordinary surfaces, spectators, ar-
biters, and contenders alike paid attention to writings on the wallpublic spaces
that served as venues for announcement, celebration, and self-articulation. In one
anecdote with several variants, Han Yu and Huangfu Shi (777835), both estab-
lished literati men, are so impressed with the candidate Niu Sengru that they de-
liberately visit his home while he is away; they write on his door Han Yu and
Huangfu Shi came calling. As a consequence of this message, Nius reputation
soars.24
The anecdote suggests that Han Yu and Huangfu Shi both understand the the-
atricality of talent: they know that leaving a visible trace on Niu Sengrus door
would be far more effective in elevating Nius reputation than an actual
visit whose
consequences would be short-range and short-lived. On a busy street of Changan,
a door frame serves as a bulletin board with the power to broadcast. What the
two literati men accomplish is not to serve as the sole arbiter of talentrather, they
encourage the wider public to concur with their view. The anecdote highlights
the process of opinion making that capitalizes on foot traffic, word traffic, and
visible textual space in Changan, even if the participants described in the anec-
dote are closer to role types than to historical entities.25

When Monument Met Ephemera: Wall Writing

As we have seen in the tale Yang Jingzhi, the father mistakes the dream vision
of the Cien Pagoda inscription for another kind of public writing: the official
pass list of the new degree holders posted on the wall outside the Ministry of
Rites. Both of these sites for writing had impact on examination culture as a vi-
sual experience, albeit in different ways. The pass list was the first and official
98Chapter 4

Front view of the Cien Pagoda (Large Goose Pagoda) in Jinchang Ward in the southeastern
corner of Changan. (Based on Zhao Liying, Shaanxi gu jianzhu, 125.) Visitors climbed to its
top for panoramic views of Changan. Both the pagoda and the nearby Qujiang (Serpentine
Pond) attracted visitors for social and recreational outings, especially during the spring.

announcement of the years new degree holders and was, therefore, highly an-
ticipated, real-time intelligence, closely watched not only by examinees but by
urban dwellers at large. (In one vignette of Northern Ward, swift-footed street
urchins are the first to report to a Pingkang courtesan that her paramour is not
on that years list.)26 The writing of degree holders names on the Cien Pagoda,
on the other hand, was in their own hand. It came later in the spring season and
was by nature more celebratory than informative. The Cien Pagoda commanded
attention because of both its scale and its location. Also known as the Large Goose
Pagoda (Dayan Ta), it is one of the very few structures from the Tang to have
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 99

survived. It towered over its surroundings at sixty-five meters, which was several
times the height of the palace walls. Men of letters who climbed to its top for the
panoramic view or for a breath of fresh air left many poems commemorating such
excursions. The pagoda itself was inside the Grand Cien Temple (Da Cien Si), a
lavish structure that took up half of Jinchang Ward.27 The fact that it was within
walking distance of the recreation area of the Serpentine Pond made it a popular
sightseeing venue; on its temple grounds, religious functions overlapped with
secular entertainment.
The pagoda became a prominent billboard for literati self-presentation. One
of the longest sections in Tang Gleanings is titled Various Records of Name-
Signing, Sightseeing and Poetry-Making at the Cien Temple (Cien si timing
youshang fuyong zaji), and is devoted to recording activities that were both di-
rectly and indirectly related to these literary pageants.28 This practice of name-
signing (timing), now shaped by the rituals of examination culture in which ming
connoted reputation and the establishment of a career through the jinshi degree,
actively engaged new degree holders, aspirants, and spectators. Among the crowds
at temples like the Cien, name signing extracted jinshi success from the official,
institutional realm and transplanted it into a wider cultural arena and imaginary
space, calling attention to the degree holders status as urban celebrities in addi-
tion to future officeholders.
Such literary showmanship evoked a heightened sociality among readers and
writers. Upon seeing the commemorative writings of the years newest crop of jin-
shi degree holders, for example, the poetess Yu Xuanji responded with both de-
light and professed envy in a poem titled Visiting Chongzhen Abbeys South
Tower, Seeing Where New Examination Graduates Left Their Writing:

An eyeful of cloud-capped peaks, the new spring sun,

The clear silver hooks: brushstrokes come pouring from fingers.
What shame that silken frocks veil ones verses:
I raise my head and envy in vain the names on the list.29

Notice that the Chongzhen Abbey referred to herelocated in Xinchang

Wardwas yet another public site for textural production tied to the propaga-
tion of a gliterati identity. Notice, too, that like Yang Jingzhi in the aforemen-
tioned tale, the written names (timing) were such that the poetess had to raise her
head to view them. The conspicuous list was a textual spectacle meant to elicit ad-
miration. The poem points out that calligraphy (yin gou), lines of poetry (shi ju),
and the doubly meaningful name and reputation (ming) are all components of an
identity these men sought to create in the public eye. As mentioned in chapter3,
100Chapter 4

Yu Xuanji was a close associate of literati circles in Changan. As a well-connected

and poetry-savvy socialite in the capital, she was a participant in the examina-
tion culture built around literary virtuosity, pageantry, and the sensibility of
gallantry and feeling (fengliu) cultivated through discursive practice.30 Her up-
ward, envious gaze joined those of failed degree seekers; all of them imparted
energy to this post-examination ritual.
Closely connected to the act of name signing was the act of writing poems
on walls. As scholars have already pointed out, with beginnings traceable to the
Six Dynasties, wall poems (tibishi) were already very widespread during the
Tang. By Christopher Nugents count, well over one thousand entries in the Com-
plete Tang Poems had titles indicating that they began as inscriptions on some
surface other than paper or scrolls.31 These surfaces included walls at places of
gathering and transit, such as post stations, scenic sites, inns, and increasingly in
the latter part of the Tang, Buddhist temples, which also served public roles for
lay gatherings and performances.32 The spontaneity of wall writing extended to
times of trauma and crisis. Returning to Changan after the Huang Chao rebel-
lion, Zheng Gu (ca. 851910; jinshi 887) described the rubble and burned fields,
inscribing a poem onto the wall of a former government office in the now-ravaged
capital.33
A few examples will illustrate the ubiquity of this medium. According to the
biography of the early-Tang poet Wang Ji (586644), the poems he wrote on the
walls of wine shops would soon after be on the lips of enthusiasts or followers (hao
shi zhe).34 In other cases, poems seemed to have enjoyed circulation even years
after their initial composition, and their materiality made a powerful commen-
tary on the passing of time. This was particularly well documented in the corre-
spondence of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen. In 815, for example, Yuan Zhen, newly ar-
rived in Tongzhou where he was sent as a demotion, chanced upon Bais poem on
a pillar at a deserted post station, copied by some admiring hand.35 It turned out
that this was a poem Bai had composed fifteen years earlier to a singing girl just
after he received his jinshi degree. When Bai Juyi himself was demoted from the
capital months later, he wrote to his friend to say that whenever he stopped at a
post pavilion (yi ting), he would dismount and scan the walls and circle around
pillars to look for Yuans poems.36 In both cases, a wider public beyond the writer
(and the writers bosom friend) was cognizant of, if not actively seeking out, the
written poems for their value.
In addition to walls and pillars, a kind of removable wall space also evolved
out of a demand for bulletin space: in the ninth century, wooden plaques called
poetry boards (shi ban) appeared for the purpose of accommodating written verses
and were sometimes found in monasteries. These poetry boards portability made
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 101

it easy for wall poems to be updated or selectively retained.37 The Japanese pil-
grim Ennin (794868), for example, traveling from Wutai Mountain to Changan,
encountered one of these boards and dutifully copied from it a poem mourning
a Japanese monk who had sojourned there.38 These examples in connection with
exile, pilgrimage, and miscellaneous forms of travel show us ways wall writing
constituted a form of publishing.
Relating to Changan in particular, tibishi had a particularly nuanced spatial
dimension. As the crucible for transforming jinshi contenders into jinshi holders,
Changan held even higher stakes in this zeal for public writing and the circula-
tion and display of meaning, because Changan hosted the densest concentration
of contenders and observers. Unlike writing disseminated through mass print-
ing, commemorative public writing drew its meaning and power from both the
occasion and the nature of the surface used for the writing. Where temple walls
showcased names and verses, monuments hosted ephemera. Because inscriptions
and lists occasioned by the examination chronotope were constantly renewed and
updated, their temporal dimension had a seasonal vitality that drew onlookers.
This is contrary to the melancholy quality of writing in places where faded and
dust-covered words evoked loss and the passage of time.39
In this performative medium, the written text captured not only current sta-
tuses, but also the process of transformation itself. In Changan, wall poems were
both public and interactive. They might begin with a single entry, but poems be-
gat other poems as latecomers contemplated the past and their relation to the ear-
lier writers. Tang Gleanings documents how public writing authored by literati
men were kept up to date with emendations to the writers status. The updates
highlight in particular winning a degree and becoming a chief minister.
Men who had first left their poems on the temple wall and subsequently passed
the examination were honored by retroactively changing their signature from jin-
shi (equivalent to degree candidate) to past jinshi (qian jinshi), meaning for-
mer candidate:

Ever since the Shenlong Reign [705707], [each year] after

the Apricot Gar-
den Banquet [the new degree holders] all signed their names below the
Cien Pagoda. Someone among them chosen for his good calligraphy wrote
a commemorative record for it. If anyone were [later] to become a chief
minister, then [his name] would be rewritten in red. After obtaining their
degrees, it was understood [among the cohorts] that, should one of them
chance upon where someone else had inscribed his name before obtain-
ing his degree, he would add the character past [qian] on that persons
behalf.40
102Chapter 4

This palimpsest public record glamorized the much-anticipated transformation

from candidate to degree holder, and from degree holder to top-level official.
A surviving fragment of a Song-dynasty transcription of wall inscriptions cap-
tured commemorative writings on the Cien Temple dating from between 786
and863, and illustrates the visual juxtaposition of hopes realized and hopes de-
ferred. These inscriptions show a mixture of jinshi and past jinshi. The name of
Meng Jiao (jinshi 796) was written three years before he achieved his degree. An-
other inscription, written on a spring day in 835, shows the poet Li Shangyin
(jinshi 837) with his name alongside those of Linghu Xu, Linghu Tao (802879;
jinshi 830), Linghu Wei, and Cai Jing (jinshi 836). This inscription labels both Li
Shangyin and Cai Jing as past jinshi.41 The collaborative nature of public writ-
ing spawned not only interest but also competition and dissent. A publicly in-
scribed poem creates exposure. The unclaimed space around it can sometimes
invite scathing peer review. In one anecdote, a latecomer casts aspersions on a first
writers literary skills, comparing him to the general Xiang Yu (232202 BCE), who
was infamous for having learned just enough writing to manage his name: Li
Tang signed his name on a pavilion in Zhaoying County. When Wei Zhan [jinshi
865] saw it, he took a brush and dashed off a taunt: The rivers of Wei and Qin
brighten the eyes,/but why is Xiren short on poetic spirit? /Perhaps he mastered
only what Beauty Yus husband could/learning to write just enough to put down
his name.42 Li Tang here failed to do what was expected of him at a scenic spot,
and since he left his name but nothing else, his absence of poetic verses was con
spicuous. The latecomer teases him for failing to rise to the occasion and missing
an opportunity to put down lines of poetry in addition to his name. Zhaoying,
situated about 50 li to the east of Changan, was a major stop on the way to and
from the capital.43 It would not be a stretch to imagine the sniggering of those who
read this inscription in a frequented pavilion.
Here, the identity of the commentator is self-disclosed. Important in this net-
work are also anonymous writersdissenters who leave their mark by saying
and yet! to the self-fashioning of others. Tang Gleanings devotes one of its sec-
tions to the subversive comments of these so-called nameless entities (wuming zi),
defined in Tang Gleanings as those who anonymously make accusations (niming
zaobang).44 Because of the polysemic nature of ming, we can think of these
gadfly-like entities as either anonymous ones or those without a degree. Both
designations are entirely appropriate for their roles. For example, one anecdote
recounts that, when two recent degree winners wrote their poems on the Ximing
Temple in 853, unruly naysayers immediately annotated these poems, deriding
the fact that the new degree winners were both teenagers: A pair of past jinshi, a
couple of fresh-faced babes.45
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 103

Only in a world where everyone has the potential to judgeand be judged in

turncan such mixtures of irreverence and humor occur. The two babes re-
ferred to hereZhang Du (835886) and Miao Taifuwere indeed in their late
teens; they also happened to share Niu Sengru as their maternal grandfather and
were relatively well-connected.46 Since it was more common for jinshi candidates
to compete for the degree into middle age and beyond, the gibe on their youth
also hints at possibilities of nepotism.
The power of wuming zi came from their collective freedom (due to anonym-
ity) to criticize the mechanisms of recruitment itself. As numerous anecdotes in
Tang Gleanings illustrate, examiners too could be subject to such anonymous
criticism if they showed nepotism or poor judgment over candidates literary
worth.47 For example, in 854, examiner Zheng Xun (jinshi 828) awarded a candi-
date a top-rank degree after mistaking him for a descendant of the loyalist hero
Yan Zhenqing (709785). In response, the anonymous accusation was direct: The
examiners heads full of gook, mistaking Yan Biao for the Duke of Lu.48 Other
accusations suggested more nuanced wrongdoings. One implied an ignoble con-
nection between the title of an examination topic and the given name of the can-
didate eventually chosen. Another couplet mocks two examinees for winning their
degrees through bribes of alchemical pills and money, respectively.49
Anecdotes in other sections of Tang Gleanings demonstrate that anonymous
accusations noticeably affected actual events. In one anecdote, during the Dazhong
Reign (847859), Hegan Jun, the son of a powerful official, was competing for the
first rank in the capital prefectural dispatch; this was the prefectural administra-
tion from which candidates had the highest chance of winning a degree. Accord-
ing to the anecdote, the following day Hegans competitor suddenly died. As a
consequence, a couplet circulated accusing the powerful Hegan family of foul
play. Soon after, both Hegan Jun and his brother withdrew from the examina-
tions.50
Unlike inscriptions on the Cien Pagoda in which self-representation predom-
inates, anonymous ripostes had characteristics of both urban graffiti and edito-
rial column. Urban graffiti is possible only with the license of anonymity; edito-
rializing requires a reading public that shares some of the central values informing
the criticisms. The nameless entities as described in Tang Gleanings resort to sly-
ness and laughter, forming a kind of unruly collective dissent. In these cases
where anonymous opinions introduced a note of skepticism or cynicism regard-
ing the turn of events, they contested the decisions of examiners in their selection.
As if contending with these potential critics, official biographies of examiners
often emphasized their reputation for fairness, describing this as a shared opin-
ion among literati men.51 Although the recruitment system was far from fully
104Chapter 4

meritocratic, participation in this urban textual spectacle allowed those who

could not obtain the degree to voice their opinions and protests.
For a degree seeker in Changan, these circuits of information and judgment
received more discussion than the actual examination itself. Tang literati wrote
copiously about activities such as name signing, public exposure, and triumph. It
would not be an exaggeration to say that in ninth-century temples and popular
recreation areas, the vertical spaces were teeming with verses that clamored for
attention. In comparison, examinees were curiously terse about their experiences
in the examination compound itself.52 For them, learning to navigate these alter-
native circuits, even taking advantage of the opportunities of self-promotion of-
fered, was tantamount to learning to inhabitand to thrive inthe citys liter-
ary spotlight.
Another type of social space that allowed examinees to vie for this spot-
light was the pleasure quarters in Pingkang Ward, which I discuss in its own
right in chapter 5. Here I want to treat three short vignettes from Northern
Ward in the context of wall poems. As Rouzer has pointed out, because courte-
san households catered to examinees and new degree holders, and because cour-
tesans mirrored the examinees in their literacy and tastes, Pingkang Ward pro-
vided an additional arena for literati identity formation and competition.53
Writing on the walls of courtesans living quarters, literati clients created for
themselves the identity of dashing romancers in addition to good poets. They
competed for this exposure. In one example in Northern Ward, Sun Qi introduces
us to a household with three courtesans, all of them popular with verse-writing
clients.54 One of them, Yizhi, is particularly close to Sun Qi and gives him a space
in her dwelling and asks him to fill it up with more verses: [Yizhi] had received
many poems, but she considered my poem the most pleasing. She held the poem
on the red wall to the left of the window and asked me to inscribe it there. When
I finished inscribing, because the wall was far from full, she asked me to compose
a couple more, in order to admonish those [whose verses were] without allure.
Accordingly I inscribed three quatrains, as if composed in her own voice.55 The
three poems written by Sun Qi are then duly recorded in this anecdote, joined by
a poem of Yizhis own, which takes up the last of the wall space.56 Insofar as a
courtesan household is a public, commercial space, Yizhis red wall here serves
as prime real estate for poetic pageantry. Granted this coveted space, Sun Qi is
free to showcase his own poetic talent by praising the courtesans virtues, and
both of them view this as an act of being singled out.
The spatial dimension of wall poems means that whether the writing was on
a candidates door or on a temple pagoda, each kind of surface imparted its own
significance to the writing. Their text and paratext in the urban context remind
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 105

us that, in Judith Zeitlins words, tibishi is best defined as writing in place, to be

contrasted to graffiti, which is writing out of place.57 As long as there was an
audience, any surface had the potential to become a forum for display, contesta-
tion, and satire. The following anecdote makes an analogy between an architec-
tural surface and the surface of a womans body:

Wang Tuaner...was a brothel mother and had a few daughters [courte-

sans]. The eldest was named Xiaorun, courtesy name Zimei, and when
she was young she was quite outstanding. Cui Chuixiu [Cui Yin] was in-
fatuated with her the year of his transformation [when he passed the jin-
shi degree] and spent quite a fortune on her. He once wrote on Xiaoruns
thigh. The writing was seen by Weishan, who offered the following poem:

Under the Cien Pagoda there is a newly plastered wall,
so smooth and shiny it puts jade to shame.
Why does Cui the Fortieth from Boling
instead practice calligraphy on a beautys leg?58

With Cuis flesh-bound tibishi, then, one might say that the courtesans body
has been added to the repertoire of available media for textual one-upmanship.
The response poem, in the proper jousting spirit, questions this very choice. By
this time in the late ninth century, the act of writing ones name on the Cien Pa-
goda has become so closely tied to jinshi success, and the pleasure quarters such
a frequent destination for well-heeled examinees, the second writer implies that
there is tension between the two kinds of white spaces. The pagoda wall, newly
cleared for the new class of degree holders, signifies actual fame, while the thigh
of a courtesan signifies an altogether different notoriety. Since Cui has resorted
to thigh writing, the poem slyly implies, he has failed to record his name where it
really counts.
The cultural logic that connects the whitewashed wall and a courtesans thigh
is the spirit of disputatious play, which pervaded examinees public life in the cap-
ital. The spirits of play and contest are in fact two sides of the same coin, Johan
Huizinga suggests in his seminal work Homo Ludens, because both activities share
a mood in which action is accompanied by exaltation and tension, and in which
mirth and relaxation follow.59 In the vocabulary of contests, we might say that an
examinee strives to be singled out for attention, bears uncertainty and risk (to his
reputation), and endures tension in the process. The public nature of these jousts
attests to how easily the competition for examination success spills into other
spaces.
106Chapter 4

In the third anecdote I discuss, the public exposure of ostentatious writing

seems to have occupied one examinee in a significant way. Sun Qi recounts an
event immediately before the Huang Chao rebellion of 881 that devastated the cap-
ital and forced the emperor to flee to Sichuan. In this anecdote, Sun Qi relates
that he paid a visit to a courtesan in Pingkang Ward with a first-time examinee,
Li Wenyuan.60 While there, both men wrote poems on the lintel of a courtesans
door. What took place two days later, in the pandemonium before the rebels en-
tered the capital and while its residents fled for cover, showed how much a seem-
ingly casual act of writing occupied its author:

Two days later, while going to the Southern Courtyard [nanyuan] together,
Wenyuan said to me: The other day I got drunk and left my name where
we visited; it wasnt appropriate. I will go back and remove it. When we
got to the Anshang Gate, someone from my household chased after me to
say: The Tong Pass has fallen. Not wanting to turn back midway, Wen
yuan eventually reached the Southern Courtyard. By the time he turned
back, there was definitely no time to keep the previous engagement, and
he had to return home in a hurry. By the time he reached Qinren Ward,
all around him were speeding horses. He then turned around in a panic,
and soon was fleeing desperately.61

These events took place under the circumstances of a major catastrophe. Ear-
lier the rebel army had already overtaken the auxiliary capital Luoyang; the Tong
Pass referred to here was the last protective position that stood between the rebel
army and Changan. Hearing the news that the pass had fallen, the residents of
Changan understood that they had very little time to escape. Seen in this light,
the zigzagging itinerary in this anecdote (between the imperial city, the pleasure
quarters, and Qinren Ward) seems to be brazenly heedless of danger. At the very
least, it shows a peculiar moment of imbalance, when the consequences of writ-
ten traces on the lintel of a brothel overshadowed an approaching disaster at the
empires gateway.
Both the peer network and the broadcasting mechanisms of Changan played
a powerf ul role in creating and shaping the identity of an examinee. Li Wenyuan,
who may have been a son of Li Wei (jinshi 837,d. 879), was likely concerned about
the appropriateness of visiting courtesans too soon after the death of his father,
since the moment captured in the anecdote fell within the two-year mourning pe-
riod.62 This first-time examinees concern, then, was how the community of
readers might interpret his tibishi, and what implications it might have for his
reputation. So powerful were these concerns that, even when his own safety
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 107

was threatened, Li was temporarily unable to attend to the consequences of the

fallen Tong Pass.

Crowds Visible and Invisible

How far can this theatricality of talent go, if rendered into imaginative narrative?
The Tale of Li Wa features a particularly memorable music contest that distills
the spirit of competition in the urban setting, even if it is, on the surface, unre-
lated to examination culture. As we recall from the tales plot, the courtesan Li
Wa absconds after the young Zheng depletes his fortune. In the middle section of
the story, in which Li Wa does not play a part, Zheng recovers from illness and
creates a new identity for himself in Changan. He does so by becoming a dirge
singer for a funeral parlor after he is given shelter and livelihood there:

Whenever he heard the funeral songs [in the funeral parlor,] he would sigh
that he was no better off than the departed, and soon would weep uncon-
trollably. At home, he would imitate the songs. This young scholar was mu-
sical and nimble in intelligence; before long, he had minutely exhausted
the subtleties of the subject. In all Changan there was none to compare
with him.63

Having quickly mastered the new profession, he finds himself a key competitor
in a contest between two rival funeral parlors, and the audience quickly overflows:
Men and women gathered together in a festive assembly numbering in the tens
of thousands. Upon which the ward officers notified the bureau of banditry, which
reported the matter to the Metropolitan Prefect. People from all directions rushed
to the scene, and all the homes in the lanes emptied out.64 Previously, scholars
have noted the importance of this scene in the narrative arc of the tale, and ways
in which the contest in the tale is about the engagement of the two halves of the
city with the protagonist at the geographical center.65 Like the description of Li
Was house-switch analyzed in chapter3, this scene of a citywide spectacle inflects
perceptions of the contiguous networks and spaces in the city.
The description of the audience Zheng faces here (in the tens of thousands)
gives us a sense of the ardor with which Changan crowds attended public ritual
prayers, variety shows, Buddhist lectures, and even executions.66 Apart from sea-
sonal festivals, crowds in the capital are seldom written about in and of them-
selves. The few historical sources that document scenes like this tend to portray
the crowding negatively, as in one account by Liu Yu (fl. 581601) of the lantern
festival, in which he objects to the indecorous mingling of officials with the rest
108Chapter 4

of the city.67 Similar crowds play no less important a role in the urban sojourns of
Tang literati men: the cachet of winning the jinshi degree drew equally avid at-
tention by the later part of the ninth century. The examination culture of Changan
was such that during the Serpentine Pond banquet [celebrating degree winners],
mobile markets were arrayed everywhere, and almost all of Changan would come
out [and empty out their dwellings].68
Returning to the contest in Li Wa, we recall that just prior to this, the pro-
tagonist has abandoned his studies and was at one point on the verge of death.
When countless spectators converge their gazes upon him, they present him with
an opportunity to doff his obscurity and don a new identity. As Zheng takes the
stage, his performance succeeds spectacularly:

A youth in a black headscarf arrived, flanked by five or six attendants hold-

ing funeral banners. It was our young scholar. He put his clothing in or-
der and, without hurry, stretched out his throat and delivered a tune, his
face looking as though he could not bear [the sorrow]. He sang the verse
Dew on the Shallots....Before the tune was finished his listeners were
sobbing and sniffing as they hid their tears.69

The competition in which Zheng takes part here derives much of its energy
from the public competitions familiar to examinees in Changan. This demonstra-
tion of skill adheres to the cultural logic of an up-and-coming literatus seeking a
stage upon which to make an unforgettable debut in Changan. Zheng wins the
contest because his performance unleashes tremendous affective power through
its meditation on the brevity of life. Just as in previously discussed anecdotes in-
volving acts of public recognition, public jousting of wit, and public reversals of
literary reputation, this tale depicts its young protagonist winning adulation after
having mastered an art form that requires sensibilities similar to his literary train-
ing. The words used to describe his mastery of funeral singing are that he had
minutely exhausted the subtleties of the subject (qu jin qi miao), a pivotal phrase
found in the preface of Lu Jis (261303) Poetic Exposition on Literature (Wen
fu), in which Lu Ji aims to transmit the splendid intricacy of craft of previous
writers and discuss the origins of success and failure in the act of writing.70 As
Glen Dudbridge notes, this was a textual allusion that would have been familiar
to Tang readers.71 In recounting the story of a prodigal son, the use of this iconic
phrase in the context of Zhengs acquisition of a new skill draws attention to the
perhaps ironic parallel between the world of funeral singing and the public
deployment of literary talent during the examination season. Here, the young
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 109

scholar, initially expected to triumph in the examinations, transforms into a

different kind of urban celebrity. The narrative renders a plausible interchange
between the credentials of the jinshi degree winner and that of a newly risen per-
former. The ultimate aim of both literati writers and the dirge performer was to
draw a large audience into the orbit of a performance, to move these people pro-
foundly, either through the words in poetry or a rendition of song.
In his monograph on Tang performance culture, Ren Bantang observes that
Tang singers of the highest skill tended to perform songs of intense and conta-
gious sadness.72 Many such moments are captured in verse by poets such as Bai
Juyi, Li Shangyin, and Zheng Gu, who refer to the bowel-rending sounds (duan-
chang sheng) of these songs and the resulting tears of listeners and passersby.73
Literati men, however, were also more than listeners; some of them wrote lyrics
to funeral songs, the success of which was measured by how widely and frequently
they were sung. One vignette in Northern Ward describes a courtesan who, when
dying, solicits verses from her most cherished literati clients; after her death, they
become funeral songs and are sung throughout Changan. An Old Tang History
biography of Li Yi, a jinshi degree holder and also a putative character in the tale
The Story of Huo Xiaoyu, describes his poetry as being sought after by palace
musicians as soon as it was written.74
The literati aspirant and the unlettered singer share a professional interest in
bringing pathos of their own orchestration to an appreciative audiencethe larger
the better. The anecdote about Chen Ziang cited at the beginning of this chapter
is an example of the potential interchangeability between a literary collection, a
performance on the zither, and, by further extension, an open-air singing con-
test. Despite the social distance that separates the poet and the singer, their
desiresand the very public reception of such ambitionsconverge in the pro-
tagonist Zheng in Li Wa. Drawing on skills evocative of literary sensibilities,
he proceeds to accomplish on the dirge-singing stage what he might have ac-
complished on the examination circuit, had everything gone according to plan.
The parallel here is not just that learning funeral dirges mimics the literary stud-
ies he has abandoned, as Rouzer suggests.75 Rather, the parallel is that the success-
ful performance of the dirges in front of the megalopolis is analogous to a jinshi-
worthy literatus publicly deploying his talent to reach the same.
In the long history of civil service examinations, the Tang embodied an age
in which the rungs on the ladder of success were not yet fully codified with pro-
cedural regularity. Eschewing the stepping-stones that constituted induction into
the official world, Zhengs metamorphosis into an accomplished dirge singer can
be viewed as a deliberate riff on the expected path of the examinee in which he
110Chapter 4

wins adulation of crowds and affirmation from prospective patrons and ultimately,
the examiner. In other words, Zhengs widely beheld performance in the midst of
Changan is a chthonic counterpart in the urban pageantry of jinshi success.

Conclusion
What I call the theatricality of talentan increasing valorization of the spectacle
of publicizing ones literary prowessbegan well before the Tang, as early medi-
eval men of letters sought out ways to highlight their skill in front of peers and
superiors, in and outside of court life.76 Yet Changan during the examination sea-
son became a crucible for this theatricality with a new vigor. In the second half of
the Tang, winning the coveted jinshi degree necessitated a series of presentations
of literary talentboth on paper and in personto intervening parties, and to
the even larger community of beholders. The very presence of this community in-
fluenced the behavior of literati men, as they understood that possessing literary
talent meant possessing demonstrable talent. In this social context, more so than
in the ages that followed, being a person of talent meant commanding a platform
on which ones education and learning could become manifest. It was in this ca-
pacity that the capital and its social spaces functioned, as a stage on which literati
identities could be constructed, through the circulation of news and views in chan-
nels sustained by gossipmongers, literary enthusiasts, even street urchins. The
city-as-capital was a cradle for the emergence of a literary fame (ming) that was
pivotal in the process of completing or establishing oneself (chengming).
In an article about urban life in Kaifeng of the Northern Song and the inter-
face between eating and performance, Stephen West points out that only in a large
urban area in which public ceremony is both ritual practice and social theater is
the idea of a contest, of vying in the eyes of the public for attention or even ap-
probation, possible.77 Even predating Kaifengs becoming the first capital to have
formed as a commercial rather than ritual center, 78 in Tang Changan one finds
a voracious appetite for contests and performance spectacles that ran the gamut
from the athletic (games of polo, kickball) to the punitive (public executions) to
the ritualistic (funeral processions, dirge singing, Buddhist rites).79 In the late
Tang, showcasing literary talent fit into this passion for urban spectacles in two
ways. First, prior to the actual academic test, aspirants seized opportunities to
demonstrate their literary prowess by writing publicly to showcase their advan-
tage. Second, the season-end celebration in the spring, for about two dozen new
degree holders and for onlookers at large, was both culmination and preview of
the tournament of talent.80
 Staging Talent in Urban Arenas 111

Literary prowess, defined both through the jinshi degree and independently
from it, made for urban theater that combined energy from these urban specta-
cles. In The Tale of Li Wa, we see in its musical contest scene a transmuted form
of literary performance. We also witness a clear flow of both values and activities
among the different performative venues in Changan: on the surfaces of public
monuments, during seasonal festivals, in the wide intersections of avenues, and
in the undulating alleyways of the pleasure quarters.
c ha p t e r f i v e

Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters

No book on the relationship between Changan and literati aspirants would be

complete without some discussion of the capitals pleasure quartersa city within
a city that captures the pitfalls and bounties the capital city offers an aspiring man
of letters. Pingkang Ward, also known as the northern ward (beili), was a resi-
dential enclosure on the eastern half of Changan, adjacent to the market. Ping-
kang was home to a large number of officials and elites, as well as Taoist and Bud-
dhist temples.1 An enclave of courtesan households clustered in the northeastern
quadrant of the ward. Here, commerce met literary aspirations and pretensions;
examinees met the gendered Other. The pleasure quarters is germane to our ex-
amination of Changan as site and opportunity for literati transformation, because
it was shaped by the glamour of examination culture, spurred on by opportuni-
ties for urban commerce, and its literati visitors entered this world with the aware-
ness (as elaborated in chapter 4) that their talent could be displayed and their
reputation bolstered by its residents and fellow visitors. Bai Juyi, for example, rem-
inisced later
in his career over roaming in the Pingkang Ward with friends;
in his lines, Pingkang was both spatially and temporally evocative of his youth-
ful amusements and of his connection to those who had been close to him in
those days.2
This chapter is a study of how the precareer literati engaged with this corner
of Changan, and the ways in which the sheen of literary talent was situated within
the framework of sexual commerce, artifice, and theatricalityall of which served
as the working foundations of the pleasure quarters.

An Important Source on the Pleasure Quarters

The cornerstone of our case study of the pleasure quarters is the topical collec-
tion Anecdotes from the Northern Ward, which contains a dozen anecdotes that
describe various literaticourtesan interactions, ranging from banquet banter,
poetry exchanges, and faux pas committed by the less adept.3 The composition of
Northern Ward (preface dated 884) and its narrated events (about a decade be-

112
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 113

fore) straddle the cataclysmic year 881, during which the troops of Huang Chao
sacked both capitals, Changan and Luoyang. In recounting events prior to this
disaster during the era of peace, Sun Qi takes a stance as an examinee in
Changan.4 In the preface, Sun Qi places himself squarely within examination cul-
ture in the prerebellion days:

I have repeatedly taken the examinations and have been a longtime dweller
of the capital. From time to time I also roamed in the [Pingkang] ward,
but certainly not because of its amusements. When I thought about how
things often reverse their course after reaching an apex, I suspected that
[all this] could not last. Thus, I wanted to record [what I saw] so that in
later eras it may serve as fodder for conversation.5

I suspected that all this could not last: readers familiar with the capital jour-
nal for the Song-dynasty capital of Kaifeng, A Dream of Splendors Past in the
Eastern Capital (Dongjing menghua lu), written over 250years after this moment,
may well recognize the pangs of loss in this preface. Yet here, in Sun Qis words,
the recollection cannot be called straightforwardly nostalgic.6 He writes about
something transient, to be sure, but he also distances himself from this firsthand
experience, protesting that his visits were not due to the amusements of the
lanes.7 The author shows us conflicting impulses of an interest in fleeting experi-
ences on one hand, and, on the other hand, a decorous response to keep them at
arms length.8 This is because most of the anecdotes in this collection deal with
experiences that may be called private, in that they are set up as the protected do-
mains of romance,9 but which cannot be sequestered from the more public eye
and the networks and pageantry of jinshi success. In important ways, the authors
ambivalence about the pleasure quarters amusements is about the conflicting
roles these experiences play in public and private life.
With its details redolent of a prerebellion Changan, this collection not only
supplements anecdotes of examination lore such as those in the collection Tang
Gleanings, but also adds to the limited glimpses we have of courtesan lives from
poetry exchanged between literati and individual courtesan-poetesses such as Li
Ye (fl. eighth century) and Yu Xuanji (fl. 860s) in Changan and Xue Tao (768
831) in Chengdu.10 Although we do not know much more about the author, inter-
nal textual evidence suggests that, by the time he was writing, he was well con-
nected in the official world: for example, his female cousin is mentioned in one
vignette as the wife of Zhao Chong (jinshi 872), who would later serve as exam-
iner in 890.11 We have no extant record of Sun Qis jinshi degree, but he seems to
have held significant posts after writing Northern Ward. A poem addressed to him
114Chapter 5

by Zheng Gu (ca. 851910; jinshi 887) and dated between 901 and904 alludes to
Zheng and Suns concurrent tenure as one of the remonstrance officials from 894
to 897.12 These and other biographical details mean that Sun Qi was in a position
to write about a time of precareer license and privilege from the perspective of an
established member of the ruling class, with a family power base in the auxiliary
capital of Luoyang.13
Recent studies of Northern Ward have moved beyond mining the collection
for its information on prostitution in the Tang capital; they focus on its role in a
Tang performance culture and as rhetoric that sheds light on the competitive male
community vying for cultural capital.14 In his study of Northern Ward in the con-
text of gender in early medieval and Tang writing, Paul Rouzer observes what he
calls the discourse of appreciation, in which the courtesans, as a unified group,
evaluated and recognized the clients in an alternate testing ground and thereby
provided reinforcement between courtesan culture and examination culture.15 He
concludes that writing about the pleasure quarters was about literati men and for
their own sake; the courtesans functioned to facilitate competition between them,
to fortify collective identity, and to accrue cultural capital in a homosocial
context in which curiously little is said about the women.16
I build upon but ultimately diverge from Rouzers characterization of the
Northern Ward as a male-centered community. The courtesans matteredeven
if their representations were penned by and shared among male literati. The
living room where the conversations and banter took placealong with the non-
literati neighborsmattered. The prices for banquets and entertainment mat-
tered, even if they were seldom mentioned directly. Most of all, the location of all
this within the urban social and commercial matrix of Changan mattered. Visi-
tors to the Pingkang Ward, along with the women who inhabited it, were part of a
social space that was the product of the newly emerging discourse of transforma-
tion for the cultural elite in Changan. The relationship between examinees and
courtesans was colored by their respectively liminal social positions: the men were
not-yet-officials while the women were neither-wives-nor-concubines. Given their
shared literacy, aspirations for higher status, and at times a sense of displacement,
men and women of the pleasure quarters shared uneasy alliances, given the (un-
spoken) knowledge that the courtesan households operated as businesses. Instead
of focusing on the parameters of romance and gender, as other scholars have done,
I examine the parameters of the courtesan household as a nexus profitably con-
necting urban commerce and literati culture, to show that Northern Ward and
the space it depicts stood at the intersection between urban culture and exami-
nation lore.
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 115

The courtesan houses were clustered together in three lanes (qu) in the north-
east section of the ward. In the introduction of Northern Ward, Sun Qi describes
a configuration of the courtesans with their own social hierarchy correlated to
their spatial coordinates: From the north gate of the Pingkang Ward, the three
lanes in the eastern quarter were where the courtesans all lived. The prominent
ones mostly lived in the southern and middle lanes. The one lane by the wall was
occupied by low-class courtesans and disdained by [those in] the other two lanes.17
In this profile, the most sought-after spaces are the most accessible spatially
and positioned close to the thoroughfare, while households languish in the cor-
ners along the walls. Each vignette in this collection of anecdotes is named after
either a courtesan or a brothel mother, and the recollections all begin with plac-
ing the household in one of the three aforementioned lanes. Thus organized, the
collection simulates a household register in narrative form, and the women por-
trayed therein constitute itinerary markers and mnemonic keys to roaming in this
part of Changan:

In front of the southern and middle lanes was the crossroad; those who
had recently been awarded office in court tended to come to visit in dis-
guise. The residences in these two lanes were all spacious and serene, each
with three living rooms or more, and with the front and back planted with
flowers and greenery; some [residences] had unusual [ornamental] rocks
and garden pots arranged symmetrically. The small halls hung bamboo
blinds and had couches, curtains, and the like.18

This was a place where clients were confronted by the tension between surface and
substance, between literati self-fashioning and the urban networks of trade and
commodity exchange that in fact undergirded such fashioning. To begin, we must
first address the discourse of literaticourtesan romance and its role in mutual
self-fashioning in the Pingkang Ward.

The Sheen of Fengliu

Contemporary discourse frequently used the term fengliu to describe the mutual
appreciation between literati men and courtesans (or courtesan-like women) in
Tang literature. Fengliu is inadequately translated into English as panache, gal-
lantry and feeling, or more loosely though conveniently rendered as romance.19
Between courtesans and literati, this ideal was part of a preoccupation with lyri-
cism and sentiment, and shaped the clientcourtesan relationship into a kind of
116Chapter 5

stylized mutual enchantment. The realm of fengliu was decidedly outside of the
official mechanisms of jinshi recruitment, and yet in the collective imagination,
it was also intricately entwined with the idea of literary talentand therefore of-
ficial success. It is in this sense that fengliu cannot be truly isolated from Changan
as the site of personal and political transformation for a man of letters.
Unaccounted Events from the Kaiyuan-Tianbao Reigns, a Five Dynasties col-
lection of anecdotes about events from two consecutive reigns of Xuanzong
(r.713756), recounts events from the golden era of the Tang. If not altogether
historically reliable, its entries give us an idea of how the halcyon days of the
Tang might have been imagined immediately after the dynastys collapse.20 An
entry in this collection characterizes the pleasure quarters this way: In Changan
was the Pingkang Ward where the courtesans lived. The young gallants of the
capital congregated there. Also, each year the new jinshi degree holders took their
calling cards on red stationery to roam and visit therein. People at the time called
this ward the thicket and seedbed of fengliu.21 The narratives of fengliu, thus en-
dowed with a local habitation and a name, are identified spatially with the state of
fengliu. It is also closely associated with an identifiable set of participants
courtesans, young gallants, and new degree holders.
Another entry in the same collection illustrates an archetypal depiction of an
attachment in this thicket:

In Changan, the illustrious courtesan Liu Guorong was beautiful and

could chant poems. She and the jinshi [degree holder] Guo Zhaoshu were
enamored with each other, and others did not dare to peek [at them]. Later,
Zhaoshu was given his first post as the Heavenly Chief Recorder and parted
from Guorong. The next morning he departed [for his post], and by the
time he reached Xianyang, Guorong had dispatched a maid on a pony to
give him a short letter that said: At the height of our supine rapture, I re-
sent that the cockcrow cuts short our affection; with our adoration yet to
reach its height, I lament that the hoofbeats are so without feeling. My heart
is strained and I will eat less because of you. Our next meeting I shall await,
in order to complete our nuptial bliss. Many young men of Changan
[Changan zidi] could recite [these lines] from memory.22

This instantiation of fengliu is archetypal, first of all, in that it engages the right
participants: it chronicles a moment in the relationship between a degree holder
and a verse-savvy courtesan. The relationship takes place in what Owen calls a
minimal society of election that constitutes a protected domain and shuts out
external compulsions.23 Mutual attachment (xiang ai) in this context valorizes acts
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 117

with strong and spontaneous affirmation of feeling and unfettered expression. The
note dispatched on a pony impetuously lays bare the courtesans longing: at the
moment of separation the courtesans actions are both spontaneous and passion-
ately indecorous.
In Northern Ward we see examples in which examinees and new degree re-
cipients (who were celebrated but were not yet conferred posts) make up the pre-
ferred clientele of the pleasure quarters. As mentioned in chapter3, even though
certain groups of officials were also allowed to visit the quarters, they did so with-
out the overt comfort and license that belonged to the examinees and new degree
holders, who could do so with a carefree sense of entitlement. According to North-
ern Ward, examination candidates [juzi], new jinshi degree holders, and staff of
the Three Monitor Offices who have not yet been entered onto the court registers
or have not been in the rotating services of the emperorthese all could visit
[the courtesans in the pleasure quarters].24
Along with examinees and new degree holders, who have not been given of-
ficial posts, the last group described here are officials who have not become faces
in court life, so to speak. This passage eloquently demonstrates the gradations of
official life vis--vis their freedom to roam in extraofficial space. The rule here
is that the more successful and more visible politically one became, the more dif-
ficult it was to visit the courtesans with abandon.
In one telling anecdote set in 874, during a gathering of new degree holders,
one of these men arrives with unsightly scratch marks on his face. He clumsily
explains that the wounds came from the assault of a courtesan infamous for
scratching clients who have offended her. Upon hearing this, his fellow degree
holders are shocked, but the chief examiner, Pei Zan, is said to have lowered his
head and laughed, and for a long time could not lift his head.25 From the chief
examiners reaction, we can see that he fully expected the new initiates brothel
visit; his laughter is evoked by the undignified facial injury resulting from the visit,
and the manner in which its victim discloses its cause.
Channels for upward mobility existed explicitly for the examinees through ex-
amination recruitment, and implicitly for courtesans through marriage into elite
households. In the same way that an examinee can transform into an official, cour-
tesans are capable of transforming into concubines and wives. Northern Ward
provides ample examples of courtesans who manage to become concubines to men
ranging from a Changan police officer to a petty clerk, or, in one case, the nephew
of Princess Guangdes husband. These anecdotes show courtesans knowingly and
willingly take up opportunities for status change. As is discussed in a later sec-
tion, Sun Qi devotes a long anecdote to a courtesan who proposes to him, asking
him to redeem her as a concubine.26
118Chapter 5

In a mordant poem addressed to a courtesan, the late-Tang poet Luo Yin makes
explicit the parallel between obtaining a degree (chengming) and marrying (jia),
both viewed as status elevation. With both cynicism and self-deprecation, he de-
picts two lives in woeful stasis:

Over ten springs passed since we parted over wine in Zhongling,

Again I see you, Yunying, still lissome enough to dance upon palms.
I have not made a name for myself, nor you married off,
So it appears that we are both not quite up to par.27

Both examinees and courtesans are transitional identities, Luo Yin suggests in his
verse, so perennial degree seekers and career courtesans must be similarly sec-
ond rate. Parallel desires on the part of courtesans and examinees bring them to-
gether as allies in the demimonde. Under the discourse of fengliu, their mirrored
experiences of waiting to be singled out, recognized, and integrated into sanc-
tioned social structure become poetic and narrative occasions.
The account of Liu Guorongs attachment to Guo Zhaoshu is also archetypal
in that it lends itself to avid and admiring spectators. In this case, as in many
others, these spectators are described as young men of Changan (Changan zidi),
and in comparable cases elsewhere are referred to more simply as haoshi zhe
busybodies or newsmongers. As these spectators recite and broadcast Liu Guo
rongs poems, her lines leave the private sphere of direct address and enter a collec-
tive corpus characterized by fengliu, of which the larger community partakes.
In other words, the culture of mutual literaticourtesan enchantment was a
discursive phenomenon that entailed collective exchanges, borrowings, and
perpetuation.28
Finally, this episode between the courtesan Liu Guorong and Guo Zhaoshu is
archetypal of fengliu in its temporality. The scene brackets Guo and Lius liaison;
it is remembered as an eternal climax. It does not continue past the courtesans
parting words. Any future negotiations are also conveniently and indefinitely
deferred: Our next meeting I shall await, in order to complete our nuptial
bliss.29 The perpetuation of their sentiment upon partingthrough the verbal
repetition of the community of onlookersensures that any subsequent obstacle
to romance is tactfully elided. Notice, too, that the liaison is contingent upon a
suspension of extrinsic social roles; it takes place just before Guo Zhaoshu doffs
his hempen clothes (jie he) and is conferred his first official postthat is, be-
fore he attains his postliminal state of being fully integrated into the empires
bureaucracy.
In this thicket of fengliu, passion and impulse are privileged and protected
from countervailing factors such as greed or physical force. Sun Qi makes clear
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 119

in his vignettes that courtesans cannot be compelled to admire anyone, nor be

made to appear in front of men who are too crass to understand that the appeal
of courtesans comes from their wit and literacy. In one counterexample of feng-
liu, Sun Qi details a humiliating foray into the demimonde by one Liu Tan (jinshi
877), a wealthy sixteen-year-old son of a former minister who arrives in Changan
as a tribute scholar from Yangzhou. In the anecdote, Liu wrongly believes that the
courtesan with the best reputationone Jiangzhen or Crimson Goddesswould
go to the highest bidder. When she repeatedly refuses his escalating offers, he de-
cides to outmuscle her: he bribes a functionary who is said to be able to control
the courtesans. The functionary then abducts Jiangzhen, but in the end the young
client does not get what he expects:

Having taken this enormous bribe, [the functionary] went straight off into
the lanes. He gave chase and bundled [Jiangzhen] into a sedan chair and
carried her off to the banquet. She arrived with disheveled hair and a face
streaming with tears. As soon as Liu lifted the curtain [of her sedan] and
took a look, he sent her sedan chair back where it came from. By now Liu
had already spent over a hundred gold pieces on her.30

As Paul Rouzer has already pointed out, this anecdote illustrates the vulgar-
ity of Liu Tan, who dispenses money where discernment is required.31 As a young
newcomer to Changan (despite his fathers power and wealth), Liu Tan in this an-
ecdote makes a series of neophyte mistakes in his first foray into the pleasure
quarters, ignorant of its cultural logic. Liu wrongly equates reputation with beauty
and assumes that money is the only currency in the demimonde.
As it turns out, the Northern Ward the author describesfrom the perspec-
tive of an insideroperates neither purely on commerce, nor on the pure senti-
ment propagated by the discourse of fengliu. In the following sections I give close
and contextual reading of three cases from Northern Ward in which Sun Qi gives
the most complex articulation of the negotiation of value in the urban nexus of
Pingkang. The first case is one of an elegant courtesans posthumous disgrace; the
second, the case of a thwarted marriage proposal from a courtesan to her client.
The third case is a rarely studied story named Zhang Zhuzhu that transforms
the fraught discourse of courtesanliterati romance in crucial and interesting
ways.

Sentiment, Money, and Artifice in the Pingkang Economy

Northern Ward not only shines light on courtesanliterati culture but also pays
attention to its shadows. By shadows I mean a kind of chiaroscuro that throws
120Chapter 5

into relief practices that are required to maintain and propagate discursive prac-
tices of fengliu, gesturing toward unseen networks of consumption and collabo-
ration.
Fengliu operates on the illusionhowever fragilethat men and women are
commensurate partners in the embodiment, discernment, and deployment of po-
etry as expressions of genuine feeling. But even as this discursive culture acquired
compelling force, its generative rules and criteria of behavior were nonetheless
never simply given. Northern Ward, by depicting the pleasure quarters as a site of
textual production with a cultural logic of its own, bring to light this uneasiness
and precarious balance of lyrical ideal and urban commerce. As glimpsed in an-
ecdotes, Pingkang as social space could not be entirely walled off from the mone-
tary concerns and entrepreneurial vigor of the urban setting from which it evolved
and grew.
That the demimonde is a form of commerce is often unsentimentally exposed
by Sun Qis accounts in which he enumerates the going price for buying out a cour-
tesan as a provisional concubine (one thousand cash per day) or the rate for a
courtesans virginity (three thousand cash), as well as his mention of disputes be-
tween courtesans and their brothel mothers over monetary matters. The subli-
mated currency of poetry bestowed on the courtesans does not always adequately
disguise the actual monetary transactions that serve as the demimondes opera-
tive foundation.
In one anecdote, a poem fails to accomplish its intended function as carrier
of the central values of fengliu and becomes instead the subject of mockery. Here,
the courtesan Wang Susu, characterized as witty and humorous, ejects a client
(Li Biao) whose verse hits the wrong note. His poem to her is as follows:

Flowers of the late spring flutter about her door,

As noble princes seeking paradise draw in their dusty robes.
The immortal in the grotto is full of affection and grace,
She keeps Lad Liu and does not let go.32

This poems rhetorical strategies are conventional; the immortal in the grotto
(dongzhong xianzi) is a common reference to brothel courtesans and can be traced
back to the early Tang text Wanderings in the Immortals Grotto (You xian ku)
by Zhang Zhuo (660732).33 Similarly, Lad Liu, a literary allusion to Liu Chen the
accidental tourist in the empyrean, is also a natural extension of the poetic trope
paralleling visits to courtesans and seekers of immortality.34 Conventional
though it is, the poems premisethat it is the immortal who beseeches the vis-
itor to stayexposes its writer to ridicule. Susu hesitates only a moment before
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 121

she says to him, Say whos keeping you here? Dont spout nonsense! She then
dashes off a poem of her own, rhyming his:

Strange that the dogs and chickens are spooked and run amok,
I see but a skinny page, a bony horse, an old hemp-clad examinee.
Who oh who thoughtlessly invited these loafers in?
Put down your cash and out the door with youquick!35

Her poem is stripped of the discursive trappings that otherwise adorn these
exchanges in the demimonde: she substitutes the language of Taoist immortality
with colloquial references to the clients poverty, age, and overall lack of glamour.
If this is not exactly a poem of high literary caliber, the focus here is on the quick-
ness of the riposte and on the outcome it produces. Wang Susu deflates Li Biaos
poetic image as the immortality seeker, and reminds him that he is not entitled
to a refund. The anecdote continues as the humorless man blushes thoroughly be-
fore ordering his carriage to drive off. Later, the anecdote tells us that whenever
Wang Susu sees people from his household, she would ask if Mr.Kicked-Out is
still around.36
The following two examples from Northern Ward, in more extensive ways, call
attention to the artifice and theatricality that underlie the discourse of courtesan
literati appreciation, as well as the network of forces that makes the discourse
possible. In these accounts, we witness fengliu in dishabille, as its participants slip
out of their discursive roles.
The first anecdote introduces the courtesan Yan Lingbin from the more pres-
tigious southern lane of the quarter:

Yan Lingbin lived in the southern lane [of Pingkang]. Her deportment
was full of fengliu, her proclivities rather elegant, and [she] was also es-
teemed highly by contemporary worthies. She wielded brush and inkstone
and authored verses. Whenever she saw an examinee, she received him
with the utmost courtesy and often begged some poem or song to retain
as a parting gift. Her coffers were always filled with multicolored statio-
nery.37

By emphasizing the mutual esteem between Yan and the examinees, she is here
portrayed as an embodiment of the lyrical ideal. The multicolored stationery
she has amassed, like the examinees red calling cards described in the entry in
Unaccounted Events from the Kaiyuan-Tianbao, testifies to her affinity withand
affirmation bymen of letters.
122Chapter 5

As this account continues, Yan Lingbin becomes gravely ill. On a fine spring
day, sighing as she watches the flowers fall, she writes a poem lamenting her im-
minent death:

She then ordered a servant boy, Take this [poem] for me to the Xuanyang
and Qinren wards [nearby]. If you meet any recent degree holders or
examinees, present them with this and say that Miss Yan of the lanes will
await their visit in spite of her illness. She then made her family set out
wine and snacks to wait for [these guests]. Soon after, several showed up.
They played music and drank until dusk. With tears streaming down,
Lingbin said: Im not long for this world, so I hope that you will each
compose a dirge to send me off with.38

If Yan Lingbins story were to end here, it would have evoked longing and regret,
consistent with the culture of fengliu. As a point of comparison, we notice that
Yan Lingbins story, its arc of events as well as her lament, resemble the following
funerary inscription from about the same time (870), written by a literatus client
for a courtesan in Luoyang:39

Shen Zirou from Wuxing was one of the beauties of Luoyangs courtesan
houses. Her childhood name was Xiaojiao. In Luoyang, be it the noblemen
of fengliu disposition, or the well-known literati of broad refinement,
when they sought her out with lavish fees, she always responded with
eagerness and solicitude, appraised the grades of high and low in conver-
sation, and resolved never to lower her ambition [zhi]....She was skilled
musically and exquisite at singing accompanied by stringed instruments;
her nimble intelligence was endowed from heaven, and she was by nature
kind and filial.
The yin year of the Xiantong Reign was plagued by epidemics. Across
the neighborhoods, no one was spared. One day Zirou slept late in her bou-
doir and received [me] while still under her quilt. We took our pleasure to
the full, but she suddenly sighed: I have been fortunate to receive your
extensive favor, and vow to steadfastly keep your faith. Even so, I think
about the thinness of my lot and fear that I will be swept off by the plague
within the month. Though fortune-telling might avert it, I still fear there
is no way out [of this disaster]. I thought at the time that she lacked com-
forting news and that her sadness gave rise to such words. It happened to
be a time of thriving scenery with flowers all in bloom, so I invited every-
one in her house to come drink and make merry. Yet before ten days
passed, her maid came with news of her illness. It proceeded as quickly as
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 123

thunderclaps and lightning or the spread of fire by wind: medicine was of

no help and she passed away soon after.40

The inscription not only uses the explicit term fengliu but also mobilizes other im-
ages inherent to the discourse: the courtesans association with cultured clients,
her proclivities as a kind of ambition (zhi), and the last drunken feast with the
client on a bright spring day. Her sudden death is mourned with references to un-
diminished passion. The inscription is an apotheosis of a figure whose status as
the belle of the courtesan houses maintains its integrity to the end.
Replete with feeling and avowed hopes of its posthumous continuation, this
funerary inscription gives us a glimpse of the kind of commemoration Yan Ling-
bin might have hoped to obtain in her last days. Unlike this funerary inscription,
however, the account of Yan Lingbins death in Northern Ward continues past the
elegiac moment. In doing so, it quickly reveals the outer limits of the discourse of
fengliu: Yans elegy for herself becomes unmasked after her death, which in turn
ruptures the lyrical surface of this narrative. As the anecdote continues, it takes
an unexpected turn, to describe the reaction of her foster mother, the household
madam. Thus begins another layer of the story, one that would never have been
included in an epitaph: After [Yan Lingbin] died, on the day she was about to be
buried, her [foster] mother received several letters. She opened them and saw that
they were all dirges. She angrily tossed them out onto the street, saying, How is
this going to help me make ends meet!41
Being the head of a household in the southern lane, the most elegant of cour-
tesan addresses, the brothel mother may well have been literate herself, and may
even have been responsible for Yan Lingbins literacy. But at this point in this an-
ecdote, the mother turns to actual, rather than symbolic, currency in the Ping-
kang economy. The multicolored stationery that once attested to Yans worth is
now deprived of its symbolic value. Viewed through the eyes of the madam, po-
etry is exposed as counterfeit currency.
The unmasking of Yan Lingbins self-representation does not end here. Her
identity as the counterpart to men of letters is further unraveled. After her death,
we are told, commemorative dirges authored by examinees begin to circulate
widely throughout Changan and are widely sung by mourners.42 This propa-
gation of shared words and memories among a circle of audience-participants is
not unique to Yans situation, as we have already seen in the account of Liu Guo-
rong. What is remarkable here is that the expanding sphere of knowledge not only
transmits coded images of the culture of fengliu but also unmasks the nature of
its artifice. The last couplet of one of these dirges for Yan Lingbin alludes to a
neighbor and lover. It does so through a classical reference to the poet Song Yu
124Chapter 5

(fl. third century BCE), who had famously attracted a neighbor-admirer. The lines
read: Presiding over your death should be a host;/Song Yu is your neighbor to
the west.43 At this point the author discloses that Yan has allegedly had a liai-
son with a neighboring music player (yuegong) named Camel Liu (Liu Tuotuo).
The story then brings in Lius own testimony on Yan Lingbins life and career:
when asked if he were the Song Yu in question, the music player smiles and
implies that Yan Lingbin has had many lovers: There are plenty of [men like]
Song Yu around.44 At the hands of the literati whose esteem Yan has eagerly
sought, the self-fashioned lyrical beauty is posthumously parodied for her liaisons
outside the literati class. The narrative does not linger on the talented poetess who
died young, even as it avails itself of the familiar images and vocabulary of ro-
mance.
As Yan Lingbin recedes from the foreground of the anecdote, it brings to light
her mercenary brothel mother and her flute-player lover from the underclass, both
of whom are behind-the-scenes players outside the discourse altogether. Collective
complicity and cooperative silence on the part of the literati and the courtesans
are both required in order for the culture of romance to function. In this case, even
when Yan Lingbin was alive, her fellow courtesans maintained a cooperative si-
lence over her unseemly affair. The anecdote explains that one of Yans cohorts
once lets this knowledge slip in a moment of indiscretion, making an oblique refer-
ence to Yans affair with Camel Liu:

The courtesans all knew [Yan] dallied with a music-player as well as other
neighbors. They found this most shameful and hushed it up. [The courte-
san] Jiangzhen was once teasing Lingbin and the others, when she blurted
out, You shouldnt be so rude just because of your living arrangements,
but immediately appeared contrite. Later, those who were close to Jiang-
zhen and the others repeatedly asked about [this blunder], but in the end
all maintained their silence.45

Yans case posthumously reveals the fissures in the culture of fengliu. If the other
courtesans want to keep it a secret, it is because Lingbins affair outside the lite-
rati class matters to every courtesan: if exposed, it ruptures the symbiotic romance
in which courtesan and literatus are seen as partners in mutual enchantment. By
showing that a flute player can take the place of poets in her bed, Yan Lingbin has
broken the spell of fengliu.
When we place Pingkang Ward in its urban context, Camel Lius unruly pres-
ence in the story shows Sun Qis own awareness of the slippage between the
dirges lyrics and what is spoken between Camel Liu and his interrogators (Arent
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 125

you the Song Yu in question?). This is the simultaneous awareness of both the
artifice and enchantment of fengliu. As a related case of rupture, the next anec-
dote in Northern Ward, about a courtesan named Yizhi, begins with the familiar
ground of fengliu: the author details a series of poetry exchanges between him and
Yizhi, who is very bright and talented in letters and who singles out his po-
ems to her as the most satisfactory of all that she has received.46
Sun Qi writes that one day Yizhi, who frequently expresses melancholy over
her plight, asks him to buy her out as a concubine, by tearfully presenting him
with the following poem on red paper:

Forlorn day after day with no plans,

I deign not to confide my heart to just any mortal.
Unlike spilled water, I may yet be redeemed,
So I ask, immortal lad, have you an inkling or not?47

Yizhi inverts the usual reference to courtesans as immortals; she designates her
client as the immortal one, someone who stands out from the crowd and sees her
for someone other than a courtesan (spilled water). It is not unusual for Ping-
kang courtesans to cross the boundary between courtesanship and concubinage,
as elsewhere recorded in Northern Ward.48 However, though he knows he has been
chosen, Sun Qi does not want this boundary crossed, and writes: I thereupon
apologized to her: I know full well what you imply, but this is not suitable for
an examineewhat of this? Weeping again, she replied, Luckily, Im not on the
registers of the Imperial Music Bureau [jiaofang]. If you so wish, its but an ex-
pense of one or two hundred pieces of gold.49
Again, numbers and prices offer us some context. Her price, one or two
hundred pieces of gold, is about the same as the cumulative amount the afore-
mentioned Liu Tan rashly spent on Jiangzhen to goad her to a first meeting. But
again, Yizhi mentions this price in speech and not in her poem. In her poem the
language instead highlights plans (tu), inner turmoil (xinshi), and intention (yi).
True to the form of the culture of fengliu, where poetry is the normative vocabu-
lary of feeling, Yizhi insists that Sun Qi respond in writing. When he does, by
matching (rhyming) her poem, he asserts rather unsentimentally that fengliu should
be kept outside the elite home:

How could the young beauty have these long-ranging plans?

I cannot do this for you; indeed Im not the one.
The lotus mired in mud may yet be pristine
but cannot be transplanted into the homestead garden.50
126Chapter 5

In this pivotal exchange, Suns refusal to bring Yizhi into his household unequiv-
ocally affirms the social division between literati men and courtesans. Sun Qis
decision ruptures the discourse of sentiment that has been bilaterally maintained
through poetry and mutual admiration in the cultural space of Pingkang. It does
so by calling attention to its normative boundaries.
Not surprisingly, after this moment, romance, unmasked for its disingenuous
denial of institutional and monetary compulsions, can no longer be restored. Sun
Qi writes that after Yizhi reads his response, she weeps, says nothing further, and
her feelings toward him immediately cool. Sun Qi does not retract his initial
decision, and even though they exchange words later, it is only for Yizhi to affirm
their estrangement.51 Sun Qi ends this account by recording Yizhis personal his-
tory, in which she arrives in Changan because of a deceptive stranger from her
hometown. Rouzer aptly observes that Sun Qis choice of including this passage
may well be motivated by his wish to emphasize his own sensitivity rather than
callousness, and to underscore his role as the unconventional moralist in the
pages of this collection.52 For our purposes here, however, it is worthwhile to look
at her personal history more closely, beyond its function to exonerate the author.
This is what Yizhi tells him:

I was originally from Jieliang. Our home was next door to a music player
[yuegong], and when I was young, I learned needlework, singing and poem-
chanting in his household. In my adolescence I was deceived; I married a
traveler who said he was going to the capital for the selection of officials.
He brought me to the capital but having lied to me, left me here [in the
brothel]. In the beginning my [brothel] household treated me kindly
like a daughter. After a few months, however, they forced me to learn
drinking songs, and gradually bade me to receive clients. After that I
was deflowered by Police Officer Ji, and kept by the son of Prime Minister
Wei Zhou and by the son of Senior Princely Attendant Wei Zeng. They
must have supplied this household with over a thousand pieces of gold
[for my services]. During all this, my brothers came looking for me and
they wanted to discuss how to take me away, but I thought their means
were feeble, so I had no choice but to tell them: Im already a lost cause; I
fear that your efforts will be futile. I obtained a few hundred pieces of
gold [from that household] to give to my brothers. Wailing, we parted
forever.53

Reminiscent of Yan Lingbins frowned-upon dalliance with a musician, Yizhis

story strays beyond literati circles. In her story, her childhood education comes
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 127

from a musician neighbor, her arrival in Changan is the result of her falling vic-
tim to human trafficking, and her eventual entry into elite households comes after
extensive training in courtesanship. These experiences are emblematic of the
licit and illicit operations that make the pleasure quarters possible. Her personal
history, once narrated, intimates monetary exchanges and appropriations that
reinforce the fact that the thicket of fengliu is in fact staffed with suppliers, role-
players, performers, even indentured servants. In short, the author discloses alarger
network of forces, relationships, and players that operate behindeven beyond
the demimonde.
If this liaison with Yizhi differs from the lyrical romance of Liu Guorong and
Guo Zhaoshu in any fundamental way, it is that the author directly confronts the
courtesans connections to a world outside of the lyrical ideal. The relationship as
recounted here is neither sustained by an eternal climax of passion, nor is it pro-
tected from the intrusion of other urban dwellers. Both this story and that of Yan
Lingbin intimate a metonymic presence of an urban social matrix, which con-
stantly lurks behind the discourse of fengliu.
Sun Qi, then, proves himself the consummate savvy visitor: he sees the senti-
ment in the courtesan and is aware of the subsurface realities of her humbler birth
and her forced displacement. In fact, the abiding pattern in Northern Ward is the
fact that Sun Qi cannot delineate any one courtesan or any single moment in a
protected lyrical domain without also bringing to light this larger network of
stakeholders, evaluators, gatekeepers, and transmitters beyond the literati world,
many of whom are otherwise elided in literati writing. This condition manifests
itself in a new and intriguing way in the last tale in the collection.

The Power of the Alleyway

Yan Lingbins anecdote shows fengliu to have decidedly theatrical underpinnings,
and that it owes its upkeep to a supporting cast embedded in the urban network.
The same kind of network and its negotiated artifice are more explicitly visible in
The Story of Zhang Zhuzhu.54 More than any other vignettes in Northern Ward,
this narrative is shaped by the urban context. It shows the interplay between
linguistic facility and sexual success, an interplay we find in the discourse of
fengliu, but it also demonstrates the importance of metropolitan, situational
knowledge. It also shows how the pleasure quarters, drawing together literati
clients, merchants, and other commoners in spatial contiguity, might have shaped
the production of text: by leaving a literary imprint of the networks of informa-
tion and judgment found in the vibrant and audible street life of Pingkang.
128Chapter 5

I would like to start with an overview of the story, focusing on many of the
spatially specific details that have no parallel in other vignettes in the collection.
The protagonist, Zhang Zhuzhu, a girl described as intelligent and musical, has
betrothed herself to a childhood sweetheart living next door, the impoverished
Pang Fonu. This idyllic relationship is threatened when a wealthy merchant, Chen
Xiaofeng (Little Phoenix), makes an offer for her virginity. Before he lays claim to
her, however, Zhuzhu devises a way to consummate her nuptial pact with Fonu,
aided by an old woman serving as a go-between. The unsuspecting Xiaofeng pays
handsomely for what he thinks is Zhuzhus deflowering, and thinks of marrying
her with the full rites.55
Zhuzhu is now faced with the choice between her wealthy client and Fonu,
and maintains fidelity to her betrothed:

At the time, Xiaofengs was a wealthy family in the Pingkang Ward, and
his conveyances and clothing were quite splendid. Fonu was hired help at
the Xu capital administration and could not provide food [for himself].
Her mother and brothers knew this, the neighbors poked fun at [the
couple], but Zhuzhu refused to forsake Fonu through and through. Point-
ing to the well, she said, If you keep coercing me, its going to be plop
[gudong]and that will be that.56

As Zhuzhu shows her mettle, colorful and colloquial language seeps into the clas-
sical Chinese in the last line, and incorporates the onomatopoeia gudong to de-
scribe her jumping down the well.57 With this language, the story departs stylis-
tically from other anecdotes in the collection; in lieu of the lyrical, brush-wielding
beauty in the manner of Yan Lingbin, Zhuzhu emerges instead as a plucky hero-
ine of the alleyway.
The story now rapidly moves to the height of its tensions, and at the tales heart
are the spontaneously composed ditties that circulate in the alleyway and play a
crucial role in disseminating neighborhood gossip. In chapter4, we saw that the
urban network of arbiters commented on examination decisions and each others
literary prowess. What emerges here is a different community of beholders: it re-
lies on orally circulated colloquial verses to achieve similar functions of evalua-
tion and social commentary.
Ditties composed by roving youngsters are mentioned more than once in
Northern Ward. In an earlier entry on the romance between the examinee
Guangyuan and the courtesan Laier, on the day examination results are an-
nounced, youngsters of the capital (jingshi xiao zidi) rush to the courtesans door
to inform her that her paramour has failed the examination and that she has there-
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 129

fore pinned her hopes on the wrong examinee.58 In this case, roving bands of
youngsters are quick to grasp the import of public, freshly disseminated infor-
mation. From it, they improvise contentious play.
Although it is not the first time street urchins have made an appearance to
unsettle protagonists, in Zhuzhus story, here they emerge as a coherent entity and
play a significant, even decisive, role in the plot. In the first round of exchanges,
frivolous youths or urchins (qingbo xiaoer) in the neighborhood who know
about Zhuzhus relationship with Fonu begin to chant, Xiaofeng has been duped
by Zhuzhu. As a cohesive and omniscient chorus of voices, these urchins com-
pose the following ditty:

Lord Zhang tipples but Lord Li gets tipsy;

Sheng the Sixth sires a son that Zheng the Ninth adores.
The rooster of the house destroys a reputation;
Xiaofeng from the south end pays three grand.59

The ditty has a distinct spatial signature. The first half of the first couplet is a cat-
egorical comment about swapped identities and misplaced consequences.60 The
second half of the ditty cites a specific case of being deceived in these alleys: a man,
Zheng the Ninth (Zheng Jiulang) raises a son with his provisional concubine
Xiaofu, not knowing that he is in fact not the father. The text explains, Xiaofu
was bought out [as a temporary concubine] by Zheng the Ninth, but carried on
an affair with Sheng the Sixth in the lane. She gave birth to a son, and [Zheng of]
Xingyang cared for him generously.61
In the dittys first couplet, we already see the social scope of its content: no
one, not even a man with an aristocratic surname (Zheng of Xingyan), is free from
the street urchins surveillance. We also notice that although the ditty conveys
duplicity, the first couplet also refers to acts of misappropriation or misrecogni-
tion on the part of men. The concern here is for a man to astutely discern a situa-
tion and not be fooled by appearances.
From the first couplet onward, the chant moves gradually toward references
of increasing specificity and relevance. Xiaofeng is referred to by name and
asfrom the south end (nantouXiaofeng), as is the price of three thousand he
pays (na sanqian). However, the ditty leaves unnamed the pivotal party, the
rooster of the house (she xia xiong ji) whose analogous action amounts to having
destroyed a reputation (shang yi de).
If a riddle is a set of clues, then the cryptic third line is, of course, the key to
the cautionary riddle. Upon hearing these words on the street, Xiaofeng, the target
130Chapter 5

audience, does not solve the riddle. He does not make the association that the
virtue in the ditty might be a reference to Zhuzhus virginity, which Fonu has
in fact acquired instead of him.
With this ditty circulating on the street, Xiaofeng is left in doubt but [does]
not take notice [of the truth] (yi er wei cha).62 Zhuzhu, on the other hand, cun-
ningly and boldly puts forth another interpretation, in order to keep Xiaofeng
from learning the truth. She explains to Xiaofeng that he has misheard the words
and that they are in fact the following:

The rooster of the house loses a foot(ing);

Xiaofu on the street incurs three blows.63

The reinterpreted ditty is altered by substitutions of similar-sounding pivot

words.64 This new version is also rooted in the quotidian particulars of the al-
leyway. Zhuzhu explains its meaning to Xiaofeng: the day before, Fonus rooster
injured its foot, and Fonus father mistook a certain Tian Xiaofu as the culprit,
and consequently roughed up this Xiaofu.65 Zhuzhu not only manages to divert
the dittys targeted criticism with minimal substitutions, she even keeps its over-
all coherence. The revised ditty is still about male misappropriation and misrecog-
nition, even if its core example (of Fonus father beating up the wrong perpetra-
tor) seems slightly contrived.
To bolster the authenticity of ditty two over ditty one, Zhuzhu asks Xiaofeng,
Besides, what does it mean for a rooster to destroy a reputation anyway?66 With
this rhetorical question, she implies that given two versions, the one that makes
more concrete sense must be the correct one. Xiaofeng, we are told, cannot get a
word in edgewise: he neither discerned [shen] nor was aware [yu], so he had noth-
ing to say in response.67
The battle of wits does not end here. Rather audaciously, Zhuzhu further
strengthens her argument by mobilizing popular opinion. She calls on the
members of her household to poke fun at Xiaofeng, who by now feels foolish.
Fonu makes his own contribution to the revisions authenticity. He binds the
claw of a rooster with thread to make it limp; he then summons the street ur-
chins to sing Zhuzhus version of the ditty. Xiaofeng, with a limping rooster in
front of him and urchins chanting around him, is now fed an audiovisual, fool-
proof rendition of Zhuzhu and Fonus interpretation. This multilateral plan
works well. Upon hearing the altered lyrics from the urchins, Xiaofeng regrets
having harbored suspicions about Zhuzhu and returns to her household with an
elaborate banquet.
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 131

However, Zhuzhu and Fonus success at changing the word on the street is rela-
tively short-lived. The next morning, Xiaofeng hears a third ditty composed by
urchins, which presents new information:

Dont take Pang the Eldest for a buckwheat lump;

Inside his skin hes none too feeble.
Not fearing Phoenixs frontal hit,
He takes a cord to tie up the roosters foot.68

The key difference is that it twice names Fonu (Pang the Eldest) and identi-
fies him as the perpetrator of the deception, joining the ranks of Lord Zhang and
Sheng the Sixth. It also explicitly describes Fonus brazenness in wronging
Xiaofeng. This third ditty, best summarized as Pang Fonus foul play, is at such
a level of specificity that its meaning is unmistakable even to Xiaofeng. This time,
Xiaofeng (the phoenix in the ditty) finally understands the message, after which
he stops visiting Zhuzhu altogether. Despite having been exposed by the neigh-
borhood gossip mill, the lovers eventually get what they aspire to: Fonu moves up
in his career
and weds Zhuzhu with full rites, and the story ends by contrasting
their ascendant prosperity with the declining family fortunes of Xiaofeng, who
gets a raw deal from Zhuzhu as well as from life.
Zhuzhus story relies upon the cunning use of languagea cunning that un-
derstands its medium of propagation. If the collaborative revising of the ditties
shows us anything, it is the young couples adaptive quickness in manipulating
the media machine in their surroundings, contrasted with Xiaofengs slow up-
take. The alleyway ditty in Zhuzhus story, repeatedly improvised and updated,
brings into sharp focus a web of competing values and sympathies. This web is
woven with self-enforced local justice and informed by a flow of information
(transparent to everyone except the cuckolded Xiaofeng). Sitting in judgment
against bad faith and improper behavior are the ubiquitous street urchins who
create and chant the ditties. Like the nameless entities described in Tang Glean-
ings, these urchins function as a gang of gadflies to bring up contrary points of
view and, in this case, disclose market deceptions in the world of sexual commerce:
if Xiaofeng has paid for exclusive access to Zhuzhu and her virginity, then it is
only right for Zhuzhu to provide what has been promised. Counterpoised to this
judgment is the implicit belief that the bond of feeling between Zhuzhu and Fonu
takes precedence over the interests of her client. Also intervening in the affair are
Zhuzhus household members, who act at first to thwart the love affair in favor of
money and later become Zhuzhus collaborators. On the young couples side
132Chapter 5

besides luck and ingenuityis also the old woman who helps the couple connect
at crucial moments. As a go-between who bridges the social and spatial barriers
between the lovers, she serves an analogous function as the procuress in The Story
of Huo Xiaoyu, the vivacious maidservant in The Story of Yingying, and as the
sister-in-law in Dalliance in the Immortals Cave whose function is ritualistic
rather than pragmatic. Although here her presence is unobtrusive, with hindsight
we recognize in the old woman the more officious go-between role that would be-
come a prototype in later vernacular novels such as The Plum in the Golden Vase
(Jin ping mei).
Many of the storys plot motifs also anticipate the vernacular short story from
the Song and Ming. In this story we already see the setting of an urban household,
the development of a relationship that is not socially sanctioned, and highly col-
loquial language with gamy exuberance. The background of Zhuzhus story is also
thrumming with popular amusementscockfights and roosters that can be de-
ployed as props.69 The storys urban alley is an aisle full of noises: on the last morn-
ing, Xiaofeng is said to have escaped from the din of Zhuzhus house onto the
street, only to be besieged by the urchins renewed singing.70
Being part of this urban milieu, the lovers subscribe to a kind of romance with
its own cultural logic, vocabulary, and currency. In Zhuzhus tale the alleyway
ditty replaces written verse, and the community of verse readers and appraisers
is replaced with a vigilant gang of street urchins. Rather than poetry exchange,
which drives the relationship of literaticourtesan lovers as described else-
where, in Zhuzhus case the exhibition of talent is redefined: it includes having
self-knowledge, social cunning, and urban savoir faire. Instead of comparing her
lover to Song Yu or Sima Xiangru, for example, Zhuzhus pet name for Pang Fonu
refers to a rebel leader with the same surname, Pang Xun (d. 869).71 Just as allu-
sions to written classics constitute shared knowledge for literaticourtesan pairs,
here we may infer that the legend of this rebel (as a kind of folk hero) was in the
conversational repertoire of their shared childhood.
Most importantly, the alleyway ditty thrives on a network of information, the
kind we have already seen in examination culture. The ditties form a nuanced and
dynamic discourse of accusation, cover-up, corroboration, and renewed accusa-
tion. To be properly equipped to understand the information conveyed in the first
ditty, a hearer like Xiaofeng must have both linguistic and social competence. The
former comes from being able to decode euphemism and analogies, and the
latter comes from maintaining a somewhat omniscient perspective of social
behavior.
Looking at Northern Ward as a whole, if we take the story of Yizhi as the texts
autobiographical center, one that concerns the authors immediate self, immedi-
 Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters 133

ate environment, immediate associates, and so on, then we can see that the story
of Zhuzhu may appear to be outside this sphere of contact. Yet Zhuzhus world is
unmistakably also a part of Pingkang Ward, whose spatial configuration Sun Qi
has taken pains to delineate at the beginning of the collection. Even though there
is no obvious literati involvement in Zhuzhus story, we can nonetheless trace the
serpentine connections that lead Zhuzhu back to the author through two degrees
of separation. First, Zhuzhus affair, along with the ditty that uncovers it, is men-
tioned in conjunction with another courtesan, one Xiaofu, whose deception over
her sons paternity is presented as the social analog of Zhuzhus selling Little Phoe-
nix her first night: And soon, it happened that at the same time, the foster daugh
ter of Wang Tuaner of the northern lane, Xiaofu, was bought out [as a temporary
concubine] by Zheng the Ninth, but carried on an affair with Sheng the Sixth
in the lane. She gave birth to a son, and [Zheng of] Xingyang cared for him gen-
erously.72
This courtesan Xiaofu in fact serves as a bridge that shows us that the authors
world of literary refinement and the alleyway world of Zhuzhu are not at all far
apart: Xiaofu is the sister of the authors paramour, Yizhi, also known as Fu
niang, and both of them live in the household of Wang Tuaner in the southern
lane (first house from the western end). The author tells us: I studied [for the
jinshi curriculum] with other young men when I was in Changan. When we grew
weary or bored, we visited [the Wang household]. We sat in a circle with the two Fus
[Funiang and Xiaofu], took on pure conversation and elegant drinking, and their
fetching demeanors were especially evident.73 Thus, from the author to Yizhi, from
Yizhi to her sister Xiaofu, from the illustrious Zheng clan of Xingyang to the
rooster-keeping family of Fonu living next to Zhuzhu, the story takes us through
a spatially contiguous network of urbanitespeople who would otherwise have
been separated by conventional social boundaries.
If Zhuzhus world of urchins and ditties seems incongruous to Sun Qi, whose
favorite courtesan proposes to him only in poetry and requests that he reply in
kind, the author makes no attempt to obliterate its otherness. Rather than an eth-
nographic anecdote, this representation of an alternative practice of self-expression,
pledging of feeling, and even opinion-mongering speaks to the metropolitan na-
ture of the demimonde.

Conclusion
When an examinee entered the undulating lanes of the Pingkang pleasure quar-
ters, he entered a subculture of Changan shaped by the gendered space of the cour-
tesan household, by the glamour of examination culture, and by opportunities
134Chapter 5

for urban commerce that came about from the large influx of examinees and from,
as Sun Qi notes, the increasing wealth accompanying examinees and degree win-
ners. Although the Pingkang Ward, as an enclave, enjoyed a reputation as the
idealized, lyrical thicket of fengliu, examples from Northern Ward show that the
same thicket had an unmistakable metropolitan fingerprint. This urban charac-
teristic was a product of what happens, to paraphrase Mary Elizabeth Berry, when
strangers are massed together and everything is for sale.74 In Northern Ward, even
as Sun Qi writes about the Pingkang courtesans poetic savvy and quick wit, his
vignettes simultaneously shed light on their role as cultural brokers and on the
heterogeneity of the quarters residents.
All three anecdotes discussed in this chapter offer insights into the practices
of information propagation, valuation, and selective transmission that operate
continuously as part of examination culture and the discursive culture of fengliu.
Just like Zhuzhus extraordinary story, the anecdotes of Yizhi and Yan Lingbin,
set at varying distances outward from Sun Qis immediate social circle, illustrate
the scintillating points of contact between literati culture and a less visible world
of urban alleys and networks. Zhuzhus story is a kind of radioactive tracer that
makes visible the channels and flows of information, desire, and resources in an
urban center, the social panorama of which we are otherwise not privileged to see.
The Pingkang Ward as a cultural space may appear to have its own operating
license for romance, but it was by no means insular. This topical collection of an-
ecdotes is as much about the courtesans relationship with literati life and exami-
nation culture as it is about the very spatial logic of the lanes, revealing a city
within a city bustling with denizens and activities well beyond what is normally
written about in the context of elite interests.
 Epilogue

When Gaston Bachelard coined the term topoanalysis to mean a systematic

psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives,1 he had in mind interior,
domestic spaces, those that are far smaller in scale than the various urban space
of Tang Changan. Yet the nooks and crannies of space in Changan, as described
in narratives of experience, nonetheless corroborate Bachelards observation on
what space is for: At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we
know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the beings stabilitya being who
does not want to melt away, and who, even in the past, when he sets out in search
of things past, wants time to suspend its flight. In its countless alveoli space con-
tains compressed time. That is what space is for.2
The countless alveoli in Changan, I would add, also contained compressed
identities waiting to be unfolded and expressed to the full, and help us retrieve
lost ligatures between senses of place and a sense of the self. The corpus of writ-
ing examined in this book variously captures these pockets of space and the fleet-
ing moments of change and anticipation. On the walls of the Cien Pagoda, jinshi
hopefuls and degree holders leave poems and other written traces of their liter-
ary fame; the selfsame wall, full of such traces, appears in the dreams of men like
Yang Jingzhi, who want their sons names to appear there, too. Nearby, also in
the southeastern part of Changan, the Serpentine Pond recreation area holds
springtime celebrations for new degree holders such that, decades later, people like
Liu Yuxi still thought of themselves as men of the Apricot Garden; in a temple
atop the hills inside Xinchang Ward, a panoramic map of the empire reminds
one examinee of his remote origin, but also of his conviction that the capital is
the place to put down roots. Among the three undulating lanes in the northeast
quadrant of Pingkang Ward, one young man injudiciously writes his name on a
courtesans lintel before the end of his fathers mourning period, while his friend, on
his many visits to the first household westward in the front lane of the same en-
clave, disappoints his favorite courtesan, who has hopes of becoming a concubine
his concubine.

135
136Epilogue

The texts I call narratives of experience presented in the preceding pages do

not belong to a single genre, specific movement, or individual author. Rather, they
constitute shards of a lens that showcases a metropolitan consciousness in the
ninth century.
This consciousness, as I have argued, is made legible in narratives
that describe new domains of experience associated with the social spaces in the
capital. In an urban nexus that combines the cult and professionalization of lit
erature with commerce, forms of urban space at the human scale evoke retrospec-
tion of personal transformation, along with concerns of how best to fashion the
literati self.
As Richard Lehan argues in his compendium of literary paradigms to con-
ceptualize European cities, as literature gave imaginative reality to the city, ur-
ban changes in turn helped transform the literary text.3 Walter Benjamin notes
that it was in Baudelaire that Paris first becomes a subject of lyric poetry.4 In the
case of China, literature and city (neither of which should be referred to in
the singular) did not simply reflect each others existence as they came into be-
ing. The systematic chronicling of urban existence for its own sake came relatively
late in the history of Chinese literature and in the history of Chinese cities, and it
was never simply given that writing transparently represented space.5 Writing and
space require an intermediary to find each otherand to find their way to us. For
the Tang, our intermediaries are the wenren writers of the ninth century, who
come to us not as fully formed members of the literati elite, but rather as liminal
entities whose identities are unfolded (and complicated) by the social spaces of
Changan. Benjamin was not thinking of these Tang writers when he wrote that
the flneur in nineteenth-century Paris is still on the threshold, of the city as of
the bourgeois class. Neither has yet engulfed him; in neither is he at home, and
yet the condition he identifies predates the flneur. For the Tang writers, it is be-
cause of their not-at-homeness that their accounts offer glimpses of living in
Changan, replete with its inherent spatial logic.
Here it is worth saying a few words about texts and practices that come after
the Tang dynasty. As for the intermediaries between cities and texts, the social
and political upheaval of the tenth century brought changes in both their com-
position and their ideological bent. Following the collapse of the Tang, the civil
service examination and official service continued to confer legitimacy on edu-
cated men, and geographical mobility continued to define them.6 However, with
the demise of the aristocracy and their capital-centered bases of prestige and
power, the relationship between lettered men and the capital would inexorably
shift. By the Song, both education and recruitment became more systematic and
local, taking place variously at county and prefectural as well as imperial levels.
As examination protocols became more tightly regulated, it was no longer possi
 Epilogue137

ble to find oneself favored to be on the degree list simply by having ones talents
recognized, as in the Tang, outside of examination channels.
There came, too, changes in the very nature and infrastructure of cities and
imperial capitals, as they became more openly commercial. From the Song dy-
nasty onward, we also begin to have access to writings about city life by people
other than the literati elite. This allows us to speak of a rise in urban literature, or
perigraphy, to use Stephen Wests coinage for the capital journal, A Dream of
Splendors Past in the Eastern Capital (Dongjing menghua lu), which does not ad-
here to established literary conventions of writing about the capital city.7
These changes from the Song onwardin the available textual record, in eco-
nomic and social developments in urban centerswould impact how we see the
city and its lettered denizens. Later still, with the inception of the nation-state,
the capitalist economy, and the self-consciously modern, notions of the city and
of its educated elite would require new ontological categories and new vocabu-
lary. Nonetheless, even given these sea changes in cities and their dwellers, down
to the early twentieth century, urban space (such as Beijing circa 1919, the year of
the May Fourth Movement) would continue to mold and refine identities for the
educated class, manifest in the newly evolved and no less fraught categories of stu-
dent or youth, each with its own complex epistemological histories.8
I began this project with the simple desire to retrieve some fragments of ex-
perience by a group of people who lived over a millennium ago in a place we now
call Xian. It is still worthwhile to revisit this fact: we find an unusual amount of
vitality and sense of possibility in narratives such as The Tale of Li Wa, Lu Yong
(the flour addict), and the account of an impersonator of the plain-clothed em-
peror. This kind of vitality behooves us to reconceptualize and reimagine these
texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than being confined to bib-
liographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. They are the liter-
ary imprint that arose out the literatis shifting relationship to the Changan that
was the crucible of their identity, even if readers of later ages selectively retained
their elements of romance, adventure, or even disillusionment, and forgot that they
were once closely entwined with the siren call of the capital city.
This page intentionally left blank
 Notes

The following abbreviations are used in the notes and bibliography:

BJYJJJ Bai Juyi, Bai Juyi ji jianjiao
BLZ Sun Qi, Beili zhi
DKJBZ Meng Erdong, ed., Deng ke ji bu zheng
JTS Liu Xu etal., Jiu Tang shu
QTS Quan Tang shi
TPGJ Li Fang etal., comps., Taiping guangji
TZY Wang Dingbao, Tang zhi yan jiaozhu
XTS Ouyang Xiu etal., Xin Tang shu

Introduction
1. Schafer, The Last Years of Chang-an, 168170.
2. For an overview of Changan, see Su, Sui Tang Changan cheng he Luoyang cheng,
409420. For the prehistory, conception, and planning of Changan, see Xiong, Sui-Tang
Changan, 3153. On premodern Chinese capitals, see Shi, Zhongguo gudu he wenhua, passim.
See also Yang Kuan, Zhongguo gudai ducheng zhidu yanjiu.
3. The Tang also had a second, auxiliary capital: Luoyang, which was also known as the
eastern capital. For a brief overview of Luoyang, see Ma, Tangdai Changan yu Luoyang,
640646.
4. On urban decline in Europe, see Mumford, The City in History, 248249. On Changan
as the terminus of the Silk Road, see Hansen, The Silk Road, 113140. On the kind of exotic
goods amassed in the Tang from the Silk Road and elsewhere that shaped contemporary
tastes, see Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, passim.
5. These remains of Changan have been documented and photographed (at the turn of the
century) in Adachi, Changan shiji yanjiu. Some Tang imperial palaces and religious temples
have been reconstructed based on excavations. See, for example, Steinhardt, The Mizong Hall
of Qinglong Si, 2750.
6. For a summary of these archaeological findings, see, for example, Li Xiaocong, Tang-
dai chengshi de xingtai yu diyu jiegou, 253.
7. Some of the physical layout of Changan is described in the now-fragmentary eighth-
century source, New Records of the Two Capitals (Liangjing xinji ) by Wei Shu
(d. 757), and in the Song-dynasty Gazetteer of Changan (Changan zhi ) compiled by
Song Minqiu (10191079); following Songs study, scholars have arranged and amended
their synoptic knowledge of Changan using the ward system as the main organizing principle.

139
140 Notes to Pages 47

This legacy of perception continued to influence such compilations as the Categorized Gazet-
teer of Changan (Leibian Changan zhi ) of Luo Tianxiang (ca. 1223ca.
1300). In the eighteenth century, they are joined by Investigation of Urban Wards in the Two
Tang Capitals (Tang liangjing chengfang kao ) of Xu Song (17811848). More
recent studies on the limitations as well as potentials in the textual cityscape include, for ex-
ample, de Pee, Wards of Words, 85116.
8. For the eastwest and northsouth dimensions of Changan, see Su, Changan cheng
he Luoyang cheng, 409.
9.See Cao, Tangdai Changan de lifang, 8388. On changes to the ward system
throughout the Tang, see Li Xiaocong, Chengshi de xingtai yu diyu jiegou, 248306. See also
Xiong, Sui-Tang Changan, 208209.
10. The wheels of carriages that left their marks on this avenue were between 1.35 and1.40
meters apart. Qi, Wei Jin Sui Tang chengshi lifang zhidu, 67.
11. For a portrait of Changan as the starting point moving toward the emergence of the
open city during the eleventh century, see Heng, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats, 167.
12. Saussy, Conclusion, 437.
13. The Tang examination system as institutional history, in the context of court politics
and in terms of its efficacy as a personnel recruitment system, has been studied in depth in Wu
Zongguo, Tangdai keju zhidu yanjiu, passim. The examinations relationship to literature has
been discussed in Fu Xuancong, Tangdai keju yu wenxue, passim.
14. For the institutional history of the examinations after
the Song, see Elman, A Cultural
History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. For a comparative discussion of the Song-
dynasty rise of examination culture and its relationship to the late-imperial era, see Chaffee,
The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China, 166169.
15. Some of these other Tang-dynasty degrees included those in law (mingfa ), math-
ematics (mingsuan ), calligraphy (mingshu ), state ritual (kaiyuan li ), and a short-
lived degree in Taoism (daoju ). See Wu Zongguo, Tangdai keju zhidu yanjiu, 2536.
16. According to one scholars count, in the early eighth century, only seven out of the
twenty-nine chief ministers in the court of Xianzong (r. 805820) had jinshi degrees; by
midcentury, however, this ratio rose drastically to twenty out of twenty-three in the court of
Xuanzong (r. 846859). Wu Zongguo, Tangdai keju zhidu yanjiu, 181. Many contempo-
rary sources also attest to the way in which Xuanzong elevated the status of the degree by tak-
ing a highly engaged and personal interest in the jinshi examinees. See, for example, Li Ding-
guang, Tang mo Wudai luanshi wenxue yanjiu, 3132.
17. Rare exceptions occurred when the examinations were moved to the auxiliary capital
of Luoyang, or were suspended due to natural disasters or political unrest.
18. There are multiple mentions of this phrase in anecdotes on examination culture. See,
for example, Qian Yi, Nanbu xinshu, 2.16.
19. Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 16.
20. One scholar attributes this disproportion to a phenomenon he calls the cult of lit
erature prevalent in the Tang. Gong, Wenxue chongbai de shehui, 216373.
21. Feng Yan, Feng shi wen jian ji, 3.17.
22. From Selection and Promotion (Xuanju ), in
Comprehensive History of Institutions (Tong dian ), juan 15, cited in Yang Bo, Changan de
chuntian, 35.
 Notes to Pages 712 141

23. Li Fang, Taiping guangji, 182.1356. The story is taken from the collection Mr.Lus Mis-
cellaneous Accounts (Lu shi zashuo ). See also Wang Dingbao, Tang zhi yan jiaozhu,
15.294. A translation of this passage appears in Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 200.
24. Scholars of examination history have shown that while during the early Tang, pupils
from the imperial academies in Changan and Luoyang initially were the most activeand
highly esteemedexaminees, from the Tianbao Reign (742755) onward, tribute schol-
ars largely outnumbered the academy pupils. See Fu, Tangdai keju yu wenxue, 4447. For an
in-depth discussion of the higher status of the tribute scholars as evidenced in the ninth
century, see Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 6976.
25. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations,xix.
26. For a description of jinshi tuan, see Fu, Tangdai keju yu wenxue, 323n5. See also Moore,
Rituals of Recruitment, 230233.
27. Sometimes these newsmongers and enthusiasts are explicitly mentioned in the preface
of collections of anecdotes, as in the Transmitted True Records from the Kaiyuan and Tianbao
Reigns (Kai Tian chuanxin ji ). In it, the late-Tang author-compiler Zheng Qi
notes that it will be the haoshi zhe who will duly note my intent, give wide berth to my
foolishness, and affirm what is on my mind . Cheng Guofu,
Sui Tang Wudai xiaoshuo yanjiu ziliao, 305. See also discussion in Sanders, Words Well
Put, 194.
28. Bol, This Culture of Ours, 112.
29. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 31.
30. The corresponding conceptual triad of terms is (perhaps less intuitively) called spatial
practice, representations of space, and representational space. Ibid., 3839.
31. Ibid., 42.
32. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 91130.
33. Mote, A Millennium of Chinese Urban History, 51.
34. Here I use the term monumentality in the sense articulated by Wu Hung to denote
in both art and architecture memory, continuity and political, ethical, or religious obligations
to a tradition. Wu Hung, Monumentality, 4.
35. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 118122.
36. This is the definition given by one of its pioneering scholars, the French ethnographer
Arnold van Gennep. Cited in Turner, The Ritual Process, 94.
37. Turner, Variations on a Theme of Liminality, 49.
38. For Turners fieldwork among the Ndembu tribe of Zambia and his early formulation
of liminality, see Turner, The Ritual Process, passim.
39. Turner, African Ritual and Western Literature, 70.
40. Turner, Variations on a Theme of Liminality, 50. See also Turner and Bruner, The
Anthropology of Experience, 43.
41. Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 181.
42. Ibid., 181218. In order to obtain a post, a degree holder had to also go through the
xuan process, one that famously thwarted Han Yu. For a case study of Han Yu and his
graduating class after winning their degrees, see, for example, Lee, The Dragons and Tigers
of792, 2547.
43. Qian Yi, Nanbu xinshu, 3.34. This designated official was the incumbent secretary of
the Hostel for Tributary Envoys (Sifang Guan Sheren ); the Hostel for Tributary
142 Notes to Pages 1215

Envoys was a governmental organ in charge of greeting primarily foreign rulers and envoys,
overseeing their preparation for presentation at court audience, the handling of their tributary
gifts, and so on. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, 446.
4 4. In 693, Reminder of the Left (zuoshiyi ) Liu Chengqing submitted a me-
morial successfully requesting that the tribute scholars should be placed in front of the tribu-
tary goods. Wang Pu, Tang huiyao, 76.1638.
45. , , Letter to Yuan the Ninth , in
Bai Juyi, Bai Juyi ji jianjiao, 45.2793.
46. Quan Tang shi , 494.5587. See also Stephen Ow-
ens translation of this couplet, in Owen, The Late Tang, 151. For the emended date of Shis
degree and his brief biography, see Meng Erdong, Deng ke ji bu zheng, 18.768.
47. From Letter to Presented Scholar Mr.Tao , in Li Shangyin, Li Shangyin
quanji, 203204.
48. According to Li Shangyins biography, Linghu Chu introduced his sons to Li Shangyin
and also provided for Lis trips to Changan. Liu Xu, Jiu Tang shu, 190.5077.
49. First-Time Examinee (Chu juzi ) was attributed to Lu Guangqi during the
Xiantong Reign (860873). Pieces of the advice it carried are briefly mentioned by writers such
as Sun Guangxian and Hong Mai (11231202). See Sun Guangxian, Beimeng suoyan,
4.78; Hong, Rongzhai suibi, 13.377.
50. The work of Seo Tatsuhiko is cited below. For an example of earlier work of this na-
ture, see Ishida, Chan no haru.
51. Dudbridge, Books, Tales and Vernacular Culture, 6.
52. Zhao Yanwei (fl. 1195) was the first to attribute the writing of marvelous tales
to patronage seeking through what was called warming of the scrolls (wenjuan ). See Zhao
Yanwei, Yunlu manchao, 8.135. Cover letters from the Tang written by candidates to accom-
pany poems and prose submitted to examiners and prospective patrons are extant, and schol-
ars have discussed their content and rhetorical strategies; there is, however, no contemporary
evidence to support Zhaos claim for the submission of collections such as Youguai lu and
Chuanqi for this practice. For a discussion on the validity of the claim that so-called chuanqi
writing came from patronage seeking (ganye ), see Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi
xulu, 11. See also Wang Quan, Tangdai ganye yu wenxue, 152n1. For analysis of some of these
portfolios in the early ninth century, see Ditter, Genre and the Transformation of Writing,
96152.
53. Dudbridge, A Question of Classification in Tang Narrative, 157158.
54. For a discussion on collections such as that of Feng Yan, see most recently Manling Luo,
What One Has Heard and Seen, 2344.
55. The title is a reference to the Xuanshi Hall of the Han imperial palace of Weiyang
.
56. I have followed the author attributions from Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi
xulu, passim. Where available, I use for author dates the years of their jinshi degree, from DKJBZ.
57. For a complete annotated translation into French, see des Rotours, Courtisanes chi-
noises. For selected English translation and discussion of this text as part of a larger study on
writing and gender in early medieval and Tang China, see Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 249
283.
58. For an extensive study of this collection in the context of Tang examination history,
along with selected translations, see Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 1025.
 Notes to Pages 1618 143

59. A well-known example is the reciprocal composition of poetry and prose in elaborat-
ing the ill-fated relationship between Xuanzong and his consort, as captured by Bai Juyis
Song of Everlasting Regret (Chang hen ge ) and its accompanying prose account Ac-
count of the Song of Everlasting Regret (Chang hen ge zhuan ) by Chen Hong .
Paul Kroll explores another case in which a long narrative poem from the ninth century re-
calling the High Tang era is informed by the submerged anecdotal literature from this time.
Kroll, Nostalgia and History in Mid-Ninth-Century Verse, 286366.
60. In this letter to Yuan Zhen, Bai Juyi refers to a group of poems that are not what he
would normally esteem, and expects later compilers to omit them in future compilations of
his work. BJYJJJ 45.2795. For more detailed examples of the selection and culling process, un-
dertaken either by the author himself or by those who survived him, see Nugent, Literary
Collections in Tang Dynasty China, 1425.
61. Owen, The Manuscript Legacy of the Tang, 296.
62. Here I follow the English translation of the table of contents from Schafer, The Table
of Contents of the Tai ping kuang chi, 258263. As Owen points out, in contrast to the Wen
yuan yinghua , another major Song compendium for which many texts were pre-
served in other venues, for the Taiping guangji, there remain few extant complete source texts
against which to compare and gain a sense of the editorial practices that created the latter. Owen,
The Manuscript Legacy of the Tang, 301.
63. It has been repeatedly adapted into other texts and genres: a northern drama (zaju
), a vernacular story, and a southern drama (chuanqi ), in which the central players
and their social contexts continue to change and evolve. See Zhou Shaoliang, Tang chuanqi
jianzheng, 232233. See also the discussion Li Wa in Later Tradition, in Dudbridge, The Tale
of Li Wa, 8098. For a comparison of two major dramatic adaptations from the Ming dynasty,
and how they compare to the original Tang tale, see Idema, The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-
tun, 123135.
64. It was initially composed as part of a prose-narrative tandem, matched with a com-
panion ballad (Li Wa xing ) written by Yuan Zhen (779831), of which only two
couplets survive. Both couplets describe Li Was coiffure and attitude as she stands in front of
her door at the moment of Zhengs first encounter with her. See the discussion in Zhou Shao-
liang, Tang chuanqi jianzheng, 240. In this collaborative narrative genesis, Li Wa was not
unique: Yuan Zhens own tale of considerable length and complexity, The Story of Yingying,
was originally composed with a matching poem by Li Shen (772846). This poem is also
lost except for a few fragments. See Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 318.
65. These writers in Yiwen ji included Niu Sengru, Li Gongzuo, Shen Yazhi
(781832), and Shen Jiji. Zhou Xunchu, Tangdai biji xiaoshuo xulu, 131134.
66. Li Wa is found in fascicle 484, under the heading Various Traditions and Records
(Za zhuan ji ). Along with a few other tales grouped under this heading, Li Wa is fre-
quently collected in modern anthologies of Tang-dynasty xiaoshuo, beginning with Tang Song
chuanqi xuan by Lu Xun (18811936), a selection of about twenty stories that
has powerfully shaped the way modern readers view Tang narratives.
67. A valuable book-length study and annotated translation of this story is Dudbridge, The
Tale of Li Wa. Article-length studies on this tale include Seo, Todai kohanki no Choan to denki
shosetsu; Tsai, Ritual and Gender in the Tale of Li Wa; Keyang Tang, The Ward Walls and
Gates of Tang Changan.
68. Greenblatt, The Touch of the Real, 3050.
144 Notes to Pages 1824

69. See, for example, Shields, Gossip, Anecdote, and Literary History, 107131; Tian, Tales
from Borderland, 3854.
70. Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics, 4.
71. Li Jianguo classifies the formation of Tang tales into two distinct processes, with the
first phase being that of oral stories, followed by a textual formation. Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai
zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 15. Cheng Yizhong observes that many Tang narratives originate in lite-
rati gatherings and storytelling sessions, some details of which we find recorded in the tales
themselves. See Cheng Yizhong, Lun Tangdai xiaoshuo de yanjin zhi ji, 4452.
72. For example, despite the relative silence on Bai Xingjians life, in a discussion of the
circumstances of the composition of The Tale of Li Wa, Dudbridge proposes a probable sce-
nario in which Bai Xingjian met Yuan Zhen for the first time in 809 (a meeting documented in
their writing) and composed Li Wa, while Yuan wrote the companion ballad. This scenario,
Dudbridge argues, is consistent with another piece of writing connecting The Tale of Li Wa
to an oral story: in a preface to one of Yuan Zhens poems to Bai Juyi, Yuan reminisces that
once in Xinchang Ward in Changan, they had listened to the story of One Sprig of Flow-
ers (Yi Zhi Hua ) from very late at night until the next morning. For a discussion on
when and where in Changan this session took place as well as who might have been doing the
storytelling, see Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 2224.
73. Allen, Tales Retold, 135. On the mechanisms of borrowing, adaptation, and trans-
mission of these stories, see Allen, Shifting Stories, passim.
74. Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 15.
75. Niu Sengrus tale Qi Raozhou , for example, ends with: In the fall of the sec-
ond year of the Taihe Reign, as I was sitting with Song Jianchen, Commandent of Fuping, the
talk turned to marvelous events (qi shi ). Niu and Li, Xuanguai lu Xu Xuangai lu, 88. In
the colophon of Li Wa we see that the listener (Li Gongzuo) clapped his hands as he listened
with rapt attention (fu zhang song ting ). Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 183185. In
Story of Yingying, the listener in question (Li Shen) is described as finding it quite remark-
able (zhuo ran cheng yi ). TPGJ 488.4017.
76. Owen, The End of the Chinese Middle Ages, 55.
77.
TPGJ 452.3697.
78.Unless otherwise noted, English translation from subsequent passages of Li Wa is by
Glen Dudbridge, with romanization changed into pinyin for consistency. Dudbridge, The Tale
of Li Wa, 183185.
79. Glen Dudbridge posits the possibility that the protagonist Zheng is based on the com-
bined characteristics of three Zheng brothers. His conjecture is based on the brothers official
biographies. Ibid., 3952.
80. Here I part ways with scholars who see these tales as smear campaigns against the
authors political rivals. On reading Tang tales as effects of Tang factionalism, see, for example,
Bian, Tang chuanqi xin tan, passim.

Chapter1. Narrating Liminality and Transformation

1.Erikson, Adulthood, 21.
2.Kinney, Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China, 3132, 179.
3.; ; Liji , Quli shang , in Shisan
jing zhu shu , 1232a. Along the same lines, treatises in medicine and law set out their
 Notes to Pages 2427 145

own parameters for defining the life stages of a man, during which time he is accorded different
characteristics and obligations. Further evidence lies in correlating age and responsibility in
terms of taxation and corve labor in Tang household registers: the age of twenty was set as a
threshold in terms of taxation and corve labor. For a discussion of the definition of male ado-
lescent (zhongnan ) and adult (dingnan ) and the importance of determining exact age
for men between fifteen and twenty, see Ikeda, Tang Household Registers and Related Docu-
ments, 121150.
4. See discussion in Tang Guangrong, Tangdai leishu yu wenxue, 179188. For the role
leishu may have played in textual memorization, see Nugent, Manifest in Words, 115117.
5.Dong, Tangdai si da leishu, 1670a.
6. Liji, Quli shang, in Shisan jing zhu shu, 1232a.
7.Bol, This Culture of Ours, 614.
8. Michael Nylan reconstructs these typical career trajectories based on the rulin
chapters of Han Histories (Hanshu ). Furthermore, she points out: As local recommenda-
tions were usually in the hands of the local elites, it is not at all clear that study of the classics
represented an important avenue for social mobility, as is sometimes alleged. Nylan, Toward
an Archaeology of Writing, 1819.
9. For Kongs degree, see his biography in JTS 73.2601.
10. A list of similar examination lingo can be found in Li Zhao, Tang guoshi bu, 141143.
11. The vermilion robes signified fifth rank or above; purple robes signified third rank or
above. For a discussion of Bai Juyis stated regret over not being able to wear a vermilion robe
after his return to Changan in 820, see Lin, Zhong Tang wenren guanyuan de Changan yin
xiang ji qi suzao, 317318.
12. ? Li Zhao, Tang guoshi bu,c.145. In
another anecdote, the same examinee, Song Ji , is parodied in jinshi circles during the time
of Dezong (r. 779805) for perpetually missing the proper rhyming scheme in examination ses-
sions for poetry.
13. For a group of these poems from the year 843, see DKJBZ 22.887889. See also TZY
3.65.
14. Composed upon the Day of Procession through the
Halls, after Receiving My Degree , QTS 682.7819.
15. The use of bianhua occurs periodically in early canonical texts such as the Zhouyi and
Liji. It is unfortunately beyond the scope of this book to do justice to this epistemologically
rich term. For usage of this compound in the context of the materia medica tradition, see Nappi,
The Monkey and the Inkpot, 71.
16. I have resolved to stay put in the city, hoping for the one success after a hundred
defeats Sent to Editing Clerk Yang Maoqing , QTS
497.5634.
17. Yao He is alluding to the Record of Rites passages that describe
seasonal changes and ritual proceedings in the different months; in the third month of sum-
mer, along with the arrival of warm breezes and the activities of the cricket and hawk, decay-
ing grass becomes fireflies . See the Monthly Ordinances (Yue ling ) chapter of
Liji, in Shisan jing zhu shu, 1370c.
18. He writes, I had been on the tribute examinee registers since the end of the Dazhong
Reign [847860]. My fate was precarious and my status low, and from the years jimao to geng
yin, a total of twelve years, I watched the transformation of others
146 Notes to Pages 2732

, , , . From Xiangnan yingyong ji xu , in Luo

Yin, Luo Yin ji, 286.
19. From Guichou nian xiadi xian xin xianbei . Wei Zhuang, Wei
Zhuang ji jian zhu, 290.
20. This poem, Respectfully Submitted to the Examiner
, was written to Pei Tan (jinshi 834). See QTS 495.5613, TPGJ 182.1360, and Wang
Dang, Tang yu lin jiaozheng, 6.580.
21. TZY 12.258. Moore discusses this anecdote in relation to the candidates origin from
the Wu region and his inability to properly deploy the language of the capital. Moore, Rituals
of Recruitment, 157158.
22. Tu, The Confucian Perception of Adulthood, 119.
23. From the fifth-century treatise San Qin ji . Liu Yiqing, Shishuo xinyu jiaojian,
5n4.
24. English translation from Mather, Shih-shuo Hsin-
y, 3. For a similar entry explicating dragons gate, see the biography of Li Ying in the Later
Han History (Hou Han shu ), which states that those who are received and accommo-
dated by him are said to have ascended the dragons gate. Fan, Hou Han shu, 67.2191.
25. Feng Yan, Feng shi wen
jian ji, 3.17.
26. This group of poems was written to match a congratulatory poem sent to Wang Qi by
Zhou Chi , DKJBZ 22.887889. These poems are listed in the QTS under the title Rhym-
ing Examiner Wang Qi .
27. By Meng Qiu , QTS 552.6389.
28. QTS 552.6394. For Huang Pos years of failed exami-
nation attempts, see DKJBZ 22.885.
29. Wu Zongguo, Tangdai keju zhidu yanjiu, 65. Another way to be conferred a post right
away was to pass a decree examination (zhi ke ). Ibid., 105112.
30. The popular phrase was thirty is old for a mingjing; fifty is young for a jinshi
, . See, for example, TZY 1.10.
31. For example, in the preface of a poem by Pi Rixiu (ca. 834ca. 883) titled Poem
Lamenting the Jinshi Candidate Yan Zichong , QTS 614.7083. Annika Pissins
analysis of epitaphs written for children in medieval China notes a similar phenomenon: par-
ents did not know how to place young children who died too young to have claimed a stable
identity for themselves in the mortal world. Pissin, Elites and Their Children, 231255.
32. Du Mu was the prefect of Huzhou at the time. Epitaph for Deceased Jinshi Can-
didate Gong Yao , in Du Mu, Fanchuan wenji, 9.145.
33. Ibid.
34. See, for example, Du Mus fuller, and more official, epitaph for Niu Sengru
(779847), who had at one time been his superior. Ibid., 7.114119.
35. Turner, The Ritual Process, 94.
36. A tale from the collection Records of the Rivers East (Hedong ji), for example, is con-
temporary with Gongs epitaph, and describes just this kind of encounter. A young man trav-
eling in a group is summoned by emissaries of the underworld, who are invisible to everyone
but him. Thereupon, he gravely begins to make preparations for his imminent death at the end
of the journey. Liu Xie , TPGJ 308.2441.
 Notes to Pages 3241 147

37. Dongluo Zhangsheng , TPGJ 357.2824.

38. Yingtao Qingyi , TPGJ 281.2242.
39. Chen Jiqing , TPGJ 74.462.
40. Chezhong nzi , TPGJ 193.1450.
41. Bai Youqiu , TPGJ 46.285.
42. Bakhtin first coined the term chronotope to describe the intrinsic connectedness of
temporal and spatial relationships expressed in literature and, in particular, the novel. Bakhtin,
The Dialogic Imagination, 84.
43. Anomaly accounts (zhiguai ) from the Six Dynasties describe meetings between
mortals and elusive, nonhuman creatures such as ghosts, animal spirits, and immortals. In his
study of this genre, Robert Campany describes them as an enterprise of cosmography, where
the act of collecting in writing the strange and anomalous represents a worldview in which the
periphery is ultimately tied to a cosmic center, in which humans dwell in a cosmic moral com-
munity shared by spirit beings as well as animals, and where humans bump against the vari
ous Others across permeable boundaries. Anomaly accounts can be thought of as case studies
in diplomacy among the human world, the animal world, and the netherworldsthat is, in
them the human protagonists are representatives of the human species in the same way that
other creatures are emissaries from their respective worlds. Campany, Strange Writing, 118, 397.
4 4. Turner, Variations on a Theme of Liminality, 50.
45. Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 104186.
46. Frankel studied the group biography of 101 literati in the Biographies of the Garden
of Letters (Wenyuan zhuan ) section of the Old Tang Histories (Jiu Tang shu). Frankel,
Tang Literati, 6583. Even these character types themselves, notes Denis Twitchett, were as-
signed by the historian to his subject in order to symbolize the life-long consistency of char-
acter and conduct which the historian sought to establish. Twitchett, Problems of Chinese
Biography, 28.
47. As Kevin Tsai points out, the tale is concerned with structuring social restoration
through canonical paradigms, even at the expense of verisimilitude. Tsai, Ritual and Gender
in the Tale of Li Wa, 104115.
48. TPGJ 281.22432244.
49. For a study on Record within a Pillow, see, for example, Zhou Shaoliang, Tang chuanqi
jianzheng, 8394. For annotated translations of both tales, see Nienhauser, Tang Dynasty Tales,
73188.
50. Lu Yong , TPGJ 476.3920. The Chinese term in this passage, mian , can refer
to both flour and food made with flour. What we today call noodles was referred to as bing .
See Schafer, Tang, 119.
51. The foreigners claim to be from Nanyue , a region in the south of China. For more
on how this region figured in the Tang imagination, see Schafer, The Vermilion Bird, passim.
52. TPGJ 476.3920.
53. These fascicle headings have various levels of specificity, from the numinous to the zo-
ological. It was as if the compilers were intent on classifying the tales according to a taxonomy
where the stories are vehicles of knowing the myriad things of a certain worlda world, one
may add, that is also crowded with supernatural beings. These motif classifications are often
inconsistent, even arbitrary. Allens study of redundant narratives in the compendium reveals
that such narratives are often included under distantly listed categories, implying that duplicate
148 Notes to Pages 4145

stories made it into the compendium because they were considered under different categories
and perhaps by different members of the editorial staff. Allen, Tang Stories, 191.
54. TPGJ 402.32433244.
55. Zhang was only seventeen at the time of his degree; in Tang Gleanings, we find an an-
ecdote about other examinees writing a poem deriding Zhang for his youth, calling him a
fresh-faced babe. TZY 3.80.
56. See DKJBZ 22.912, 23.984.
57. For a list of anecdotes that referenced each other, see Sanders, Words Well Put, 287.
58. Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 809. On these two mens jinshi degrees,
see discussion in chapter4.
59. Zhang Dus father, Zhang Xifu , and Miao Taifus father, Miao Yin , were
married to Niu Sengrus third and eldest daughters respectively. For Miaos parentage, see Ou
yang, Xin Tang shu, 75.3369. For Nius sons-in-law, see his epitaph in Du Mu, Fanchuan wenji,
7.114119.
60. In the preface of Records of Temples and Pagodas (Sita ji ) from Mixed Morsels
from Youyang, Duan Chengshi mentions Zhang Xifu by name. Duan describes the content of
these records as notes and diary entries based on touring the temples of Changan with Zhang
and one other friend in 843, seven years earlier. In Youyang zazu xuji , Duan
Chengshi, Youyang zazu, 5.213. For a study and translation of the linked verses the two friends
wrote during their outing to the Changan monasteries, and for a larger cultural context of the
Sita ji, see Ditter, Conceptions of Urban Space, 7681. For an earlier study of this collection
and translation of the prose content, see Soper, A Vacation Glimpse of the Tang Temples of
Chang-an, 1540.
61. The collection is attributed to Wen under his biography in JTS. See Cheng Guofu, Sui
Tang Wudai xiaoshuo yanjiu ziliao, 204.

Chapter2. The Lure of Changan

1. Only occasionally were they held in the auxiliary capital, Luoyang, either in lieu of
Changan or in addition to Changan (as occurred between 765 and776, and827 and828). See
Fu, Tangdai keju yu wenxue, 7377.
2. From To My Cohort after Having Received My De-
gree , QTS 706.8127.
3. As Dai Weihua points out, a high proportion of Tang literati men, especially in
the mid- and late Tang, served in military governments (mufu ). Nonetheless, this channel
of advancement was taken out of necessity when the men could not succeed through the jinshi
degree, or were in need of financial support. Dai, Tangdai mufu yu wenxue, 87.
4. From Discussing Tentatively Cancelling the Examina-
tion Selection This Year , Han Yu, Han Changli wenji, 8.586.
5. , The short anecdote is found in TPGJ 183.1346; Lus
bid for the degree survived even greater disruptions when Changan came under attack by
Huang Chao rebels. He received his degree in Sichuan, under the administration in exile. See
DKJBZ 23.986.
6. , , , From Discourse on
Putting Forth Scholars (Jian shi lun ), Quan Tang wen, 846.3941b.
7. Han Yu, Han Changli wenji, 8.586. Since the memorial aimed to argue that the exami-
nations did not tax the capital in a year of drought, Han Yu probably exaggerated the denomi-
 Notes to Pages 4548 149

nator (total population) in order to underscore the insignificance of the numerator (the num-
ber of examinees).
8. , , , This was part of a policy question
(jinshi cewen ) Han Yu formulated for provincial candidates in Bianzhou . Ibid.,
2.104105. In Han Yus first post as a collator of texts, his duties included the supervision of the
provincial examinations each autumn, and marked the beginning of his formation of a liter-
ary coterie that would eventually include Li Ao (774836), Meng Jiao (751814), and
Zhang Ji (ca. 768ca. 830). See Hartman, Han Y and the Tang Search for Unity, 3437.
9. Because there is no record indicating Shen Jiji ever received the jinshi degree, scholars
surmise that he served in offices after passing the less prestigious Canonical Experts (mingjing
) degree. See Nienhauser, Tang Dynasty Tales, 97.
10. Du You, Tong Dian, 18.102.
11. See discussion of Shen Yues argument in Goh, Sound and Sight, 8099.
12. Ibid.
13. On the local and regional (rather than center-bound) travels of established Song offi-
cials and discussions on how these journeys helped define the Song literati ideal, see Cong
Ellen Zhang, Transformative Journeys, passim.
14. For Feng Yans (fl. 750800) description of the ideal career route for a Tang chief min-
ister, which includes the position of constable (xianwei ) of imperial counties as a groom-
ing position, see discussion in Ta-ko Chen, Organizing Authority, 145147.
15. Xuanzongs attempt in 720 was recorded in Zizhi tongjian juan 211 and212;
see discussion in Huang, The Recruitment and Assessment of Civil Officials, 75.
16.Ta-ko Chen, Organizing Authority, 269296. Chen compares the careers of Kou
Yang (665748) and Cui Mian (673739) to illustrate the differences in career op-
tions at the local and capital levels.
17. Mao, Cong shizu jiguan qianyi kan Tangdai shizu zhi zhongyang hua, 235337.
18. Johnson, The Last Years of a Great Clan, 5102.
19. Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy, passim.
20. Tackett, Geographic Relocation and the Exploitation by Late Tang Elites.
21. Wang Jing, Jinggong Yang jia, 395403. Besides textual evidence that refers to the
clans new, urban power base, epitaphs show that Yang Ning, his grandson, and his great-
grandson all died over a fifty-eight-year period in a Jinggong Ward residence, attesting that
houses remained in the familys possession for decades. Tackett, The Destruction of the Medi-
eval Chinese Aristocracy, 79n17.
22. Nienhauser, Tang Dynasty Tales, 97.
23. DKJBZ 15.660. For mention of Shen Jijis other son, see DKJBZ 27.1199.
24. For Shen Chuanshis official biography, see JTS 3.40344038. For his purchase of a house
in Kaihua Ward, see Wu Zaiqing, Du Mu ji xi nian jiaozhu, 926; Xiong Cunrui, Tang Changan
zhufang kaolue, 5673.
25. Shen Xun was the examiner in 841 and again in 855 (DKJBZ 22.876). During his ten-
ure as examiner, according to examination lore, he tried (unsuccessfully) to keep the notori-
ous Wen Tingyun from helping as many as eight fellow examinees with their examination an-
swers. TZY 13.167.
26. Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy, 87.
27. The New Book from the South gives an even longer multigenerational summary of the
Shen family, beginning with Shen Jiji and ending with the authors contemporary Shen Liang
150 Notes to Pages 4952

, who received a jinshi degree in the year 1000 of the Xianping Reign in the Northern
Song. Qian Yi, Nanbu xinshu, 62.
28. For discussions on the tales details of daily life in Changan, see, for example, Zhou
Shaoliang, Tang chuanqi jianzheng, 94118.
29. , ,, From
Letter to an Examination Official in the Capital Prefecture , in Shen, Shen Xiax-
ian ji jiaozhu, 8.147.
30. For example, Denis Twitchett identifies employment in provincial governments and
specialized agencies as the real breakthrough in social mobility following the breakdown of
central authority. Twitchett, Composition of the Tang Ruling Class, 79.
31. Dai, Tangdai mufu yu wenxue, 87.
32. From Epitaph for Cultivated Talent Lu from Fanyang . Du Mu,
Fanchuan wenji, 9.144.
33. Chen Yinque explains this epitaph as an example representative of the state of Hebei
as being fond of warfare but having less regard for literary education. Chen Yinque, Tangdai
zhengzhi shi shulun gao, 26.
34. Du Mu, Fanchuan wenji, 9.144. Du Mu also wrote poems to the same Lu Pei as the lat-
ter set out to take the examination. (Farewell to Candidate Lu, who is about to emerge from
the Wangwu Mountains to seek his fame, after meeting in Jiangnan
, QTS 524.6006; On a summer day in Juxi, sending off Candidate Lu Pei as he re-
turns to Wangwu Mountains to get ready for the examinations
, QTS 522.5965.)
35. Lu Peis program of study at a mountain temple was by no means unusual among Tang
examinees. Yan Gengwang documents at least two hundred similar cases. Yan, Tangren xiye
shanlin siyuan zhi fengshang, 307313. Working from Buddhist sources and Dunhuang man-
uscripts in particular, Erik Zrcher concludes that in the latter half of the Tang, monasteries
all over China seemed to have acquired a secular education function at the grassroots level.
Zrcher, Buddhism and Education in Tang Times, 3956.
36. For an overview of Liu Yuxis official career in Changan and elsewhere, along with those
of Bai Juyi, Yuan Zhen, and Liu Zongyuan in the context of their views toward Changan
throughout their official careers, see Lin, Changan yinxiang ji qi suzao, 267360.
37. From Spring Prospect in Qujiang , in Liu Yuxi, Liu Yuxi ji jian-
zheng, 1084. Bai Juyi, in a response poem, ends with a couplet that expresses his envy at Lius
fitness, and says that he had not spent the passing years in vain (), QTS
449.5061.
38. From In Reply to
Letians Under the Flowers in the Apricot Garden . Liu Yuxi, Liu Yuxi
jijianzheng, 10811082.
39. To Director Liu,
under the Apricot Flowers , BJYJJJ 1756. Also QTS 448.5048.
40. In Reply to Bai Letians Apricot Garden , QTS 423.46484649.
41. Anna Shields has done an extensive study on the poetry of nostalgia shared between
Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi about their shared exploits in Changan, beginning in the early days of
their careers, in which the place of Changan was crucial to remembering their former selves.
Shields, Remembering When, 321361. See also Ao Wang, The Fashioning of a Poetic Ge-
nius, 110149.
 Notes to Pages 5356 151

4 2. From Harmonizing Mr.Linghus Farewell to Peo-

nies , Liu Yuxi, Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng, 1177. For the poems date, see Jiang, Liu
Yuxi shiji biannian jian zhu, 449.
43. For many of these examples, see Lin, Changan yinxiang ji qi suzao, 300306.
4 4. QTS 435.4822. The preface says she learned to play the pipa from the two virtuosi
(shancai) Mu and Cao ; here shancai is used as a generic term for a vir-
tuoso. In Miscellaneous Records from the Music Bureau (Yuefu zalu ), however, Cao
Shancai is used as a proper name.
45. QTS 435.4822.
46. Wang Xuanbo, Li Shen shi zhu, 3033.
47. From Mourning Shancai , QTS 480.5466. See also Wang Xuanbo, Li Shen shi
zhu, 15. Stephen Owen has translated this poem in a discussion of its artistic debt to Bai Juyis
Pipaxing. Owen, The Late Tang, 8184.
48. A spring banquet in the third month of 823, given by Muzong, is recorded in the Jiu
Tang shu. Li Shen reminisces in another poem about the events between 820 and823, during
which he served in the Muzong court. See Wang Xuanbo, Li Shen shi zhu, 4.
49. In Miscellaneous Records from the Music Bureau (Yuefu zalu ), an entry on pipa
music lists three generations of noteworthy players from the Cao family: during the Zhenyuan
Reign, Cao Bao was supremely good at the moving strum (yun bo ); his son Cao Shan-
cai and his grandson Cao Gang both inherited his art. Duan Anjie, Yuefu zalu, 24.
50. This tune was part of the pipa repertoire. See Cui Lingqin, Jiaofang ji jianding, 154.
51. , , Cao Gang ,
QTS 365.4127.
52. According to David Knechtges, beginning in the early medieval period, the baked or
steamed bread known as hu bing or foreign cake was made with sesame sprinkled on top.
Knechtges, Gradually Entering the Realm of Delight, 233.
53. Sending Foreign Pancakes to [Governor] Yang of Wanzhou , BJYJJJ
18.11641165.
54. This festive occasion was described as spawning countless poems by the literati. See
Liu Su, Da Tang xinyu, 8.127128. For an overview of other festivals in the capital, see Li
Bincheng, Sui Tang Wudai shehui shenghuo shi, 450461.
55. From Hearing of
the lanterns in the capital on the fifteenth of the first month, regretting that I cannot see them
, QTS 541.6221. Li Shangyin, Li Shangyin shiji shu zhu, 497.
56. Li Dehui, Tangdai jiaotong yu wenxue, 302305.
57. For a discussion of the role of the Zhongnan Mountains as both a retreat and a place
for strategic self-promotion in the official careers of Tang literati men, see Wang Jing, Zhong-
nan shan yu Tangdai Changan shehui, 129168.
58. QTS 448.5041. The
Guanyin Terrace was one of five on the peaks of the Zhongnan Mountains. For other
poems from the same series, see BJYJJJ 25.1718.
59. For a discussion of the cosmological view as incorporated into the grid, see Lewis, The
Construction of Space in Early China, 251.
60. The eight poems in Du Fus Autumn Meditations are
justifiably the best-known ruminations on Changanand all that it entailsfrom a distance.
QTS 230.2510. For another translation, see Graham, Poems of the Late Tang, 53.
152 Notes to Pages 5660

61. Of the eleven gates of the Daming Palace, five were in the south. The visual distance
between the city and the mountains can be inferred from a reciprocal gaze: from the Daming
Palace, which was situated on a rising plain, one could see a view of the entire city as well as
the Zhongnan Mountains in the far distance. See Song Minqiu, Changan zhi, 6.6.
62. From Five Poems to a Friend , QTS 425.4678.
63. See the chapter Examinations and the Changan Seasonal Calendar, in Moore, Ritu-
als of Recruitment, 254275.
64. From Spring in Xunyang, One of Three: Spring Arrives (), BJYJJJ 1072.
Also in QTS 440.4899.
65. TZY 3.74.
66. Ibid.
67. Milk-based concoctions such as lao were featured frequently in Tang depictions of
food and foodways. For a detailed discussion, see Schafer, Tang, 106.
68. TPGJ 281.2242.
69.
Wei Zhuang,
Wei Zhuang ji, 351352.
70. TZY 3.76.
71. An entry in Topical Conversations (Yinhua lu ) by Zhao Lin (jinshi 828) records
the following incident: a newly installed metropolitan police officer (Jingzhao yin ) pub-
licly caned to death a soldier in the imperial army (shence jun ) who did not make way
for him as he went to his official quarters. When asked by Xianzong about this incident,
Liu responded confidently that such insolence was not only an insult to him as an official, but
also made light of the imperial laws . Ding, Tang Wudai biji xiaoshuo da guan, 845.
For a discussion of this entry in the context of night curfew enforcement in the Tang, see Yang
Weigang, Tangdai dushi xiaoshuo xushi de shijian yu kongjian, 123124.
72. Based on dates found in his poems, we know that Xue Feng had already been living in
Changan by 831, when he was twenty-six. See Wu and Fu, Tang Wudai wenxue biannian shi,
7273.
73. TZY 3.76; cf. Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 253.
74. Encountering Scholar of Eastern Wu (Written upon
leaving the Pass after receiving the degree) ), in Wei Zhuang, Wei
Zhuang ji, 296.
75. Perhaps one of the most iconic poems capturing postdegree mania is the following, writ-
ten by Meng Jiao : , , (Of
yesterday, pent-up and pitiable, the less said the better;/Come today, my thoughts turn ram-
pant and unfettered./The spring breeze, just to my liking, speeds up my hoofbeats/in one day
I take in the flowers all over Changan), QTS 374.4205.
76. , TZY 3.46.
77. In Oliver Moores detailed analysis of Wangs strategic self-disclosure, he observes
that Wangs descent claims are less than secure; Wang also deliberately glosses over his origin
in the remote south (most likely Hongzhou ). Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 2636.
78. Ibid., 29. Moore puts these claims in context: However questionable they now appear,
all associations with past state examiners, governors of Guangzhou and life in the Tang capital
of Changan were biographical means of validating his authority as an ex-Tang informant in
the remote and precarious conditions of Southern Han elite society....Proving links with the
 Notes to Pages 6069 153

northern heartland of the vanished Tang government was a fashionable pursuit among South-
ern Han courtiers. Ibid., 38.
79. From Fulu yi in Shen, Shen Xiaxian ji, 283293. See also Nienhauser, Cre-
ativity and Storytelling in the Chuan-chi, 36.
80. Letter to an examination official in Tongzhou , Shen, Shen Xiaxian ji,
8.146147.
81. DKJBZ 22.908909. Liu Tui was hailed as the one who broke the dry spell (po tian-
huang ) of examination success for scholars from his home region.
82. QTS 610.7034; see also Li Dehui, Tangdai jiaotong yu wenxue, 111.
83. Zhang Jiuling (jinshi 702) was from the city of Shaozhou , up the North River from
Guangzhou . For more on Zhang and his relationship to the south, see Schafer, The Ver-
milion Bird, 4546.
84. Ibid., 24.
85. Ibid.
86. Wang Juzhen , TPGJ 430.3495.
87. TPGJ 74.462. The tale was originally from Record of the Unusual (Zuan yi ji ) by
Li Mei (fl. 846859).
88. TPGJ 74.462.
89. TPGJ 74.463.
90. TPGJ 74.463.
91. These cloisters are frequently mentioned in the travel diaries of the Japanese pilgrim
Ennin (794868), who traveled to China and sojourned in Changan in the mid-ninth
century. Reischauer, Ennins Travels in Tang China, 141150.
92.
TPGJ 74.463.
93. See, for example, poems by Zheng Gu (QTS 674.7718), Liu Cang (QTS 586.6789),
Xue Feng (QTS 548.6324), and L Wen (QTS 370.4160), cited in Li Dehui, Tangdai
jiaotong yu wenxue, 172.
94. From Having Failed the Examination, Submitted to Re-
minder Zheng as I Exit the Pass , QTS 691.7938.
95. Zhao He ,
TPGJ 347.2749.
96.
Zhang Wupo , TPGJ 310.2451.
97. On the port city of Panyu during this time and the foreign merchants there, see, for
example, Lewis, Chinas Cosmopolitan Empire, 161163.
98. For this characterization of travel accounts (youji ), see Yu-chi, in Nienhauser
etal., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, 936.

Chapter3. Navigating the City Interior

1. Lu Yan , TPGJ 346.2739. Originally from Hedong ji .
2. Ge Yonghai lists over forty such narratives, ranging from well-known ones such
as Story of Miss Ren (Ren shi zhuan ) and The Old Man of the Eastern Wall (Dong
cheng laofu zhuan ), to lesser-known tales in which the cityscape figures prominently
in the story plot. Ge, Gudai xiaoshuo yu chengshi wenhua yanjiu, 79.
154 Notes to Pages 6974

3. In his article about anecdotes attached to Anyi Ward, for example, Jack Chen con-
cludes, It may be one city ward that contains the histories of prime ministers, generals, killer
were-snakes, and tragic ghosts, but these stories do not take place within the same social
space. Jack Chen, Social Networks, 61.
4. Jianfei Zhu, Chinese Spatial Strategies, 45.
5. West, Empresses and Funerals, Pasta and Pigs. See also a related discussion in West,
Spectacle, Ritual, and Social Relations, 320.
6. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 129.
7. See the article for year fourteen of the Dali Reign (789) in Wang Pu, Tang hui-
yao, 59.
8. In a survey of epitaphs and other prose narrative genres, one scholar listed twenty-
six wards, mostly on the east side of Changan, in which either hostels (lshe , keshe ,
or lguan ) are mentioned, or in which examinees and officials are said to rent lodging in
one form or another (with terms such as yuju , jiaju , jiuju , shuiju , or qiaoju
). Han Xiang, Tangdai Changan de lshe, 5558.
9. Wu Songdi, Zhongguo yimin shi, 8788.
10. For example, Han Xiang has compiled a list of over one hundred such documented and
named Central Asians from the Tang, based on official histories and tomb epitaphs. Han Xiang,
Sui Tang Changan yu zhongya wenming, 76119.
11. Song Minqiu, Changan zhi, 10.135.
12. For a discussion on the prevalence of Sogdian merchants in Tang Changan versus the
historical memory of this population in the Song, see Rong, Qingming shanghe tu weihe
qian han yi hu, 180201.
13. Song Minqiu, Changan zhi, 304.
14. This collection, Zhong
chao gushi , is attributed to Yuchi Wo of the Southern Tang (937978). Ding,
Tang Wudai biji xiaoshuo da guan, 17791781.
15. Daan si , TPGJ 238.1835. The story is from the collection Yutang xianhua
by Wang Renyu . For a detailed study of this collection and its author, see Dudbridge, A
Portrait of Five Dynasties China, passim. Zhu Yuqi briefly discusses this particular tale as a case
of a rather outrageous con scheme taking place in the urban temples of Changan in Sui Tang
wenxue renwu yu Changan fangli kongjian, 115. The Da Anguo Temple, set up by Ruizong
(r. 684690, 710712), was in the Changle Ward. Xiong, Sui-Tang Changan, 317.
16. This story may have been influenced by an actual visit Yizong (r. 859873) made
to the Anguo Temple in 871. For a brief account, see Somers, The End of the Tang, 714.
17. Translation from Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 254.
18. Wang Pu, Tang huiyao, 6.1873. Officials of rank five and above were at the top of the
administrative pyramid and numbered about 2,200in the mid-eighth century. See Bol, This
Culture of Ours, 4143.
19. Zhang Zhuo, Chao ye qian zai, 4.
20. Liu Yuxi, Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng, 20.535.
21. Wei Zhuang, Wei Zhuang ji, 317.
22. Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 153.
23. , , From Xuji , Duan Chengshi,
Youyang zazu, 203. For the nature and variant translations of the food item biluo () as
 Notes to Pages 7479 155

pilaf or pilau, see Liu Zhangzhang, Tangdai Changan de jumin shengji yu chengshi zhengce,
158.
24. From Xuji, Duan Chengshi, Youyang zazu, 175176. For an English translation of this
anecdote, see Reed, A Tang Miscellany, 131132.
25. See his poem Lodging in the Monastery of Yanshou Ward , in Jia,
Jia Dao ji jiaozhu, 3536. See also QTS 571.6622.
26. In Chanting of Yankang Ward , QTS 571.6626.
27. For examination lore regarding Jia Daos perennial failures, see chapter4.
28. Hiraoka, Tangdai de Changan yu Luoyang ditu, 27.
29. For examples of Tang tales that reflect the dwelling pattern in Changan in which the
southern end is empty, the northern end filled (nan xu bei shi ), see Zhu Yuqi, Sui
Tang wenxue renwu yu Changan fangli kongjian, 98100.
30. Parts of this section previously appeared in Linda Feng, Changan and Narratives of
Experience in Tang Tales, 3568. There were literary and linguistic precedents for the writer
to capture the capital city in words. Examples include poetic rhapsodies in the traditions of
the Two Capital Rhapsody from the Han. Lu Zhaolins (634ca. 684) poem Changan,
Thoughts on Antiquity (Changan gu yi ) describes multiple views of the capital that
includes parallels to the Han capital city and its demimonde as well as signs of decadence and
corruption. See Nienhauser, Changan on My Mind, 6392.
31. Translation from Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 109. Piling is another name for
Changzhou.
32. Ibid., 109111.
33. For a map showing Zhengs movement in The Tale of Li Wa overall, see Seo, Todai
kohanki no Choan to denki shosetsu, 485.
34. Victor Xiong, Sui-Tang Changan, 209210.
35. Li Xiaocong, Tangdai chengshi de xingtai yu diyu jiegou, 255. Su, Sui Tang Changan
cheng he Luoyang cheng, 410.
36. QTS 321.3617, 436.4830. See also discussion in Liu Zhangzhang, Tangdai Changan de
jumin shengji, 79.
37. Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 111.
38. Ibid., 115.
39. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 118122.
40. Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan kaogu yanjiusuo Xian Tang cheng gongzuodui, Tang
Changan cheng Anding fang fajue ji, 321323.
41. See the article for year fourteen of the Dali Reign (789) in Wang Pu, Tang huiyao,
59.
42. Wang Jing, Tangdai Changan Xinchang fang de bianqian, 229233.
43. For a thorough discussion of this literary trope of extraordinary creature (youwu )
in tales, see Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 6180.
4 4. In the context of discussing Tang tales whose plots hinge upon the ward systems night
curfew, Yang Weigang cites Li Wa and observes that, based on the relative locations of Ping-
kang, Xuanyang, and Anyi wards, Li Wa most likely has left Xuanyang Ward for Anyi Ward
(where she would reappear at the end of the tale) as Zheng heads for Pingkang. Yang Weigang,
Tangdai dushi xiaoshuo xushi de shijian yu kongjian, 134135. For English translation of this
passage, see Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 139141.
156 Notes to Pages 7984

45. In fact, when Li Wa reappears later in the story, when the protagonist is rescued from
the nadir of his existence, she is living with her foster mother in Anyi Ward just two wards to
the southeast.
46. See Zhou Shaoliang, Tang chuanqi jianzheng, 232233. For a discussion of Li Wa in later
literary tradition, see Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 8098. For a comparison of two major dra-
matic adaptations from the Ming and how they compare to the original tale, see Idema, The
Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun, 123135.
47. An abridged version of The Tale of Li Wa can be found in the text Zuiweng tan lu
, dated to the Yuan dynasty (12791368). For a discussion of this abridgement, see Dud-
bridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 7.
48. Dudbridge, Lost Books of Medieval China, 28.
49. On the efficacy of ward walls in eradicating crime, see Wang Pu, Tang huiyao, 86.1867.
The walls confined criminals and denied them hiding places in the street, according to an edict
from 831.
50. Most scholars have considered Li Wa to be the primary interest in literary investiga-
tions of this tale. See for example Zhou Shaoliang, Tang chuanqi jianzheng, 5355. Dudbridge
discusses the paradoxes of Li Was transformation from courtesan to model wife. Kevin Tsai
notes that her transformation is part of a quality of the extraordinary (qi ), which argu-
ably constitutes an aesthetic which reins in and normalizes the problematic paradoxes in the
tales gender discourses, and which represents Li Wa as identifying with the hegemonic ideol-
ogy of the patriarchy as her own. Tsai, Ritual and Gender in the Tale of Li Wa, 99112.
51. Seo Tatsuhiko, in his discussion of Changan in the context of The Tale of Li Wa, also
brings attention to a number of other tales describing examinees encounters in urban Changan.
See his chart in Seo, Todai kohanki no Choan to denki shosetsu, 498.
52. This expulsion ritual dates back to early China and was described in the Hou Han shu.
See Harper, A Chinese Demonography of the Third CenturyB.C., 487488. Details of this
performance and its sounds, costumes, and masks in the Tang are described in Duan Anjie,
Yuefu zalu, 1011.
53. Qian Yi, Nanbu xinshu, 2.2223.
54. Song Minqiu, Changan zhi, 304.
55. Keyang Tang, The Ward Walls and Gates of Tang Changan, 128130.
56. At the end of Northern Ward, we find an appendix that, in the context of giving read-
ers warning about the pleasure quarters, describes two acts of violence in Pingkang Ward. Al-
though the text of the appendix may have been added later, the anecdotes are examples of the
kind of events its writer thought to have transpired plausibly a generation earlier. For a discus-
sion of the textual history of this appendix, see des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises, 177.
57. BLZ 18.
58. Ibid.
59. , BLZ 1819.
60. DKJBZ 22.933.
61. BLZ 19. See also des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises, 180181.
62. Lqiao, in Huangfu, Sanshui xiaodu, 3234. An English translation of this particu
lar account by Jeanne Kelly can be found in Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, 972
974.
63. See, for example, QTS 804.9049, 804.9053. Also QTS 804.9050, 804.9049.
64. Liu Junwen, Tang l shuyi jianjie, 579604.
 Notes to Pages 8494 157

6 5. English translations of codes follow that of Wallace Johnson, The Tang Code, 1536.
66. See the article for year fourteen of the Dali Reign in Wang Pu, Tang huiyao, 59.
67. For a discussion on this dimension of Changan as glimpsed in poetry and anecdotal
literature, see Linda Feng, Negotiating Vertical Space, 2744.
68. The story is originally from the collection Records of Original Transformations (Yuan
hua ji ) by an author surnamed Huangfu , who was active around the time of
Emperor Wuzong (r. 841846). Its extant stories cover events in the mid-Tang. See Li
Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 650.
69. TPGJ 193.14501451.
70. TPGJ 193.1450.
71. Perhaps one of the most famous tales involving wall leaping and trespassing is Kun-
lun nu (TPGJ 196.14521454). It is joined by several others, such as Pan Jiangjun
(TPGJ 196.14701471), which takes place in the cityscape of Changan. See Linda Feng, Ne-
gotiating Vertical Space, 4043.

Chapter4. Staging Talent in Urban Arenas

1. See introduction,n. 52.
2. TZY 15.306.
3. Jack Chen, Knowing Men and Being Known, 5963.
4. Nanxiu Qian, Spirit and Self in Medieval China, 2728.
5. Wai-yee Li, Shishuo xinyu and the Emergence of Aesthetic Self-Consciousness, 252.
6. Ditter, Genre and the Transformation of Writing, 136143.
7. Letter to Supernumerary Zhao of
the Right Office , in Quan Tang wen xin bian 533.6198, cited and
discussed in Ditter, Genre and the Transformation of Writing, 141.
8.TPGJ 179.1331. The tale is from the collection Du yi zhi , which Li Jianguo dates
to the Xiantong (860873) Reign. Li Jianguo, Tang Wudai zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 770772.
9. Epitaph for Deceased Inspector to the Military Commissioner, Mr.Li of Longxi
, in Du Mu, Fanchuan wenji, 136138.
10. Wei Zhuang, Wei Zhuang ji jian zhu, 462466.
11. TZY 10.216221.
12. Ding, Tang Wudai biji xiaoshuo da guan, 1249.
13. , , Eng lish transla-
tion from Sanders, Words Well Put, 230231.
14. By way of contrast, poems written to the examiner can be equally instrumental in al-
lowing a candidate to stand out and receive the degree. An anecdote from the collection Friendly
Discourse at Yunxi (Yunxi youyi ) recounts the fabled power of a much more effectual
quatrain addressed to the examiner by Zhang Xiaobiao (jinshi 819). According to this
anecdote, he achieved a first-rank degree by way of twenty-eight characters, TPGJ 181.1345.
15. Ding, Tang Wudai biji xiaoshuo da guan, 1249. There are also other anecdotes that
detail similar abrasiveness in Jia Dao.
16. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 11.
17. For examples of some of these cases, see, among others, Fu, Tangdai keju yu wenxue,
356367.
18. Ditter, Genre and the Transformation of Writing, 136143.
158 Notes to Pages 95101

19. Yang Jingzhi , TPGJ 278.2208.

20. Ibid.
21. For the Yangs degree dates, see DKJBZ 17.709, 21.864. See also JTS 17.557, 19.664.
22. Wang Jing, Jinggong Yang jia, 401402.
23. XTS 160.49714972. For a study of another case in which official biographies like this
one use anecdotal material while leaving gaps where the anecdote is thought to be historio-
graphically questionable, see Jack Chens discussion of Li Yi in Blank Spaces and Secret
Histories, 10821088.
24. TPGJ 180.13401341.This story also appears in TZY 6.118119. For a discussion of this
anecdote in the context of Changan as a nexus of information, see Zhu Yuqi, Sui Tang
wenxue renwu yu fangli kongjian, 89; see also Wu Zaiqing, Tangdai wenshi de shenghuo xin-
tai, 5455.
25. There are, of course, problems with the historical reliability of this anecdote: Niu
Sengru in fact received his jinshi degree in 805, a year earlier than Huangfu Shi, and at a time
when Han Yu had already been demoted out of the capital.
26. BLZ 8.
27. Victor Xiong, Sui-Tang Changan, 260262.
28. Oliver Moore has discussed, in detail, name signing in the context of Wang Dingbaos
representation of the practice in Tang Gleanings. See Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 263269.
29.
QTS 804.9050. For another English translation and on Yus expressed envy of the de-
gree holders, see Cahill, Resenting the Silk Robes that Hide Their Poems, 545546.
30. For a discussion on this discursive practice as related to the collection of Northern Ward,
see chapter5.
31. As Nugent points out, this number includes neither alternative titles nor poems that
mention inscription outside the titles, and therefore likely underestimates the actual number
of wall poems at the time. Nugent, Manifest in Words, 201202.
32. Wu Chengxue, Lun tibishi, 413. See also Nugent, Manifest in Words, 199202.
33. Upon first returning to the capital, stopping at a government office, written offhand
on its wall , QTS 675.7735.
34. JTS 142.5116. See also Wu Chengxue, Lun tibishi, 5. For an in-depth
reading of Wang Jis poems, including these drinking poems, see Warner, A Wild Deer amid
Soaring Phoenixes, 89112.
35. On Seeing Letians Poem : The day I arrived at Tongzhou, the sun was slant-
ing west/The post station, without a soul, was imprinted with the tigers tracks/Suddenly I
turn toward a spot where the leaky roof was adrip,/a nd saw your poems written in the center
of the pillar, , QTS 415.4586.
For a translation and discussion of this poem as part of Bai Juyis nostalgic reconstruction of
the past, see Shields, Remembering When, 344346. Tongzhou was about 140 miles north-
east of Chongqing .
36. From On Seeing a Poem of Yuan the Ninth at the Post Station of
Lanqiao, , QTS 438.4870. For a discussion on the mutual fashioning of these
two poets through poetic fragments, see Ao Wang, The Fashioning of a Poetic Genius, 155169.
37. Nugent, Manifest in Words, 205, 207.
38. Reischauer, Ennins Diary, 261.
 Notes to Pages 101106 159

39. As Zeitlin aptly points out, tibishi often has a ghostly quality: The quintessential graf-
fiti (whether as dirt or art) are freshly painted and vivid; the quintessential tibishi are dust-
covered and fading. Zeitlin, Disappearing Verses, 99.
40. TZY 3.80. See also translation and discussion in Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 264
265.
41. See Luo Fuyi, Yanta timing tie jieshao, 2325.
42. TZY 3.81.
43. Yan, Tangdai jiaotong tukao, 96.
4 4. TZY 1.9.
45. TZY 3.80.
46. Zhang Du, whom we have encountered in chapter1 as the compiler of a collection of
stories, was a direct descendant of Zhang Zhuo (660732); his grandfather Zhang Jian
and his uncle Zhang Youxin both served high court positions. XTS 149.4023.
47. Multiple examples of this can be found in TZY 13.274277.
4 8. Duke of Lu was Yan Zhenqings posthumous title,
TZY 8.164. The same anecdote is found in 13.276.
49. The topic was Bei gun yi xiang tian fu and the candidate chosen was Han
Gun . The candidates accused of bribery were Jiang Bo and Zhang Hu . TZY
13.276277.
50. TZY 2.35.
51. See, for example, Wang Qi (760847), who served as examiner four times during
his career (see chapter1). DKJBZ 19.800, 19.05, 22.87, 22.93.
52. Moore, Rituals of Recruitment, 139140.
53. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 257.
54. Sun Qi introduces himself into Yizhis household as a formidable competitor in verse
writing against two other clients who patronized Xiaorun and Xiaofu ; ibid., 273277.
55. BLZ 10.
56. BLZ 910. The poems addressed to Yizhi from Sun Qi are included in the collection
Cai diao ji , which came into being between the years 907 and965, and in Tangshi jishi
, composed around 1150. They were later collected as Inscribed on the Wall of the
Courtesan Wang Funiang , QTS 727.8328. For English translations of these po-
ems, see Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 275276.
57. Zeitlin, Disappearing Verses, 7374.
58. , , ? BLZ 9. I have cho-
sen to read for in the text based on the Shuofu edition of the text. See des Rotours,
Courtisanes chinoises, 122n4. Cf. Paul Rouzers translation in Articulated Ladies, 274. Cui Yin
(853904) received his jinshi degree in 875; in other sources he has been referred to as Cui
Che and Cui Jingben . See DKJBZ 23.973. Weishan is the courtesy name of Zhao
Chong (jinshi 872,d. 904).
59. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 5055. For application of some of Huizingas concepts of the
ludic to early medieval poets, see Birrell, Games Poets Play, passim.
60. BLZ 9.
61. BLZ 1213. The Southern Courtyard was the location of the Ministry of Rites (Libu
), and where the new jinshi degree holders names were posted. It also served as a place
for posting various notices for the examinees. See TZY 15.293.
160 Notes to Pages 106110

62. Li Wenyuan himself does not appear in other Tang records; however, Northern Ward
notes that Wenyuan is brother to Li Wo (jinshi 872), who does appear in official records
as one of Li Weis sons. Assuming that there was no other Li Wo and Li Wei was indeed Li Wen
yuans father, then the prerebellion courtesan visit recorded here would have taken place just
over one year after Li Weis death, during which Li Wenyuan should have been in mourning.
63. My translation is based on the annotated Chinese text from Dudbridge, The Tale of
Li Wa, 140143.
64. English translation based on the Chinese text is from ibid., 145147.
65. Seo, Todai kohanki no Choan to denki shosetsu, 476505.
66. For discussions on rain prayer and music contests held in Changan, see Seo, Tdai
kohanki no Chan to denki shosetsu, 492493. For an account of a public execution, see the
tale Ding Yue Achieves Sword Release (Ding Yue jian jie ) from the collection Mis
sing Histories (Que shi ) by Gao Yanxiu , dated 884. Noted and translated in Dud-
bridge, A Question of Classification in Tang Narrative, 201. The Japanese pilgrim Ennin also
recorded accounts of public executions during his sojourn in Changan in the 840s. See dis-
cussion in Seo, Changan: Liyi zhi du, 417419.
67. According to Liu Yu, People fill up the streets big and small....Those from inside and
outside do not avoid each other and watch in concert....The whole household arrives, and with
no distinctions the noble mingle with the base, men with women, officials with commoners.
Wei Zheng, Xin jiao ben Sui shu, 62.14811484.
68. , , TZY 3.46. The passage refers to Changan before the
Huang Chao rebellion.
69. Translation based on Chinese text from Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 148153.
70. Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 7380.
71. Dudbridge, The Tale of Li Wa, 143.
72. Ren Bantang, Tang xi nong, 917918.
73. See Bai Juyis last couplet on the song He Manzi : A tune, four phrases in
eight repeats/from the start, the sound of heartbreak , QTS
458.5213. As another example, in Travelers Thoughts on the Qu River , Zheng Gu
refers to the zhuzhi ge as depleting ones homesick tears, QTS 674.7717.
74. JTS 137.3771, cited and translated in Nugent, Manifest in Words, 162.
75. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 244.
76. Regarding the competition required of the up-and-coming scholar in the Han, Mi-
chael Nylan refers to two anecdotes: one takes place directly in front of the emperor; another
in front of an academician. Others describe debates in scholarly conferences. Nylan, Toward
an Archaeology of Writing, 19.
77. West, Playing with Food, 90.
78. Ibid., 70.
79. See, for example, James Liu, Polo and Cultural Change, 203224. See also Seo, Tdai
Chan no sakariba, 3850; Seo, T Chanj no girei kkan, 2329.
8 0. Official procedures after the Tang sought to control these metropolitan, rather than
state-sponsored, celebrations. As Yang Bo notes, in 959 an official decree mentioned that the
first postdegree banquet, the banquet of good news (wenxi yan ), became financed by the
court. and it was possible that even by the time Tang Gleanings was written, in the years 916
917 of the Later Liang, the banquet had already been transformed from a folk celebration into
an officially sponsored ceremony. Yang Bo, Changan de chuntian, 8991.
 Notes to Pages 112114 161

Chapter5. Negotiating the Pleasure Quarters

1. Some of these included the residences of Kong Yingda, Chu Suiliang (595658),
and the Taiping Princess. Monasteries included the Baotang Monastery and the
Wanan Abbey. Yang Hongnian, Sui Tang liangjing fangli pu, 6167.
2. See Bai Juyi, Fifty Rhymes Playfully Presented to Xiao Ninth after Meeting Up with
Him Happily in Jiangnan and Thoroughly Talking Over Our Past Pleasures in Changan
, BJYJJJ 38253826. For a discussion on several similar po-
ems by Bai Juyi to Yuan Zhen, see Shields, Remembering When, 336339.
3. Extensive discussions on Pingkang Ward and its courtesans along with a full French
translation and critical commentary can be found in des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises. For a
discussion of the different categories of Tang courtesans and their respective relationships
with literati men, see Bossler, Vocabularies of Pleasure, 7199. See also Yao, The Status of
Pleasure, 2653. For discussions of courtesan culture, ci performance, and the mobility of
the song and poem from elite culture to popular urban culture as suggested by the social mo-
bility of courtesans, see Wagner, The Origins of Chinese Tzu Poetry, 8191.
4. For a detailed discussion on Sun Qi as the author of this collection, see des Rotours,
Courtisanes chinoises, 1620. On the dating of the preface of Northern Ward, des Rotours
points out that based on the official titles of persons mentioned in the text, additional editorial
touches were added as late as 893. Ibid., 16.
5.
BLZ 2. The phrase sui jili here refers to participation in the capitals annual recruit-
ment mechanism.
6. For a more extensive treatment of nostalgia and its counterpart in the Chinese literary
tradition culminating in the late Ming, see Kafalas, In Limpid Dream, 143183.
7. I also roamed [in the pleasure quarters] from time to time, but certainly not due to its
amusements , BLZ 2.
8. We are reminded here of a similar balancing act in the realm of poetry: Yuan Zhen
justifies including erotic poetry in his own corpus on didactic grounds (i.e., that they are in-
structive by negative example). See Shields, Defining Experience, 70.
9. For a discussion of a culture of romance emerging from full-length narratives such
as The Story of Yingying, The Story of Huo Xiaoyu (Huo Xiaoyu zhuan ), and Li
Wa, see Owen, The End of the Chinese Middle Ages, 130148, 182201.
10. Lu Xun considers the collection a kind of casual jotting (biji ) literature with a
chuanqi spirit; Li Jianguo groups it as a topical biji (zhuanti biji ). Li Jianguo, Tang
Wudai zhiguai chuanqi xulu, 3.
11. DKJBZ 23.965, 24.1003.
12. Ji taiyuan Sun Duangong Qi , Zheng, Zheng Gu shiji jianzhu, 419.
13. As Nicolas Tackett concludes from epitaph data on clan members, Sun Qi belonged to
the Lean Sun clan with a lineage base in Luoyang. Tackett, The Destruction of the Me-
dieval Chinese Aristocracy, 140n76, 114.
14. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 249283. For an earlier translation, see Levy, The Gay
Quarters of Chang-an, 93105, 115122, 103110. For a discussion of the story of Zhuzhu in
the context of Tang performance culture, see Ashmore, Hearing Things, 126156. For a trans-
lation and textual study, see Jing Wang, Courtesan Culture in the Beili zhi, passim.
15. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 263.
162 Notes to Pages 114121

16. Ibid., 256257.

17.
BLZ 1.
18. BLZ 119. For my English translation, I have also consulted the annotated translation
in des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises, 6365. Discussions and some translations of the anec-
dotes in this chapter have also appeared in Linda Feng, Unmasking Fengliu in Urban Changan,
121.
19. For the formation of a discernible Tang corpus of scholar and beauty narratives, as
well as a list of Tang stories that share the romance (lianai ) theme, see, for example, Seo,
Caizi yu jiaren, 695722. For a discussion incorporating less-known tales from the Taiping
guangji, see also Hsieh, Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction, 1519.
20. For a study of this collection of miscellany as a multifaceted picture of the past, see Man-
ling Luo, Remembering Kaiyuan and Tianbao, 263300.
21.
Wang Renyu, Kaiyuan Tianbao yishi, 10.
22.
Ibid., 19.
23. Owen, The End of the Chinese Middle Ages, 133.
24. BLZ 1. See also des Rotours,
Courtisanes chinoises, 49183.
25. BLZ 5.
26. BLZ 1011.
27. Impromptu verses
, QTS 662.7593.
28. As other scholars have pointed out, this can be glimpsed in the tales The Story of Huo
Xiaoyu or The Story of Yingying: they describe internal audiences that comment, circulate,
and even intrude upon events that would have otherwise taken place in the more intimate con-
text of a couple. For a discussion on such internal audiences taking over the narrative, see
Owen, The End of the Chinese Middle Ages, 147. See also Manling Luo, Discourse Formation
in Tang Tales, 105; Owen, What Did Liuzhi Hear? 8889.
29. Wang Renyu, Kaiyuan Tianbao yishi, 10.
30.
BLZ 3. See also English translation from Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 262.
31. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 262.
32. , . , BLZ 13.
33. This text, not recorded in any post-Tang bibliographies in China, found a receptive
audience in Japan that enabled it to be preserved and transmitted. For an up-to-date list of
translations and studies pertaining to the textual history and philology of this text, see Yao,
Historicizing Great Bliss, 208.
34. Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao were characters in Youming lu (Records from
the Netherworld), a collection of Six Dynasties anomaly tales.
35. BLZ 13.
36. BLZ 13. See also des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises, 150151. See also Rouzer, Articu-
lated Ladies, 266.
37.
BLZ 6. See also translation of this anecdote in Rouzer, Articulated
Ladies, 269272.
 Notes to Pages 122128 163

38. BLZ 6.
39. As Yao Ping points out, this kind of inscription is rare because it was written for a com-
mon courtesan (minji ), rather than for household courtesans (jiaji ) owned by elite
families or for palace entertainers (gongji ). On the relative numbers of funerary elegies
for women (mostly written by children or husbands), see Yao, Hunyin zhiwai de nxing, 212.
On the terminology of courtesans and their increasingly notable presence in the eighth and
ninth centuries, see Bossler, Vocabularies of Pleasure, 99.
40. From an epitaph titled You Tang Wuxing Shenshi muzhiming bing xu
, in Zhou and Zhao, Tangdai muzhi hui bian xuji, 10841085.
41. BLZ 6.
4 2. BLZ 7.
43. , Ibid.
4 4. Ibid.
4 5.
Ibid.
46. BLZ 910. The poems addressed to Yizhi from Sun Qi are included in the collection
Cai diao ji (ca. 907965) and also in Tangshi jishi (ca. 1150). The stories of Yizhi
and Yan Lingbin, along with those of several other courtesans, can be found in a version of Zui
weng tan lu (ca. 12081224). See notes on these texts in des Rotours, Courtisanes chi-
noises, 3741.
47. , , BLZ 10. Rouzer
translates these poems and discusses them in the context of Sun Qis introducing himself into
Yizhis household as a formidable competitor in verse writing, against two other clients who
also visit Xiaorun and Xiaofu ; see Articulated Ladies, 273277.
4 8. See, for example, the anecdotes of Runniang (BLZ 34) and Yu Luozhen
(BLZ 1213), respectively. Yu Luozhen first marries the nephew of an imperial son-in-law, then
later a petty official, before finally returning to Pingkang Ward with her daughter from the sec-
ond marriage. Runniang retires and marries a police chief outside the quarter, but continues
to flirt with an old acquaintance, despite the punitive surveillance of her thuggish husband.
From records of Runniangs association with Zheng Hejing (jinshi 875), we can infer
that she had been active in the ward about a decade before the Huang Chao rebellion. See also
Rouzers translation of this exchange in Articulated Ladies, 266268.
49.
BLZ 10.
50. BLZ 1011.
51. BLZ 11.
52. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 283.
53. BLZ 1112. For a summary and discussion of officials going to the capital as part of the
diaoxuan (selection) process and its reassignment, see Fu, Tangdai keju yu wenxue, 503
509. For the post of xunliao (police officer), I have followed the translation of des Rotours,
Courtisanes chinoises, 138139.
54. Zhuzhus story, along with those of Zheng Juju the toastmaster and the courtesan Chuer
(aka Runniang), are included in the later collection L chuang xinhua (composed
between 1127 and1278). It is under an expanded title, Zhang Zhuzhu Does Not Breach Her
Rightful Marriage . Fengyue zhuren, L chuang xinhua, 119120. For an ex-
tended bibliographic note, see des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises, 41.
55. BLZ 1416.
164 Notes to Pages 128136

56. BLZ 15. For a full translation of this particular anecdote, see Ashmore, Hearing
Things, 127139.
57. BLZ 15.
58. According to this anecdote, these youngsters have taken a direct route from the ex-
amination compound in the southern courtyard to her door to chant the following:
They all said Laiers words could be counted on,
She who all winter boasted her mans repute was fine.
Just now we saw news in front of the Anyuan Gate,
Who says Guangyuan really hit a home run?
,
,

Laier rebukes them with an impromptu poem of her own, taking on the same rhyme as
the original. The author cites it as evidence of her quick wit. BLZ 8.
59. BLZ 16.
60. A ditty that refers similarly to political affairs can be found in the era of Empress Wu
Zetian : Rumor from the times of Empress Wu said, Lord Zhang drinks wine and Lord
Li gets tipsy . Zhang Zhuo, Chao ye qian zai, 1.12.
61. BLZ 16.
62. BLZ 16.
63. , BLZ 16.
64. For discussions of homophones or near-homophone pairs / and / in medieval
pronunciation, see Ashmore, Hearing Things, 134n17.
65.
BLZ 16.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. As for the role of the rooster in Zhuzhus deflowering, we can only speculate about the
significance of Fonu giving Zhuzhu a cockscomb from a fighting rooster. One possibility may
be that it can be used to fake virginity. Another possibility is that it is a phallic token, as sug-
gested by des Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises, 161.
70. BLZ 16.
71. The text explains: Fonu was of the same surname as Pang Xun and was employed
as a scribe at the capital offices of the Xuzhou provincial administration. That is why she
called him familiarly Xuzhou boy (Xuzhou zi), BLZ 15. The historic Pang Xun staged a re-
volt in 868 that began in Guizhou and centered on Xuzhou.
7 2.
BLZ 16.
73. BLZ 9.
74. Berry, Japan in Print, 140.

Epilogue
1.Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 8.
2.Ibid.
3.Lehan, The City in Literature,xv.
 Notes to Pages 136137 165

4. Benjamin, Paris, 52.

5. That is, even if we take into account the lexically extravagant rhapsodies on metropo-
lises from the Han dynasty.
6. Cong Ellen Zhang, Transformative Journeys, 209.
7. Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing meng hua lu zhu, passim. On ways of remembering the erst-
while capital through this text, see Pei-yi Wu, Memories of Kai-feng, 4760. See also de Pee,
Purchase on Power, 149184. For the use of perigraphy to describe this genre of writing, see
West, Spectacle, Ritual, and Social Relations, 291322.
8. For the category of student from Peking University and its relationship to Beijing,
see Lanza, Behind the Gate, passim; on the epistemology of youth, see Song Mingwei, Xian-
dai Zhongguo de qingchun xiangxiang, 417.
This page intentionally left blank
 Glossary

Anding Ward Chen Ziang (661702)

Bai Juyi (772846) Chezhong nzi (Woman in the
baipao Carriage)
Bai Xingjian (776826) Chuanqi (Transmitted Marvels)
bao chuanqi
beili Chunming Gate
Beili zhi (Anecdotes from the Chuxue ji (Record of First Learning)
Northern Ward) Chuzhou
Beimeng suoyan (Casual Talk from Cien
the Northern Dream) Cien si timing youshang fuyong zaji
Ben shi shi (Poems Rooted in Events) (Name Signing, Sightsee-
Bian Canal ing, and Poetry Making at the Cien
bianhua Temple: Miscellaneous Events)
bianhua zhi li Cui Chuixiu
Bianzhou Da Anguo Temple
biji Da Cien Temple
biluo () Daming Palace
buming er shi Daxing Cheng
buyi Dayan Ta
bu yu Dayu Ling
cai Dazhong Reign (847860)
cai denggao lin gongzhong
Cai Jing (jinshi 836) Dengke ji (Register of Degree
Cao Gang Winners)
Cao Shancai deng longmen
Changan deng ying
Changan zhi (Gazetteer of Changan) Dezong (r. 779805)
Changan zidi dicheng
Changqing Reign (821824) Dongjing menghua lu (A Dream
Changxing Ward of Splendors Past in the Eastern
Chao ye qian zai (From the Court Capital)
and Beyond) Dongmen jie
chengming dongzhong xianzi
Chen Jiqing duanchang sheng
Chen Xiaofeng Duan Chengshi (ca. 803863)

167
168Glossary

Du Mu (803852) huangcheng
Du Xunhe (jinshi 891) Huangfu Mei (fl. 872904)
Ennin (794868) Huangfu Shi (777835)
fang Huangfu shi
Fanyang Huang Po (jinshi 843)
fenghong Huang Tao (jinshi 895)
fengliu huan ying tu
Feng Menglong (15741645) hua xia ren
Feng shi wen jian ji (Mr.Fengs Huazhou
Record of Things Heard and Seen) hu bing
Feng Yan (fl. 750800) huibi
Feng Yan zhuan (The Story of Huichang Reign (841846)
Feng Yan) huiman bu bi
Fuxing Ward hu qin
Fuzhou jia
Gan River Jia Dao (779843)
Gan sunzi (Dry Snacks) Jiangnan
ganye Jiangzhen
Ganze yao (Sweet Swamp Lore) Jiangzhou
Gao Yanxiu (jinshi 874) Jiankang
Gaozong (r. 650683) Jiaofang
gongsheng jiehe
Gong Yao (d. 850) Jieliang
Guangzhong Jinchang Ward
guan li jingdu sheng
guanshi Jinggong Ward
guihua huang juzi mang jingshi xiao zidi
guiren jingyi
Guo Zhaoshu Jingzhao Fu
gushi Jingzhou
guxiang Jingzhou
Handan Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden
Han Wo (844923) Vase)
Han Yu (768824) jinshi
haoqi zhi shi jinshi tuan
haoshi zhe jiu chong cheng
Hebei jiudi
Hedong ji (Records of the Rivers jiu mo
East) ju
Hegan Jun (fl. 847859) junjun chenchen fufu zizi
honglou n Jutan lu (Records of Unfettered
Hongnong Conversation)
houjin juzi
hua Kaicheng Reign (836840)
Hua Mountain Kaifeng
Huang Chao (d. 884) Kaihua Ward
 Glossary169

Kaiyuan Tianbao yishi Li Ye (fl. eighth century)

(Unaccounted Events from the Kaiyuan- Li Yi (748827)
Tianbao Reigns) Li Ying (Li Yuanli )
Kang Ping (jinshi 878) Li Zhao (fl. 820s)
keju Longzhou
Kong Yingda (574648) lou
kunchong L Dafang (10271097)
Laier Lu Ji (261303)
Langzhou Luoyang
li Luo Yin (833909)
liang shi Lu Pei
Li Ao (774836) Lu Shangqing (jinshi 882)
Libu Lu Yong
Li Fengji (758835) Lu Zhao (jinshi 843)
Li Gongzuo (ca. 778848) Luzhou
Li Guan (766794) mayi
Li He (790816) Meng Jiao (jinshi 796)
Liji (Record of Rites) mensheng
Li Kan miao ji
Li Mei (fl. 846859) Miao Taifu (jinshi 852)
Linghu Chu (766?837) Min
Linghu Hao (jinshi 860) ming
Linghu Tao (jinshi 830) mingchang
Linghu Wei mingjing
Linghu Xu mu
Lingnan Nanbu xinshu (New Book from the
lingyi South)
Lishan Nanke Taishou zhuan (Tale of
Li Shangyin (813858) the Governor of the Southern Branch)
Li Shen (772846) nantou Xiaofeng
Liu Chen nanyuan
Liu Guorong Nanyue
Liu Jing (jinshi 825) na sanqian
Liu Ling (fl. 260s) niming zaobang
Liu Tan (jinshi 877) Niu Sengru (779847)
Liu Tui (jinshi 850) Niu Xiji (b. 872)
Liu Tuotuo nuo
Liu Xiang Pang Fonu
Liu Xubai (jinshi 860) Pang Xun (d. 869)
Liu Yu (fl. 581601) Panyu
Liu Yuxi (772842) Pei Du (765839)
Liu Zongyuan (773819) Pei Xing (fl. 860s)
Liuzhou Pei Zan
Li Wa zhuan (The Tale of Li Wa) Pengcheng
Li Wei (d. 879, jinshi 837) Pingkang Ward
Li Wenyuan (fl. 880) pin zao
170Glossary

pipa shi er jie

Pipaxing (Ballad of the Pipa Player) shi jian
Pi Rixiu (ca. 834ca. 883) Shi Jianwu (jinshi 820)
putong yuan shi ju
Puyang Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of
Puzhou Tales of the World)
qi Shouzhou
qi Song Yu (fl. third century BCE)
qian da Sun Guangxian (895968)
Qiantang Sun Qi (fl. 880s)
Qian Yi (fl. 9981023) Suzhou
qi fen qi bu Taihe Reign (827836)
Qin fu yin (Song of the Lady of Qin) Taiping guangji (Extensive Records
qingbo xiaoer of the Taiping Era)
Qinglong si Taiping Ward
Qin meng ji (A Record of Dreams Tang guoshi bu (Supplements to
in Qin) State Histories of the Tang)
Qinren Ward tang lao
qiu jin Tang l shuyi (Annotated Tang
Qizhou Code)
qu Tang que shi (Missing Histories of the
Quan Deyu (761818) Tang)
que Tang yu lin (Forest of Words from the
Qujiang Tang)
qu jin qi miao Tang zhi yan (Tang Gleanings)
Ren Bantang tao xi
Ruan Ji (210263) Tianbao Reign (742756)
Sanshui xiaodu (Booklet from tibishi
Sanshui) tiejing
shang yi de timing
shang yu Tong dian (Comprehensive History of
Shanxi Institutions)
shen Tongguan
Shen Chuanshi (769827) tongnian
Shengdao Ward Tongzhou
Shengping Ward tu
Shen Jiji (ca. 740ca. 800) Wang Dang (d. 1107)
Shenlong Reign (705707) Wang Dingbao (870940)
shen ren zhi ji Wang Ji (586644)
Shen Xun (d. 863) wang jing lou
shenxian Wang Qi (760847)
Shen Yue (441513) Wang Renyu (d. 956)
Shen Zirou Wang Shi
she xia xiong ji Wang Susu
shi Wang Tuaner
shi ban Wangwu Mountains
 Glossary171

weijin Xuanzong (r. 713756)

Wei River Xuanzong (r. 846859)
Wei Zhou Xue Alley
Wei Zhuang (836910) Xue Tao (768831)
wenchang Xue Yusi (fl. 820s)
Wen fu (Poetic Exposition on Xu Hun (ca. 791ca. 858)
Literature) Xuzhou
wenji Yang Dai (jinshi 837)
wenren Yang Jingzhi (jinshi 807)
Wen Tingyun (ca. 812866) Yang Ning (744817)
wuming zi yan ji guishen shi
Wuxing Yankang Ward
Wu Yuanheng (758815) Yan Lingbin
xiadi shi Yanshou Ward
Xian Yan-Z hao
xianbei Yan Zhenqing (709785)
xiang Yan Zhitui (531591)
xiang ai Yao He (jinshi 816)
xiang gongdian she yi
xiangli yi
Xiang Xiu (ca. 227272) yi er wei cha
xiangyi yin gou
Xiang Yu (232202 BCE) yingtao yan
xian ji Yinhua lu (Topical Conversations)
Xiantong Reign (860873) yishi
Xianyang Yi shi (Lost Histories)
Xianyi Convent yi ting
Xiaofu yiwen
xiao mian chong yi wen jin qu
Xiaorun Yizhi
xiaoshuo Yizhou
Xiazhou Yizong (r. 859873)
Ximing Temple yousi zhi gong
Xinchang Ward You xianku (Wanderings in the
Xinghua Ward Immortals Grotto)
Xingyang Youyang zazu (Mixed Morsels from
xingyuan Youyang)
xingyuan ren Youzhou
xinshi yu
xuan Yuan Cai (fl. 11401195)
Xuanguai lu (Records of Mysterious Yuan hua ji (Records of Original
Anomalies) Transformations)
xuanlao Yuan Jiao (fl. 860s)
Xuanshi zhi (Chronicles from Yuan Zhen (779831)
Xuanshi Hall) Yu bing hu (The Foreign Pancake-
Xuanyang Ward Seller)
172Glossary

yuegong Zhao Lin (jinshi 834)

Yunxi youyi (Friendly Discourse at zhe gui
Yunxi) Zheng Gu (ca. 851910, jinshi 887)
Yu Xuanji (fl. 860s) Zheng Guangye (fl. 860s)
zaju Zheng jiulang
Zang Tong Zheng Xun (jinshi 828)
Zao Xiang Zhen zhong ji (Record within a
zashi Pillow)
zashu Zhengzhou
zawen zhi
Zhang Du (835886, jinshi 852) zhiguai
Zhang Ji (ca. 768ca. 830) zhiren
Zhang Jiuling (678740) Zhongnan Mountains
Zhang Xifu Zhou Zhangheng
Zhang Zhuo (660732) Zizhou
Zhang Zhuzhu Zuan yi ji (Record of the Unusual)
Zhao Chong (jinshi 872) zuozhu
Zhaojun
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 Index
Note: Page numbers in boldface type refer to illustrations.
Account of the Song of Everlasting Regret
(Chen Hong), 143n59
adulthood, 2425, 144n3
aficionados. See haoshi zhe
age and examination culture, 24, 25, 30,
8081, 145n3, 146n30
airborne threats, 84
alchemy, 4042, 103
Allen, Sarah, 19, 147n53
alleyways, 22, 76, 111, 128, 130134
Analects, 25, 28, 51
Anding Ward, 5, 77
anecdotes, defining, 18
Anecdotes from the Northern Ward (Sun Qi):
about, 15; on courtesan hierarchy, 115;
dating of, 112113, 161n4; funeral songs
in, 109; on liminality, 8182, 89; on pass
list, 98; violence in, 156n56; wall poems
in, 104; on Xuanzong (r. 846859), 72;
Yan Lingbin in, 121124; Yizhi in,
125127, 132; Zhang Zhuzhu in, 127133.
See also Sun Qi
An Lushan rebellion, 70
Annotated Tang Code, 84
anomaly accounts (zhiguai), 33, 67,
147n43
anonymous wall writing, 102103. See also
walls
Anyi Ward, 5, 154n3
Apricot Garden, 26, 52, 5758, 65, 135
archaeological findings, 4, 37, 77, 78, 84,
139n5, 139n7
athletic contests, 110
Autumn Meditations (Du Fu), 56, 151n60
avenues, 4, 8, 73, 76, 140n10
Babylon, 2
Bachelard, Gaston, 135
Bai Juyi: ballad by, 5354; on Changan, 56,
57, 76, 143n60; demotion of, 100; exile
poetry of, 52; on legitimacy, 16; on Liu
Yuxi, 150n37; on Pingkang, 112; on song
performance, 109, 160n73; Yuan Zhen
and, 52, 100, 143n64, 150n41, 158n35
Bai Xingjian, 12, 17, 20, 144n72. See also
Tale of Li Wa, The (Bai Xingjian)
Bakhtin,M.M., 147n42
Ballad of the Pipa Player (Bai Juyi), 53
ballads. See songs
banquets: for candidates, 8, 54, 101, 108, 112,
114, 160n80; by Chen Ziang, 9091;
courtesans and, 114, 119, 130; at
Serpentine Pond, 52, 57, 123, 151n48;
by Yang Jingzhi, 95
Baotang Monastery, 161n1
Beijing, 4, 137
Beili zhi. See Anecdotes from the Northern
Ward (Sun Qi)
Beimeng suoyan (Sun Guangxian), 15
belles lettres, 78. See also literati
Benjamin, Walter, 136
Ben shi shi, 41, 92
Berry, Mary Elizabeth, 134
bianhua. See transformation
biji, 14, 161n10
biluo, 74
187
188Index
bing, 147n50
biographies, 3032, 3536, 122124
Blue Dragon Temple, 62
Bol, Peter, 89, 25
Booklet from Sanshui (Huangfu Mei), 15, 83
boyhood, 2425, 144n3
bribery, 103, 119, 159n49
brothel mothers, 78, 105, 115, 120, 123, 124.
See also courtesans
Buddhism: monasteries within residential
wards, 70, 161n1; mythology of, 32;
secular education and, 107, 150n35;
temple wall writing, 100
bureaucracy, 7073
busybodies. See haoshi zhe
Cai Jing, 102
calendrical cycles, 7, 1213
calligraphy, 99, 101, 105, 140n15
Camel Liu, 124125
Canonical Expert degree. See mingjing
degree
Cao Gang, 54
capital-gazing, 5556, 151n60, 152n61
capitals of Tang dynasty. See under
Changan; Luoyang
Casual Talk from the Northern Dream (Sun
Guangxian), 15
center vs. periphery, 50, 6166
Central Asian populations, 70, 154n10
Changan, Thoughts on Antiquity (Lu
Zhaolin), 155n30
Changan as perceived space: capital-gazing
genre, 5556, 151n60, 152n61; chessboard
metaphor, 5, 6, 56, 81; as cultural
epicenter, 12, 44, 5356; exile literature
on, 5253, 6364; literati transformation
and, 2730, 4851, 5960; spatial logic
in, 10, 7580, 141n30, 156n49; Tong Pass
and, 45, 6364, 106107
Changan as physical capital: alleyways of,
22, 76, 111, 128, 130134; archaeological
record of, 4, 37, 78, 84, 139n5, 139n7;
avenues of, 4, 8, 73, 76, 140n10;
bureaucracy in, 7073; career
opportunities in, 4648, 149n16; clan
distribution in, 47, 96, 114, 149n21,
161n13; diagram of, 5, 6; gates of, 4, 56,
6465, 72, 76, 80, 86, 152n61; vs. Han
capital, 155n30; Huang Chao rebellion in,
15, 59, 73, 100, 106, 113, 148n5; migration
to/from, 6, 7, 13, 6066; physical geography
of, 26, 10, 7576, 84, 139n7; population
of, 3, 70, 107; ward system of, 4, 56, 139n7.
See also Tang dynasty
Changxing Ward, 74
character appraisal, 89
Chen, Jack, 154n3
Chen, Ta-ko, 47
chengming (completing ones name), 25, 63,
87, 88, 110, 118
Chen Hong, 143n59
Chen Jiqing, 6264
Chen Xiaofeng, 128133
Chen Yinque, 150n33
Chen Ziang, 9091, 109
Cherries and the Maidservant, 32, 3637,
42, 43, 5152, 57
chessboard metaphor, 5, 6, 56, 81
childhood stages, 2425, 144n3
Chongren Ward, 5, 75, 155n29
Chongzhen Abbey, 99
Chronicles from Xuanshi Hall (Zhang Du),
15, 41, 142n55
chronotope, 33, 37, 58, 101, 147n42
chuanqi (concept), 14, 143n63, 161n10
Chuanqi (Pei Xing), 15, 6162, 65, 142n52
Chuer, 163n48, 163n54
Chu Suiliang, 161n1
Cien Pagoda, 5, 96, 9799, 105, 135
civil service examination: cancellation of,
45, 148n7; post-Tang, 136137; selection
examinations of, 2830, 9192; subjects
in, 67; in Sui dynasty, 6, 140n13. See
also examination culture; jinshi degree
clan distribution, 47, 96, 114, 149n21,
161n13
collections of Tang narratives, 1417, 143n59,
143n66, 147n53, 161n10. See also specific
titles
collective imagination, 1821
colored robes, 26, 145n11

commerce: foreign, 39, 70; geography of, 4;
of Kaifeng, 110; post-Tang, 136137;
sexual, 22, 104, 112, 119120, 131,
133134. See also markets
Complete Tang Poems, 100
Comprehensive History of Institutions, 46
conceived space, 9, 84, 141n30
concubines, 114, 117, 120, 125, 129, 133, 135.
See also courtesans
Confucian proverbs, 12, 28
Constantinople, 2
courtesans: agency of, 118119; body writing
on, 105; households of, 104, 114115,
133134; transformation of, 117118;
Xiaofu, 129, 130, 133, 159n54, 163n47;
Xiaorun, 105, 159n54, 163n47; Yan
Lingbin, 121124; Yizhi, 104, 125127,
159n56, 163nn4647; Zhang Zhuzhu,
119, 127132, 163n54. See also brothel
mothers; fengliu
cover letters of candidates, 8990, 142n52
criminal activities, 6162, 8283, 156n56
crowd in narratives, 107108, 160nn6667
Cui Chuixiu, 105, 159n58
Cui Mian, 149n16
Cui Shou, 92
cult of literature, 7, 140n20
curfew. See night curfew
Da Anguo Temple, 71, 154nn1516
Dai Weihua, 148n3
Dalliance in the Immortals Cave, 132
Daming Palace, 11, 56, 84, 152n61
Daxing City, 2. See also Changan as physical
capital
Dazhong Reign, 41, 103, 145n18
De Certeau, Michel, 10, 69, 76, 77
demimonde. See Pingkang Ward
deng longmen (ascending the dragons gate),
28, 146n24
Dezong, Emperor, 45
diagram of Changan, 5, 6
dirge singing. See funeral rituals
dislocation, 13, 6064. See also liminality;
migration
Ditter, Alexei, 8990
Index189
ditties, 128133, 164n58, 164n60
Dongjing menghua lu, 13, 113, 137
door writing, 64, 97, 104, 106. See also walls
dragons gate metaphor, 2829, 30, 146n24
Dream of Splendors Past in the Eastern
Capital, A, 13, 113, 137
dreams in narratives, 3638, 42, 9497
drought, 45, 148n7
Dry Snacks (Wen Tingyun), 15, 42
Duan Chengshi, 15, 42, 148
Dudbridge, Glen, 14, 79, 108, 144n72,
144n79, 156n50
Du Fu, 56, 151n60
Du Mu, 3032, 48, 4951, 91, 150n34
Du Xunhe, 65
eastern capital of Tang dynasty. See Luoyang
Eastern Market. See markets
education system, 8
Elman, Benjamin, 8
Ennin, 101, 153n91, 160n66
enthusiasts, literary. See haoshi zhe
envoy official, 1112, 141n43
epitaphs: as evidence of clan distribution, 47,
149n21, 161n13; as evidence of foreign
population, 70, 154n10; of Gong Yao,
3032; of Li Kan, 9192; of Lu Pei, 4951,
150n33; of Shen Zirou, 122; of Zheng,
imagined, 35
Erikson, Erik, 24
erotic poetry, 161n8
examination culture: age and, 24, 25, 30,
8081, 145n3, 146n30; capital vs.
provincial opportunities, 4648, 149n16;
failure in, 6365, 8085, 9293; haoshi
zhe and, 89, 88, 91, 100, 110, 118, 141n27;
hierarchy in, 58, 7073; liminality of,
1011, 3442; milestones in, 2526; pass
list, 28, 94, 9799; popular opinion in,
8990; seasons of, 7, 113, 161n5; success
in, 8, 2529, 48, 65 (See also jinshi
degree). See also civil service examination;
recruitment
examinees: about, 78, 12, 141n24;
emergence of, 4243; gathering of, 45;
isolation of, 1213; pass list and, 28, 94,
190Index
examinees (cont.)
9799, 101; performance of, 8, 73, 8081,
8990, 107111; as protagonist, 3233,
3637, 42, 43, 7580; recruitment of,
2526, 42, 8889, 9394, 113, 117118,
161n5; transformations of, 2630, 37,
6364; travels of, 6, 7, 13, 6066. See also
literati
examiners, 48, 89, 149n25
executions, public, 75, 107, 110, 160n66
exile literature, 5253, 6364
expulsion ritual, 8081, 156n52
Extensive Records of the Taiping Era, 17, 18,
34, 41, 42, 62, 79, 147n53
failure in narratives, 6365, 8085, 9293
fairness in examinations, 1112, 90, 9394,
103, 142n43
family instruction books, 2425
fengliu: about, 22, 100, 113115; Liu Guorong
and, 116118; Yan Lingbin and, 121124;
Yizhi and, 125127; Zhang Zhuzhu and,
127132. See also courtesans
Feng Menglong, 79
Feng shi wen jian ji (Feng Yan), 14
Feng Yan, 7, 14, 2829, 49, 149n14
Five Plains region, 6566
flour. See food
flowers, 26, 52, 57, 115, 120, 122
Fonu, 128133, 164n69, 164n71
food, 3739, 6162, 74, 147n50, 152n67
foreigners, 3839, 70, 147n51
Foreign Pancake-Seller, The, 41, 55
Forest of Words from the Tang (Wang
Dang), 15
Frankel, Hans, 35
Friendly Discourse at Yunxi, 41, 157n14
From the Court and Beyond, 173
funeral rituals: inscriptions, 122123,
163n39; singing, 17, 73, 107109, 160n73.
See also mourning rituals
Funiang. See Yizhi
Gan sunzi (Wen Tingyun), 15, 42
Ganze yao (Yuan Jiao), 15
Gao Yanxiu, 15
Gaozong, Emperor, 84
gates, 4, 56, 6465, 72, 76, 80, 86, 152n61. See
also dragons gate metaphor
Gazetteer of Changan (Song Minqiu), 70, 76,
81, 84
gender and literary criticism, 80, 105, 114,
128, 132, 156n50
Gennep, Arnold van, 10, 141n36
geography: as literary tool, 6065, 69 (See
also Changan as perceived space);
physical, 26, 10, 7576, 84, 139n7 (See
also maps)
Ge Yonghai, 153n2
ghosts and spirits, 3133, 66, 146n36. See
also immortals in narratives
gongsheng (tribute scholar). See examinees
Gong Yao, 3032
gossipmongers. See haoshi zhe
graffiti, 105, 159n39. See also walls
gravity-defying stunts, 8586, 157n71
Greenblatt, Stephen, 18
Guangzhou, 66
Guo Zhaoshu, 116118
Han dynasty, 2, 6, 25
Han Gun, 159n49
Han Histories, 145n8
Han Wo, 26
Han Yi, 92
Han Yu, 30, 45, 74, 97, 141n42, 148n7, 149n8,
158n25
haoshi zhe, 8, 88, 91, 100, 110, 118, 131,
141n27
Hedong ji (Xue Yusi), 15, 32, 68, 146n36
Hegan Jun, 103
hempen robes, 26, 27, 29, 30, 45, 74
hierarchy. See social hierarchy
homecoming poetry, 5253, 6364
Homo Ludens (Huizinga), 105
Hong Mai, 142n49
Hostel for Tributary Envoys, 11, 141n43
hostels and rented lodging, 154n8
house-switching in narrative, 7880,
155n44, 156n45
Huang Chao rebellion, 15, 59, 73, 100, 106,
113, 148n5
 Index191

Huangcheng, 70 lao, 152n67

Huangfu Mei, 15 Large Goose Pagoda, 4, 98
Huangfu Shi, 97, 158n25 law degree, 140n15
Huangfu shi (Mr.Huangfu), 15 laws of imperial capital, 84, 152n71
Huang Po, 29 lectures, Buddhist, 107
Huang Tao, 44 Lefebvre, Henri, 9
Huizinga, Johan, 93, 105 Lehan, Richard, 136
Li Ao, 61, 66, 149n8
immortals in narratives, 26, 33, 40, 41, 66, Li Biao, 120121
120121. See also ghosts and spirits Li clan of Zhaojun, 47
impartiality in examiners, 1112, 34, 4041, Li Dehui, 55, 6465
90, 9394, 103, 142n43 Li Fengji, 55
Imperial City, 70 life stages of a man, 2425, 144n3
imperial meanderings, 7072, 154nn1516 Li Gongzuo, 19, 20, 37
impersonations of emperor, 7072 Li Guan, 90
itinerary view, 10 Li He, 92
Li Jianguo, 161n10
Jia Dao, 7475, 9293 Li Kan (Li Fei), 9192
Jiang Bo, 159n49 Li Mei, 3233
Jiangzhen, 119 liminality: in Cherries, 3637; defining,
Jiankang, 6, 47 100 1011, 21, 34, 43; in Lu Yong, 3742;
Jinchang Ward, 5, 98 state of abeyance and, 3132, 33; in The
Jinggong Ward, 5, 47, 149n21 Tale of Li Wa, 3435, 37. See also rites of
Jingling Chimes Lane, 76 passage; transformation
jinshi degree, 79, 11, 2730, 140n16, 141n42. Linghu Chu, 13, 142n48
See also civil service examination; Linghu Hao, 8283
examination culture Lishan, 55
Johnson, David, 47 Li Shangyin, 1213, 55, 56, 102, 109, 142n48
ju. See civil service examination Li Shen, 54, 143n64, 151n48
Jujube Alley, 76 Li Tang, 102
Jutan lu (Kang Ping), 15, 41 literati: -courtesan romance, 115119; death
and, 3032; identity and, 2630, 37,
Kaifeng, 4, 13, 110, 113, 137 4851, 5960, 6364, 7374. See also
Kaihua Ward, 48 examination culture; examinees
Kaiyuan Tianbao yishi (Wang Renyu), 15, Liu Chen, 120
116118 Liu Chengqing, 142n44
Kang Ping, 15 Liu Guorong, 116118, 127
Kinney, Anne Behnke, 24 Liu Jing, 74
Knechtges, David, 151n52 Liu Tan, 57, 119
Kong Yingda, 25, 161n1 Liu Tui, 60, 153n81
Kou Yang, 149n16 Liu Xubai, 27
Kroll, Paul, 143n59 Liu Yu, 107, 160n67
Liu Yuxi, 5253, 54, 73, 135, 150n37
Laier, 164n58 lived space, 1, 9, 141n30
lantern festival in narratives, 55, 56, 107108, Li Wa. See Tale of Li Wa, The (Bai
151n54 Xingjian)
192Index

Li Wa xing (ballad by Yuan), 143n64 Miao Taifu, 41, 103

Li Wa zhuan. See Tale of Li Wa, The (Bai Miao Yin, 148n59
Xingjian) migration, 6, 7, 13, 60, 6566
Li Wei, 106, 160n62 milestones, 1011, 2425, 144n3
Li Wenyuan, 106, 160n62 military governments, 148n3
Li Wo, 160n62 ming (name/reputation), 29, 99, 102, 110
Li Ye, 113 Ming dynasty, 4, 132
Li Yi, 55, 109 mingjing degree, 25, 29, 47, 149n9. See also
Li Ying, 28, 146n24 civil service examination; jinshi degree
Li Zhao, 15 Ministry of Personnel, 30
London, 2 Ministry of Rites, 159n61
Lost books, 79 minor talk, 14, 143n66
Lost Histories (Lu Zhao), 15, 32 Miscellaneous Records from the Music
Lu Guangqi, 142n49 Bureau, 151n49
Lu Ji, 108 Missing Histories of the Tang (Gao Yanxiu),
Luoyang: as auxiliary eastern capital, 50, 53, 15, 41, 9496
61, 91, 139n3, 148n1; clan distribution in, Mixed Morsels from Youyang (Duan
47, 114, 161n13; examinations in, 140n17; Chengshi), 15, 42, 74
Huang Chao rebellion in, 106, 113; travel monastic community, 6162, 70, 74, 150n35
to/from, 6, 61 monumentality, 10, 141n34
Luo Yin, 27, 118 Moore, Oliver, 7, 11, 5960, 146n21, 152n77,
Lu Pei, 4951, 150nn3335 152nn7778, 158n28
Lu Shangqing, 45 morphology, 4
lute music in narrative, 5354, 151n44, Mote, Frederick, 10
151nn4950 Mount Li, 55
Lu Xun, 161n10 mourning rituals, 106, 160n62. See also
Lu Yan, 68 funeral rituals
Lu Yong, 3739, 41, 43 Mr.Fengs Record of Things Heard and Seen
Lu Zhao, 15 (Feng Yan), 14
Lu Zhaolin, 155n30 murder, 6162, 8283
music in narratives: Camel Liu and, 124;
magician in narratives, 63 ditties, 128133, 164n58, 164n60; funeral
Mao Hanguang, 47 singing, 17, 73, 107109, 160n73; of pipa,
maps, 6364, 77, 84, 135. See also physical 5354, 151n44, 151nn4950; of zither,
geography 9091
map view, 10 Muzong, Emperor, 54
markets, 4, 8, 70, 73, 74. See also commerce
marvelous (qi) quality in tales, 14, 15, 61, nameless entities, 102103
142n52, 143n63 name-signing, 99
mathematics degree, 140n15 Nanbu xinshu (Qian Yi), 15, 8081, 149n27
Meng Jiao, 102, 149n8, 152n75 Nanjing, 6. See also Jiankang
men of letters. See literati Nanke Taishou zhuan (Li Gongzhuo), 37
meritocracy of examinations. See Nanyue (Southern Yue), 147n51
impartiality narratives, defining, 2, 14. See also
mian (flour or flour-based food), 37, 39, collections of Tang narratives
147n50 nepotism, 9497, 103, 159n46

New Account of Tales of the World, A, 28, 89
New Book from the South (Qian Yi), 15, 8081,
149n27
newsmongers. See haoshi zhe
New Years Eve performance, 8081
night curfew, 4, 55, 68, 7879, 80, 86
Niu Sengru, 19, 32, 4142, 97, 148n59,
158n25
Niu Xiji, 45
Northern Song dynasty, 4, 110
Northern Ward (collection). See Anecdotes
from the Northern Ward (Sun)
Northern Ward (place). See Pingkang Ward
nostalgia, 5457, 113, 150n41
notebook jottings, 14, 161n10
Nugent, Christopher, 100, 158n31
Nylan, Michael, 145n8, 160n76
occult magic. See supernatural experiences
official biographies, 3536
Old Man of the Eastern Wall, The, 153n2
Old Tang History, 109
One Sprig of Flowers, 144n72
Owen, Stephen, 16, 18, 1920, 116, 143n62,
151n47
pageantry of examination culture, 5859,
8897, 152n75; on New Years Eve, 8081;
record of, 9799; wall writing, 97104.
See also performance, public
pagodas, 4, 5, 96, 9799, 105, 139n5. See also
temples
palaces, 11, 56, 70, 84, 139n5, 152n61
pancakes, 41, 55, 73
Pang Fonu, 128133, 164n69, 164n71
Pang Xun, 45, 132, 164n71
Panyu, 66
parasitic creature in narrative, 3841
Paris, 136
partitions. See walls
pass list, 28, 94, 9799, 101, 159n61
pawn slip records, 78
pearls, 3940, 41
Pei Du, 93
Pei Xing, 15, 6162
Pei Zan, 117
Index193
perceived space, 9, 68, 141n30
performance, public, 8, 73, 8081, 8990,
107111. See also pageantry of
examination culture; rituals, public
perigraphy, 137
periphery vs. center in narratives, 50, 6166
physical geography of Changan, 26, 10,
7576, 84, 139n7. See also maps
Pingkang Ward, 5; anecdotal collections on,
15, 112113; Bai Juyi on, 112; as physical
space, 8, 75, 114; spatial configuration of,
4, 7677, 112, 115; violence in, 8283,
156n56; wall writing in, 104
pipa music, 5354, 151n44, 151nn4950
Pi Rixiu, 60
pleasure quarters. See Pingkang Ward
Plum in the Golden Vase, The, 132
Poems Rooted in Events, 41, 92
Poetic Exposition on Literature (Lu Ji), 108
poetry: on death, 122; on examination
failure, 30, 64, 9293; for examiner, 93,
157n14; on exile, 5253, 6364; on
homecoming, 5253; by Li Shen, 143n64;
literati-courtesan exchange, 120127;
narratives of, 8, 16, 143n59; of nostalgia,
5457, 150n41; truth in, 18; written on
walls, 8, 99102, 104106, 158n31,
159n39
poetry boards (shi ban), 100101. See also
tibishi
population, 3, 70, 107
portfolios, writing, 8, 8990, 9091
Presented Scholar degree. See jinshi degree
Production of Space, The (Lefebvre), 9
proverbs, 7, 12, 28
Puyang Yuan, 9496
Qian Yi, 15
Qing dynasty, 4
Quan Deyu, 76
Qujiang. See Serpentine Pond
rank five officials, 73, 154n18
reassignment, 44, 141n42
rebellions: An Lushan, 70; Huang Chao, 15,
59, 73, 100, 106, 113, 148n5; Pang Xun, 45
194Index
received knowledge, 1920
Record of Dreams in Qin, A (Shen Yazhi),
49
Record of First Learning, 24
Record of Rites, 24, 145n17
Record of the Unusual (Li Mei), 3233,
153n87
Records of Mysterious Anomalies (Niu
Sengru), 4142
Records of Original Tranformations
(Huangfu shi), 15, 33, 41, 157n68
Records of Temples and Pagodas (Duan
Chengshi), 148n60
Records of the Rivers East (Xue Yusi), 15, 32,
68, 146n36
Records of Unfettered Conversation (Kang
Ping), 15, 41
Record within the Pillow (Shen Jiji), 37, 63
recreational areas. See Serpentine Pond
recruitment, 2526, 42, 8889, 9394,
117118. See also examinees
Ren Bantang, 109
rental housing, 75, 79, 154n8
representational space, 1, 9, 141n30
representations of space, 9, 6364, 84,
141n30
reputation, 9496, 99, 105, 130. See also
literati
residential wards. See ward system; specific
wards
riddles in narrative, 129130
rites of passage, 2425, 2830, 144n3,
146n24. See also transformation
Rites of Zhou, 73
rituals, public, 11, 107108, 110, 141n42,
160n76, 160nn6667. See also
performance, public
riverways, 6061, 63
roadways, 4, 8, 6061, 73, 76, 140n10
robe colors, 26, 145n11
romance culture. See fengliu
Rome, 2
rooster in narrative, 130131, 164n69
Rouzer, Paul, 104, 109, 114, 119, 126, 163n47
Ruizong, Emperor, 154n15
Runniang, 163n48, 163n54
Sanshui xiaodu (Huangfu Mei), 15, 83
Saussy, Haun, 45
seasonality in narratives: on change, 2627,
45, 5657, 145n17; on festivals, 55;
nostalgia in, 5758; on spring, 5657,
151n48
selection examinations, 2830, 9192.
See also civil service examination
self-promotion, 8990, 99, 104
Sending Foreign Pancakes to Yang of
Wanzhou (Bai Juyi), 55
sensory memories, 5356
Seo Tatsuhiko, 14, 156n51
Serpentine Pond, 5, 8, 52, 54, 57, 98, 99, 108,
135
sexual commerce, 22, 104, 112, 119120, 131,
133134
Shaanxi Province, 3
Shen Chuanshi, 48, 49, 91, 149n27
Shengdao Ward, 74, 155n29
Shen Jiji: about, 48, 149n9, 149n27; on
gathering of examinees, 4546; on
long distance journey, 37, 63; on
principles of transformation, 20, 21;
in storytelling sessions, 19; works by,
37, 48
Shen Liang, 149n27
Shenping Ward, 49
Shen Xun, 48, 149n25
Shen Yazhi, 49, 60, 65
Shen Yue, 46
Shen Zirou, 122
shi ban, 100101. See also tibishi
shi class, 89, 25, 73
Shi Jianwu, 12
Shishuo xinyu, 28, 89
Sian. SeeXian
Silk Road, 23, 70
singing. See funeral rituals
Six Dynasties Jiankang. See Jiankang
Small Goose Pagoda, 4
social hierarchy, 89, 25, 7073, 8586, 115,
136, 154n18
Song dynasty, 7, 132. See also Kaifeng
Song Ji, 145n12
Song Mingqiu, 70

Song of Everlasting Regret (Bai Juyi), 143n59
Song of the Lady of Qin (Wei Zhuang), 59
songs: ditties, 128133, 164n58, 164n60;
funeral, 17, 73, 107109, 160n73
Song Yu, 123124
sophora blooms, 7. See also proverbs
Southern Courtyard, 106, 159n61
spatial logic: developing, 1, 910; historical
records of, 7778; jinshi degrees and
imaginary, 7, 140n20; private vs. public,
6869, 75, 135; representation and,
141n30; in The Tale of Li Wa, 7580;
vertical, 8486, 157n71
spirits. See ghosts and spirits
spring season, 5657, 151n48
state ritual degree, 140n15
Story of Feng Yan, The (Shen Yazhi), 49
Story of Huo Xiaoyu, The, 109, 132, 162n28
Story of Miss Ren (Shen Jiji), 21, 4849,
153n2
Story of Yingying (Yuan Zhen), 132,
143n64, 162n28
Story of Zhang Zhuzhu, The, 119, 127132
storytelling, 1921, 144n79, 144nn7172
street urchins, 98, 110, 129133
Submitted Respectfully to New Elders
(Wei Zhuang), 27
success narratives, 8, 2529, 48, 65. See also
jinshi degree
Sui dynasty, 2, 6, 140n13
Sun Guangxian, 15, 142n49
Sun Qi: on courtesan hierarchy, 115, 134;
family lineage of, 161n13; on Liu Tan
(first-time examinee), 119; Northern
Ward by, 15, 113, 161n7; poetry exchange
of, 104, 106, 113114, 159n54, 159n56;
Yizhi and, 125127, 163nn4647;
Zhuzhu and, 133. See also Anecdotes
from the Northern Ward (Sun Qi)
supernatural experiences, 3133, 4142, 66,
146n36. See also ghosts and spirits
Supplements to State Histories of the Tang (Li
Zhao), 15, 26, 48
Sutra of the Names of Thousand Buddhas, 7
Suzhou, 10
Sweet Swamp Lore (Yuan Jiao), 15
Index195
Tackett, Nicolas, 47, 48, 161n13
Taihe Reign, 65
Taiping guangji. See Extensive Records of the
Taiping Era
Taiping Ward, 59
Tale of Li Wa, The (Bai Xingjian): about,
1718; adaptations of, 18, 79, 143n63,
143n66; character epitaph of, 35; as
collaborative narrative, 143n64; opening
passage of, 3435; pretextual formation
of, 2021, 144n72, 144n79; public
performance in, 107108; relocation in,
7880, 155n44, 156n45; spatial logic in,
7577; on urban divisions, 73
Tale of the Governor of the Southern
Branch (Li Gongzuo), 37
Tang dynasty, 26. See also Changan as
physical capital; Luoyang
Tang Gleanings (Wang Dingbao): banquets
and, 160n80; on examination culture, 15,
57, 58, 89, 92; on wall writing, 99, 101,
102, 103
Tang guoshi bu (Li Zhao), 15, 26, 48
Tang que shi (Gao Yanxiu), 15, 41, 9496
Tang yu lin (Wang Dang), 15
Tang zhi yan. See Tang Gleanings (Wang
Dingbao)
Taoism: degree in, 140n15; monasteries
within residential wards, 70; in narratives,
36, 40, 6162, 66; in poetry, 26
taxonomy of Tang narratives, 17, 147n53
temples, 8, 62, 71, 139n5, 154nn1516. See
also pagodas
temporality. See liminality
tentative biographies, 3032
textual formation, 144n71
theater, urban, 8, 8081. See also
performance, public
Tianbao Reign (742755), 74, 141n24
tibishi (wall poems), 8, 99102, 104106,
158n31, 159n39
tiger in narrative, 6162
Tong Pass, 45, 6364, 106, 107
Topical Conversations (Zhao Lin), 1415,
152n71
topoanalysis, 135
196Index
transformation, 20, 21, 2630, 37, 6364.
See also liminality
transmission of the marvelous, 14, 142n52,
143n63
Transmitted Marvels (Pei Xing), 15, 6162,
65, 142n52
travel, 6, 7, 13, 6066. See also dislocation;
migration
tributary goods, 12, 142n44
tribute scholars (gongsheng). See examinees
Tsai, Kevin, 36, 156n50
Turner, Victor, 1011, 32, 34
Two Capital Rhapsody, 155n30
Unaccounted Events from the Kaiyuan-
Tianbao Reigns (Wang Renyu), 15,
116118
Various Records of Name-Signing,
Sightseeing and Poetry-Making at the
Cien Temple, 99
vertical space, 8486, 157n71. See also
spatial logic
violence, 6162, 8283, 156n56
virginity, 128, 130, 131, 164n69
Visiting Chongzhen Abbeys South Tower,
Seeing Where New Examination
Graduates Left Their Writing (Yu
Xuanji), 99
walls: about, 4, 9, 70, 76; collaborative
comments on, 102103; diagram of, 5;
efficacy of, 80, 156n49; pass list on,
9799, 101; poetry on, 8, 99102, 100,
104, 135, 158n31; vertical logic and,
8586, 157n71. See also door writing
Wanan Abbey, 161n1
Wanderings in the Immortals Grotto
(Zhang Zhuo), 120
Wang Dang, 15
Wang Dingbao, 15, 57, 5960, 143n63,
152nn7778
Wang Ji, 100
Wang Jing, 47
Wang Qi, 29, 82, 159n51
Wang Renyu, 15, 154n15
Wang Shi, 8283
Wang Susu, 120121
Wang Tuaner, 105
ward system, 4, 56, 70, 139n7, 154n8. See
also specific wards
warming of the scrolls, 142n52
Wei River valley, 23
Wei Zhuang, 27, 5758, 59, 73, 92
Wen Fu, 108
wenren, 8, 31, 136. See also literati
Wen Tingyun, 15, 42, 83, 92, 149n25
West, Stephen, 69, 110, 137
Western Han, 2
Western Market. See markets
Willow Alley, 76
wine-drinking, 31, 38, 50, 52, 73, 74, 118,
122
Woman in the Carriage, 8586
women, 80, 105, 114, 128, 132, 156n50. See
also courtesans
writing on walls. See under walls
Wu, Empress, 73, 164n60
wuming zi, 102103
Wu Yuanheng, 55
Wuzong, Emperor, 157n68
xiadi shi (examination failure poem), 30, 64
Xian, 34. See also Changan as physical
capital
Xiang Yu, 102
Xianyi Convent, 83
Xianzong, Emperor, 140n16, 152n71
Xiaofeng, 128133
Xiaofu, 129, 130, 133, 159n54, 163n47
xiao mian chong (flour-devouring crawler),
3840
Xiaorun, 105, 159n54, 163n47
xiaoshuo, 14, 143n66
Xiao Zhi, 92
Ximing Temple, 102
Xinchang Ward, 5, 78, 99, 135
Xin Tang shu, 96
xuan, 44, 141n42
Xuanguai lu (Niu Sengru), 4142
Xuanshi zhi (Zhang Du), 15, 41, 142n55
Xuanyang Ward, 4, 5, 78
 Index197

Xuanzong, Emperor (r. 713756), 55, 116, Yu bing hu, 41

143n59 Yu Luozhen, 163n48
Xuanzong, Emperor (r. 846859), 7, 16, Yunxi youyi, 41
7072, 140n16 Yutang xianhua (Wang Renyu), 7071,
Xue Alley, 76 154n15
Xue Feng, 5859, 152n72 Yu Xuanji, 83, 99100, 113
Xue Tao, 113
Xue Yusi, 15 Zeitlin, Judith, 159n39
Xu Hun, 55 Zhang Du, 15, 41, 102103, 148n55
Zhang Hu, 159n49
yakshas, 32 Zhang Ji, 149n8; as patron, 74
Yang Bo, 160n80 Zhang Jian, 159n46
Yang clan of Jinggong/Hongnong, 47, 96, Zhang Jiuling, 61
149n21 Zhang Wupo, 66
Yang Dai, 9497 Zhang Xiaobiao, 157n14
Yan Gengwang, 150n35 Zhang Xifu, 42, 148n59, 148n60
Yang Jingzhi, 9497, 135 Zhang Youxin, 159n46
Yang Ning, 47, 149n21 Zhang Zhuo, 120121, 159n46
Yankang Ward, 74 Zhang Zhuzhu, 119, 127132, 163n54,
Yan Lingbin, 121124, 128 164n69
Yanshou Ward, 74 Zhao Chong, 113
Yan Weigang, 155n44 Zhao Lin, 1415, 152n71
Yan Zhenqing, 103 Zhao Yanwei, 142n52
Yan Zhitui, 25 Zheng Gu, 100, 109, 114
Yao He, 26, 145n17 Zheng Guangye, 27
yi (unusual), 15, 19 Zheng Hejing, 163n48
Yinhua lu (Zhao Lin), 1415, 152n71 Zheng Jiulang, 129
Yi shi (Lu Zhao), 15, 32 Zheng Juju, 163n54
Yizhi, 104, 125127, 159n56, 163nn4647 Zheng Qi, 141n27
Yizong, Emperor, 7172, 154n16 Zheng Xun, 103
Youguai lu, 142n52 Zhen zhong ji (Shen Jiji), 37
yousi zhi gong, 1112, 90, 142n43 zhiguai (anomaly accounts), 33, 67,
Youyang zazu (Duan Chengshi), 15, 42, 74 147n43
Yuan Cai, 25 Zhongnan Mountains, 5556, 62, 151n58,
Yuan hua ji (Huangfu shi), 15, 33, 41, 157n68 152n61
Yuan Jiao, 15 Zhou Zhangheng, 73
Yuan Zhen: about, 12; Bai Juyi and, 12, 100, Zhu Yuqi, 154n15
143n64, 150n41, 158n35; Bai Xingjian Zhuzhu. See Zhang Zhuzhu
and, 144n72; demotion of, 100; on erotic zither, 9091
poetry, 161n8; Li Shen and, 143n64; on Zuan yi ji (Li Mei), 3233
Liu Yuxi, 52 Zrcher, Erik, 150n35
Production Notes for Feng City of Marvel and Transformation
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