![1 A Gentrified Kinship Society
In the spring of 1718, a Yangzhou poet named Cheng Ting set off for
the first time, at age forty-seven, to fulfill a dream he had nurtured since he
was “capped” at age twenty: to visit his ancestral home. His family had
lived in Yangzhou, the center of China’s salt business, since the time of his
grandfather, but now he was sojourning to Censhan village in Shexian, the
capital county of Huizhou prefecture, about two hundred miles south of
Yangzhou. The main activity of the trip was to offer sacrifice to his ances-
tors, and thus an auspicious day to begin the journey was first divined. Af-
ter eleven days traveling by boat, he arrived at Shexian on the fourteenth
day of the second month. All members of the Cheng lineage, including all
“elders and children,” came out to greet him as he walked into Censhan. He
was deeply moved by the scene. Nothing could have pleased him more than
“holding sleeves and shaking hands” with his kinspeople, he wrote. In Cen-
shan it appeared that he finally breathed some fresh air, which, nevertheless,
somehow seemed very familiar to him. On the same day he noted in his
travel diary, The Recorded Journey of a Spring Boat, certain “customs of
Huizhou,” which he certainly would have read about and heard of many
times before. The language of the diary passage conveys a profound sense
of pride and certainty, as if the social landscape of his ancestral prefecture
was as exquisite as Huizhou’s Mount Huang, one of the most popular tour-
ist spots in China.
It is the custom in Huizhou that scholar-officials and prominent households settle
in the countryside. Each village is occupied by a certain lineage whose members live
together, with no men of other surnames dwelling there. In each village a temple
is built for the earth god and an ancestral hall for the descent-line. Genealogies
are written for lineage branches so that their origins and lineal order are not con-
fused. Lords and servants are clearly differentiated, and everyone is distinctly
dressed [according to social status]. This is what distinguishes Huizhou customs
from any other prefecture’s. Men uphold integrity and righteousness, and women
cherish uprightness and chastity. Even in straitened circumstances, they never aban-
don their [husbands’] villages. There are maidens whose husbands travel far [to do
business] immediately after the wedding, and, in some cases, never return. But still](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-29-320.jpg)
![A Gentrified Kinship Society 11
Censhan was a gentry community of mercantile lineage throughout late
imperial times. In the Ming dynasty, the Censhan Chengs produced six met-
ropolitan jinshi and six provincial juren degree holders; and from the late
Ming through High Qing, they, along with ten or so other Shexian lineages,
dominated the salt business in Yangzhou, one of the most lucrative trades
in the realm.4
By the eighteenth century, the Censhan Chengs had grown
into one of the most prosperous descent groups in the prefecture.5
This gen-
trified lineage, as implied in Cheng Ting’s observation, showcased entire
Huizhou, a prefecture that was thoroughly saturated with Confucian norms
and customs. Indeed, the strict Confucianism of Huizhou had caught the
attention of numerous other visiting literati as well, not to mention self-
congratulatory native sons. For example, Yao Qiyuan, when appointed
magistrate of Qimen in 1683, offered his first impressions of this Huizhou
county in terms similar to Cheng Ting’s. In “this land of propriety and righ-
teousness,” Yao noted, gentlemen were modest and had a sense of honor,
whereas commoners were obedient and had a sense of sincerity—they all
showed the “cultural heritage of the ancient sage-kings.”6
This Confucian land was nevertheless also home to the “countrified and
folksy” Mulian performance. In fact, Huizhou was the very birthplace of
what I will call here the new tradition of Mulian ritual opera performance.
The Huizhou man of letters Zheng Zhizhen first scripted the performance
into a three-volume text, Mulian Rescues His Mother: An Opera for Good-
ness. This script, though written by a well-educated literatus and pro-
fessionally printed in 1582, was still quite “folksy” in its style, especially as
enacted during its three-night performance. Qi Biaojia (1602– 45), a met-
ropolitan degree holder from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, despised both the script
and its performance in Jiangnan: “An Opera for Goodness (Quanshan): It
shows no awareness whatsoever of operatic melodies. Just like blind beg-
gars, [the performers] do nothing but yell and sing from house to house.
However, foolish people worship Buddha. Totaling 109 scenes, the perfor-
mance lasts three days and three nights, stirring up the whole rural com-
munity.”7
Qi Biaojia was one of leading dramatic critics in the art world of
late-Ming China. His criticism of Mulian may be sound, if considered from
a literary or artistic perspective, but his personal experience might have also
fueled the rebuke. In Qi’s diary on the thirtieth of the fifth month, 1639, he
noted: “It has been extremely hot for a couple of days. Tonight the village
of Ke again staged the Mulian opera, [it was so noisy that I] couldn’t fall
asleep the entire night.”8
Here we have a puzzle that is critically important for a proper under-
standing of traditional Chinese popular culture and its relation to gentry
society: Why was the “noisy” performance of “folk” Mulian so popular in
“a land of propriety and righteousness”? The key to answering this ques-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-31-320.jpg)
![A Gentrified Kinship Society 15
trasted sharply with the empirewide average, which ranged from 6.5 to 20.6
mu in the Ming dynasty.24
Huizhou’s land scarcity in part explains why, to
quote a local proverb, “every boy upon the age of sixteen needs to go out
to do business.”25
For Xin’an men, indeed, leaving home to enter a trade
was a typical economic behavior, which earned them the title Huishang
(“Huizhou merchants”). From about 1500 to 1850, the merchants of
Huizhou dominated the highly developed commercial scene in southern and
central China.26
As a popular saying put it: “No market town can emerge
without [the presence of merchants from] Huizhou,” especially in Jiangnan
and the Middle Yangzi Valley.27
For those who stayed home, the mountains became the source of their
livelihoods, in some cases even fortunes.28
Tea, lacquer, lumber, and bam-
boo products, all mountain-related in one way or another, became major
commodities for Huizhou merchants. Some locals were masters of handi-
craft, especially good at manufacturing the “four treasures of the study”
(wenfang sibao), essential for Confucian literati life. Chengxintang paper,
Wang Boxuan brushes, Li Tinggui ink, and Jiukeng inkstones of Huizhou
were famed throughout the realm in pre-Qing times.29
Also famous was Huizhou-style woodblock printing. Of special interest
is its organization, as certain consanguineous groups dominated the print-
ing industry.30
Most notable among these was the Huang lineage of Qiu vil-
lage in Shexian. From 1436 to 1832 the Qiu Huangs produced about four
hundred block cutters. Their prints covered a variety of subjects, often with
well-cut illustrations. On the top of their list were the four major categories
of traditional Chinese writing: classics, history, philosophical works, and
belles lettres (for example, Rites of the Zhou and Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals,
Sima Qian’s Records of a Historian, the philosophical master Xun Kuang’s
Xunzi, and Songs of Chu [Chuci]). Other texts printed by the Qiu Huangs,
and by other lineage-based printers as well, included county gazetteers,
Buddhist and Daoist scriptures, manuals of trade routes, and family ge-
nealogies. They also printed moral handbooks that simplified or popu-
larized Confucian ethical teachings, such as Female Exemplars (Guifan),
Records of Model Women (Nüfan bian), and Records of Male Duty and
Female Fidelity (Yilie ji). Another major category of publication was ver-
nacular literature, including Zheng Zhizhen’s Mulian opera script and the
semierotic Plum in the Golden Vase (Jinpingmei), one of four masterworks
of the late-Ming novel.31
This list of publications, far from exhaustive, re-
flects the richness and complexity of local cultural life. It might also indi-
cate the savvy business strategy and cultural tastes of Huizhou merchants,
because these books were printed primarily for export to other places.
The single most notable heritage of Huizhou culture was its unique con-
nection to Song-dynasty neo-Confucianism, which became the state ortho-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-35-320.jpg)
![16 the set ting
doxy during the Ming and Qing. Xin’an was the ancestral place of Zhu Xi
(1130–1200), the great synthesizer of neo-Confucian philosophy and
morality.32
Members of the Cheng lineage of Huangdun in Shexian even
claimed themselves to be descended from Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, im-
portant forerunners of Zhu Xi. In Shexian and Xiuning counties, large
numbers of ancestral halls were constructed in memory of the two Cheng
brothers and Zhu Xi. Known as “the native place of Cheng-Zhu” (Cheng-
Zhu quili), Huizhou came to be called “Southeastern Zou-Lu,” with Zou-
Lu referring to the native places of Mencius (Zou) and Confucius (Lu).33
These labels, legitimate or apocryphal, conveyed enormous symbolic mean-
ing, for the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi were widely viewed as the legitimate
transmitters of the Way established by Confucius and Mencius.
By the early Ming, the Zhu Xi school (or the Cheng-Zhu school) had be-
come synonymous with neo-Confucian orthodoxy, and the curriculum set
down by Zhu Xi formed the basis for the civil service examinations, the pri-
mary route for educated men to enter officialdom.34
All students aspiring to
examination success had to master the Four Books annotated by Zhu Xi.
They were also required to follow a particular sequence in reading these
four Confucian classics, tackling first Great Learning, followed by the
Analects and then the Mencius, and ending with Doctrine of the Mean.35
Before coping with Great Learning, however, most students needed first to
master Zhu Xi’s Elementary Learning, a primer that formulated in specific
terms the social and moral discipline required for more advanced studies.36
Whereas Elementary Learning prepared students for reading the Con-
fucian classics, Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals simplified and standardized the
classical rites of capping, wedding, funeral, and ancestral sacrifice.37
The
two texts became important tools for the Ming state to “purify” local cus-
toms and ethical behavior.38
Confucian literati, too, worked hard to per-
petuate Zhu Xi’s teachings on public manners and morals. Hu Guang in-
cluded Family Rituals in his Complete Repository of [Teachings About]
Human Nature and Principle (Xingli daquan), and Li Guangdi included
it in Essential Ideas of Human Nature and Principle (Xingli jingyi). Both
anthologies were compiled under imperial order, in 1415 and 1715, respec-
tively.39
The Zhu Xi school, whose Huizhou branch came to be called
Xin’an lixue (the Xin’an school of principle), naturally had a special appeal
to residents of the area. A native of Wuyuan named Jiang Xuqi in 1626 rec-
ommended to the Ming court that Elementary Learning, along with Clas-
sic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing), be added to the civil service examination cur-
riculum.40
The Complete Repository, including Family Rituals, had already
become a required text for the examinations.41
Family Rituals, however,
was widely read and practiced by those outside the narrow circle of exam-
ination candidates. It was in fact Zhu Xi’s best-known work and contrib-
uted to his reputation as the greatest Confucian authority after Confucius.42](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-36-320.jpg)
![18 the set ting
els [for the poor], is the hope of our kinship community. This is indeed the
honor of our ancestors, with no small significance.”54
The genealogy of the
Xiaoli Huangs in Tandu, Shexian, first compiled in the Ming, expressed
the same concern regarding lineage progeny: “Offspring over the age of 15
who are intelligent by nature and working hard on their books should all
be encouraged, and properly given brush, paper, and subsidies. In addition,
a charity school will be set up to teach the poor offspring of the kinship
community.”55
In addition to support through financial aid and the maintenance of lo-
cal schools and academies, family traditions of scholarship played an im-
portant part in training Huizhou literati. For instance, the Xies in Qimen
excelled at the Spring and Autumn classics, and their offspring continuously
succeeded in the exams during the Ming.56
Combined with more tangible
support, this family-based erudition created a love for learning in local com-
munities. “[People from] the four directions call Xin’an the Southeastern
Zou-Lu,” the 1693 Xiuning gazetteer quoted a Ming source, “and scholar-
ship flourishes especially in Xiuning. In the years of great examinations,
participants reached a thousand.”57
In his preface to Prominent Lineages in
Xin’an (Xin’an mingzu zhi, 1551), Cheng Shangkuan called his native place
“a renowned prefecture under Heaven,” famous for both family pedigree
and learning, which enhanced each other to produce prominent lineages.58
These gentrified kinship communities were the social fabric of the “South-
eastern Zou-Lu.”
With so many eminent literati came stories about their unusual accom-
plishments. One of them has to do with Wang Daokun (1525–93), a lead-
ing scholar-official of the late Ming from a prominent Shexian lineage.
When his friend from eastern Jiangnan, Wang Shizhen (1526 –90), made a
tour of Mount Huang, Wang Daokun made special preparations. Shizhen
apparently attempted to “make a show in our county,” as the Shexian lit-
eratus Zhang Chao (1650–?) later noted, for this equally famed scholar-
official brought over one hundred “guests” from his home region, each spe-
cializing in an artistic skill. Wang Daokun, as “the host of Mount Huang,”
called upon native talents in all fields to wait upon Shizhen and his guests
in several “famed gardens.” When Wang Shizhen and his followers arrived,
each of them was attended by one or two of what Joseph Levenson might
have called “amateur specialists”—a calligrapher matched with a calligra-
pher, a painter with a painter, and so on. Seeing that the talents from all of
eastern Jiangnan could be well matched by one county, Wang Shizhen could
not help but leave Shexian with “plenty of admiration.”59
Many famous outsiders joined in their admiration of Huizhou, in their
awe of the beauty and eminence of the prefecture’s natural and cultural
landscape. The leading Ming playwright, Tang Xianzu (1550–1616),
“dreamed” of traveling in Huizhou, which he called “the most fabulous](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-38-320.jpg)
![A Gentrified Kinship Society 19
place” under Heaven.60
Even emperors poured praise upon this remarkable
place. The Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, for instance, handwrote pairs of
couplets for the Ziyang Academy where Zhu Xi had lectured. One of them
reads: “Learning reaching the mind and Heaven / The tradition of the Way
lasting forever.”61
The everlasting influence of Zhu Xi contributed to Huizhou’s reputation
as, to employ a term Wang Daokun and many others used with affection,
“a land of propriety and righteousness.”62
This unique heritage, according
to various sources, conditioned local people “even in solitary villages and
humble rooms” to “practice the sage’s Way”; and the reading aloud of Con-
fucian classics could be heard “even in a ten-household hamlet.”63
What is
more, the texts they studied had to be annotated by Master Zhu. The Dao-
guang (1821–50) edition of the Xiuning gazetteer noted:
From living quarters and farming fields up to remote mountains and deep valleys,
as long as people live there, there are students, teachers, and collections of classics
and history books. Their learning is all based on the time-honored teacher of our
prefecture, Master Zhu. Annotated versions of the Six Classics, and books from
other philosophers of the hundred schools, if not endorsed by Master Zhu, will not
be taught by fathers and elder brothers. Neither will these books be studied by sons
and younger brothers. Therefore, although the school of Master Zhu has spread un-
der Heaven, it is Xin’an scholars who teach it most masterfully, explain it most
meticulously, and adhere to it most firmly.64
Such rigorous schooling, stated the Kangxi (1662–1722) edition of the
Huizhou gazetteer, was intended “to clarify human ethical relations, purify
local customs, uplift filial and fraternal feelings, and promote the sense
of shame.”65
Local gentry, of course, fully understood the efficacy of neo-
Confucian moral teachings in binding communities together. “The lasting
order of the prefecture,” said Fang Hongjing, a Ming-dynasty man of the
gentry from Shexian, “relies not on the steep [mountains]. Rather, it can be
well maintained by the fastened indoctrination of moral bonds.”66
With
“village elders’ unceasing inculcation,” as Cheng Huaijing observed upon
his arrival in Huizhou as the prefect during the Daoguang reign, “local cus-
toms became thickly refined.”67
For the native elite, and for local officials
(non-Huizhou natives) as well, their prefecture was a genuine gentry soci-
ety, that is, the “Southeastern Zou-Lu.”
Lineage Institutions and Rituals
Compliments for Huizhou such as the ones cited above, made by
both insiders and outsiders, fill all kinds of historical documents concerned
with this prominent gentry society. They are, of course, all statements made
by the elite and should not be taken at face value. There is always a dis-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-39-320.jpg)
![22 the set ting
had a freestanding ancestral hall. The lineage of the Jiangnan type, consid-
ered to fall somewhere in between in terms of communal infrastructure, ex-
hibited the strongest leadership by local gentry.78
Although it is not my in-
tention to verify this general distinction, I think it important to keep in
mind that many Huizhou lineages could grow to very large size. Gentry
were dominant, but merchants played a key part in the making of Huizhou
kinship history. In fact, the two elite groups were hardly separable in both
social relation and cultural outlook. But social forces aside, no historian has
hitherto examined how popular culture contributed to the making of gen-
trified mercantile lineage in late imperial times.79
Huizhou was a stronghold of lineage organizations (zongzu or zu)
throughout late imperial times.80
Everywhere kinspeople sought to main-
tain solidarity and pure bloodlines by settling together, generally in the
same village. Within the village, a descent group was normally divided into
several branches (fang) composed of dozens of nuclear families. But the fang
branches, after enjoying further expansion of kinship population, often
spread out to several villages to form a multivillage lineage. Cheng Ting’s
ancestral agnates in Shexian and Xiuning, including those residing in Cen-
shan village, appeared to be such a multivillage lineage. In 1695, Zhao Jishi,
a meticulous observer of Huizhou customs, noted: “In Xin’an [agnates of]
each surname reside together under the lineage system (juzu er ju); no single
family with a different surname lives among them. This is a custom that
closely follows the ancient tradition.”81
Zhao Jishi’s account is somewhat exaggerated. Most Huizhou villages
did have residents with different surnames, but not every surname made up
a lineage. The Shaxi jilüe, a collection of lineage documents prepared in var-
ious eras by the Shaxi Lings in Shexian, contains a short account called
“Yixing kao” (An examination of other surnames). According to this ac-
count, people of three other surnames resided in the village of Shaxi in the
early nineteenth century: the Fangs of less than ten households, the Wus of
several households, and the Wangs of two households.82
These families did
not make up lineages of their own in Shaxi; rather, they were attached to
the Ling lineage that dominated the village. And, as the compiler Ling Ying-
qiu proudly noted, his Shaxi Lings were “a famed lineage under Heaven.”
The prominent scholar-official Zhang Ying (1637–1708) of Tongcheng
handwrote the gate plaque for their ancestral hall, first built in the Jiajing
reign (1522–66).83
The demographic composition of Shaxi was probably
typical of that of Huizhou villages. According to the 1809 gazetteer of
Jiangcun village, also in Shexian, there was only one lineage surnamed Jiang
in the village, sharing space with a small number of people surnamed Wang,
Huang, Xiao, Gu, and Nie.84
These sources do not indicate whether those other surnames were sub-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-42-320.jpg)
![A Gentrified Kinship Society 25
tinguished themselves by their examination success and the Back Luos in
commerce. Both lineages began to compile their own genealogies in the
Song. Su Shi wrote a foreword and Zhu Xi wrote a preface for them. But it
was Luo Rongzu (flourished late Yuan) of the thirteenth generation of the
Front Luos who set down the principles for compiling the genealogy: “The
compilation of the genealogy is to clarify generational status, distinguish
agnates from outsiders, illuminate human ethics, and purify customs. No
kinspeople should be left out even if they are ragged; no non-kinspeople
should be included even if they are celebrated.”97
The genealogy Luo Rongzu put together is not available. Yet his fellow
compilers in Ming-Qing Huizhou clearly used the same principle in draw-
ing up their own genealogies. For instance, Xiuning Fanshi zupu (Geneal-
ogy of the Fan lineage of Xiuning, 1600), covering a period from 750 to
1600, gives genealogical details for over 2,690 males and some 2,500 fe-
males surnamed Fan, the majority of whom dwelled in three of nine villages
in Xiuning.98
The newly discovered Kaochuan Mingjing Hushi tongzong pu
(Comprehensive genealogy of the Mingjing Hus [originating] from Kao-
chuan) covers all main branches descended from the apical ancestor Hu
Changyi, spanning the period from 904 to 1755 (when the genealogy was
compiled). Hu Changyi was (or was claimed to be) a prince of the Tang-
dynasty royal family, who changed his surname and earned the top exami-
nation degree called Mingjing (Clarifying the classics) while settling in
Kaochuan village, Wuyuan.99
By the High Qing, his descendants had spread
throughout Huizhou and further split into huge lineages, such as the branch
in Xidi village in Yixian. In 1826, the Xidi Hus, distinguished for having
produced both higher-degree holders and wealthy merchants, wrote up their
own branch genealogy, covering all agnates while claiming descent from the
same illustrious Tang ancestor. By then, the Xidi Hu branch had nearly
three thousand members, whose unified identity was confirmed by their
own independent genealogy as well as their celebrated ancestry.100
A genealogy was not just a list of kinspeople up to the apical or the first
migrant ancestor; it was the written network of social control as well as in-
tegration. It was intended, as stated in the genealogy of the Lükou Chengs,
to uphold “the principle of the lineage”: “revere ancestors, honor the line-
age, and bind kinspeople (zunzu jingzong shouzu).”101
To “bind kinsfolk,”
gentry compilers invoked neo-Confucian ethics and rituals and included
prefaces and lineage rules that elaborated on kinship ideology. Chen Li,
sounding like his contemporary Luo Rongzu or the Song-dynasty Zhang
Zai, said in his preface to Eminent Lineages in Xin’an (1316), “The [func-
tion of a] genealogy is . . . to pass on the spirit of ancestors, to purify social
customs so that [kinspeople] never forget their origins.”102
A common
source of inspiration for Huizhou genealogies, especially sections on lineage](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-45-320.jpg)
![26 the set ting
rules and rites, was Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals. The aforementioned Family
Code of the Wus in Mingzhou, as stated in a 1733 preface, was “based on
the Ziyang Family Rituals, but newly titled Jiadian (Family code).”103
It
urged kinsfolk to follow Zhu Xi strictly: “Since our Xin’an is the ancestral
place of Master Zhu, we should read Master Zhu’s books, follow Master
Zhu’s teachings, and perform Master Zhu’s rituals. We should behave our-
selves according to the inherited style of Zou-Lu, and hand this down to our
progeny.”104
Other lineages made similar demands. A lineage rule included by the
Xiuning Fans in their 1600 genealogy urged offspring to study first Ele-
mentary Learning and then Great Learning.105
So did the Ming lineage rule
laid down by the Xuanren Wangs in Xiuning.106
The Huizhou specialist
Zhao Huafu has demonstrated that the compilation of lineage rules or fam-
ily instructions, included in the genealogy, began to emerge around the mid-
Ming in Huizhou. The compilations often featured the Hongwu emperor’s
Six Injunctions: Be filial to your parents; be respectful to your seniors; live
in harmony with your neighbors; instruct your sons and grandsons; be con-
tent with your calling; and do no evil.107
These so-called Sacred Edicts, in-
cluding the Sixteen Injunctions of the Kangxi emperor for the Qing-dynasty
genealogies, were succinct expressions of Confucian teachings as well as
other imperial concerns.108
Gentry compilers also stressed neo-Confucian
ethics of a more general nature, the “three moral bonds” and the “five con-
stant virtues” (sangang wuchang).109
In 1494, a local elder named Wang
Dao wrote a postface to the genealogy of the Lükou Chengs in Xiuning,
urging them to attend to his advice: “Ah, kinsmen, listen to my exhortation.
Benevolence, righteousness, propriety-and-ritual, and rationality (Ren yi li
zhi) are the constant virtues of human beings. As a son, one should be filial;
as a father, one should be benevolent. While serving the emperor [or lord]
and making friends, one should behave with loyalty and good faith. Men
and women should be differentiated.”110
The Confucian norm was the
moral idiom of genealogies.
These moral exhortations were not just written down in lineage rules but
were frequently read aloud to kinspeople (and more subtly conveyed
through ritual and dramatic performances). The reading assembly known
as the village lecture (xiangyue) was popular in the mid-Ming and through
early Qing and often coincided with lineage as well as the lijia and baojia
systems of local taxation and social service (as some xiangyue associations
were organized also for the purpose of self-protection).111
The xiangyue as-
sembly was already in place in the Song. Zhu Xi, for instance, wrote one
such village lecture, which was adapted from the one used by a family for-
merly associated with Cheng Yi.112
This institution of local indoctrination,
however, did not flourish until the sixteenth century. Wang Yangming](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-46-320.jpg)
![28 the set ting
punishment. The shanbu and ebu format was most likely a metamorphosed
form or an extension of Hongwu’s Pavilion for Declaring Goodness and
Pavilion for Extending Clarity (shenming ting, which published the names
and wrongdoings of criminals as warnings to others). Hongwu’s pavilions,
according to Timothy Brook, fell into disuse after the mid-fifteenth century,
although we occasionally see that in Huizhou, such as Tangyue village in
Shexian, the Pavilion for Extending Clarity was still intact and in use up
through the early nineteenth century.119
A village lecture was often accom-
panied by ritual and music; and in Wentang, it ended with boys singing a
song called “The First Chapter of Filial Devotion and Obedience.”120
The
lecture assembly translated moral desiderata into living social values. The
1693 Xiuning gazetteer noted:
After it was in practice for some time, the unobservant and outlaws dared not go
to the village lecture upon hearing it was to be assembled. They hurried to their
parents and the lineage head to confess their transgressions, and [promised to] re-
mold themselves before participating in the lecture. If others raised even a slight crit-
icism, they would blush with deep shame. [The village lecture] aroused the good na-
ture of people’s mind (ganfa renxin) so effectively that moral teachings (jiaohua)
prevailed.121
No wonder Jin Sheng (1598–1645), the Huizhou hero in the war of resis-
tance against the Manchus, came to see the village lecture as an all-purpose
solution to whatever ailed local society.122
The xiangyue reading assembly fell out of fashion after the High Qing.
Yet there were always other tools in the lineage repertoire to instill Con-
fucian ethics into the consciousness of common kinsfolk. One of them,
constantly in use, was the performance of lineage ritual. This format of in-
doctrination was less imposing and often less “pure” in its orientation, but
more effective and subtler, than the reading of village lectures or lineage
rules. Needless to say, Confucian literati appreciated the significance of rit-
ual. “Above all, the lineage institution stresses ritual,” said a High-Qing
scholar from Linchuan in northern Jiangxi.123
The Jiangxi governor Chen
Hongmou believed that ritual performances worked better than family rules
in transforming popular morals. He quoted the late-Ming Lü Kun: “Today’s
prominent families are all fond of promulgating household rules, but do not
give similar emphasis to family ritual. Rules inspire only respect, whereas
rituals inspire moral transformation. Rules may motivate out of fear, but
rituals motivate out of personal affection.”124
But prominent local families,
in Huizhou at least, certainly understood the transformative power of ritu-
als as well. Most Huizhou genealogies included a section called cigui (reg-
ulations for sacrificial rituals, mainly ancestral rites) or the equivalent.125
In
1605, the Cha lineage of Ximen village in Xiuning even compiled a separate
volume regulating family rituals and recording important precedents in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-48-320.jpg)
![A Gentrified Kinship Society 29
the ritual history of the lineage.126
The most detailed of all written ritual
regulations in Huizhou was probably the Family Code of the Mingzhou
Wus. It contains one volume on family rituals, another on ancestral rites,
and still another on sacrifices to various deities called waishen (outer gods),
as distinguished from the neishen (inner spirits of ancestors).127
The prefect
even wrote a foreword to the Family Code, saying that “the essence of rit-
ual permeates human life, mediating emotion and reason, negotiating so-
cial relations. It meets the spiritual needs of the people and integrates [local
customs].”128
Rituals, of course, can be traced back to the dawn of China’s recorded
history and were used constantly throughout imperial times, everywhere in
the empire. But lineage rituals in Huizhou attained maturity during the six-
teenth century and were fundamentally reoriented in the process. This re-
orientation was directly embedded in the concurrent practice of setting up
ritual lands and the rise of new-style ancestral halls. The physical infra-
structure of the reoriented lineage rites (and ritual opera performances as
well) therefore should be considered first.
People in Huizhou, as in many other areas in southern and central China,
began to set up corporate estates (zutian) in the Song, but the trend did not
reach its zenith until the sixteenth century.129
This particular landown-
ing pattern was in part inspired by the writings of Zhu Xi (as well as Fan
Zhongyan), as Zhu’s authority continued to grow in society at large (if not
among some philosophers) in late imperial times. Family Rituals stipulated
that every descent-line should have a shrine for making sacrifices to the four
preceding generations of ancestors and therefore should establish ritual
land (jitian) as a jointly owned source of revenue reserved for ritual ex-
penses.130
In 1190, Cheng Dunlin of the aforementioned Lükou Chengs left
a testament to remind his offspring to set up land to fund rituals and the
maintenance of ancestral grave sites.131
It is not clear whether Zhu Xi in-
fluenced his contemporary Cheng Dunlin. In Ming-Qing times, however,
the most important ritual manual was undoubtedly Family Rituals, espe-
cially in Zhu Xi’s ancestral place.132
Gentry, landlords, and merchants were
all eager to follow Zhu Xi in setting up corporate ritual land. In the late-
fifteenth century, the Yongxi Wang lineage in Wuyuan produced eight jin-
shi and juren degree holders in a row. While establishing archways to extol
“Gathered Brilliance” (juying), each of these elite gentry members donated
handsome sums of silver to purchase corporate land, called “Righteous
Land of the Archway for Gathered Brilliance.” In addition, they stipulated
in the lineage rules that all degree holders thereafter must follow suit in con-
tributing to ritual land. Gentry aside, landowners as well reserved acre-
age for corporate use. In 1556, landlords of the Xie lineage in Huizhou set
aside seventeen plots of land (including ninety-eight mountain fields and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-49-320.jpg)
![32 the set ting
upon both lineage building and rural popular culture, including Mulian per-
formance, was the rising vogue of freestanding ancestral halls. This phe-
nomenon was closely linked with, but more complex than, the concurrent
trend of setting up corporate land. Zhu Xi, based on the principle of the
lesser descent-line system, had decreed that a family offering hall be built
with four shrines (kan) for the tablets of the ancestors of the preceding four
generations in the “east [left] side of the main chamber.”144
This format of
ancestral ritual was probably a compromise with ancient customs in which
commoners offered sacrifice to their ancestors only up to the deceased
grandfather and father in the main chamber and officials offered sacrifice to
unlimited ancestors in the clan temple.145
According to Gu Yanwu (1613–
82), the ancestral hall modeled on Zhu Xi’s protocol was in fashion in the
Yuan and early Ming, when “customs were pure” and “the Way of caring
for kinsmen and revering elders was widespread under Heaven.”146
Zhu Xi’s model was eventually surmounted in practice, as ancestry ex-
panded to accommodate the growth of the patriline from five to scores of
generations. Already in the Yuan, the agnates of Xu Heng (1209–81) had
founded an ancestral hall dedicated to the first migrant ancestor of their lin-
eage, apparently different from Zhu Xi’s model of the lesser descent-line
family hall. Xu Heng, a prominent follower of the Cheng-Zhu school, wrote
an essay to commemorate his kinspeople’s innovation. He legitimated it by
invoking the Book of Rites. In fact, his Song mentors seem to have harbored
a similar idea. Cheng Yi had introduced the annual worship of the “first an-
cestor” (shizu) at the winter solstice. Zhu Xi included Cheng Yi’s idea in his
Record of Reflections at Hand and Elementary Learning in spite of his per-
sonal injunction against it. But for Xu Heng, the first ancestor meant the
first migrant ancestor or the first winner of official post within an ancestry.
Xu’s elaboration of Cheng Yi’s idea for the worship of the first ancestor was
to have significant consequences on later lineage building. Shizu in Xu’s
sense became the most common term for apical ancestor in late imperial ge-
nealogies. It justified the construction of the “apical ancestral hall” (zongci)
and thus the development of a new type of kinship organization capable of
embracing a much larger lineage than the five-generation model.147
By mak-
ing an office holder a candidate for the first ancestor, moreover, Xu’s defini-
tion provided a genealogical and ritual foundation for gentry hegemony in
kinship communities.
Prior to the mid-Ming, however, the common arrangement for ancestral
halls appeared to be a combination of Zhu Xi’s quaternary system and Xu
Heng’s idea of honoring the first migrant ancestor. Wei Ji (1374–1471), a
onetime vice president of the Board of Personnel, set up a separate niche for
the tablet of the first migrant ancestor while founding an ancestral hall en-
shrining his four immediate lineal ascendants. Wei Ji’s move must not be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-52-320.jpg)
![A Gentrified Kinship Society 33
considered an isolated case limited to the privileged alone. In 1536, Grand
Secretary Xia Yan recommended to the Jiajing emperor that both officials
and commoners be allowed to worship the first ancestor as well as the four
immediate ancestors. Clearly an official recognition of a widespread prac-
tice, Xia’s suggestion in turn must have fostered the worship of the first an-
cestor and stimulated the construction of the apical ancestral hall in society
at large.148
But the zongci or lineage temple of the sixteenth century was not
the type built by either Xu Heng’s kinspeople in the thirteenth or even Wei
Ji’s in the fifteenth century.149
Lineage temples and even most ancestral
shrines (citang or jiamiao) of branch descent-lines were now independent
buildings, separate from residences.150
Such an independent hall was often
a new construction located in a strategically important spot within the vil-
lage, although it could also be the expanded house of a distinguished an-
cestor, often a scholar-official. The freestanding nature allowed the new lin-
eage temple to grow in size and called for more corporate endowment for
maintenance. It was able to incorporate a growing number of kinsfolk for
formal assemblies, including large-scale ritual performances and festival
celebrations. The ancestral hall assembly was no longer a private family cer-
emony but a public lineage ritual.
All of this was particularly manifest in Huizhou. Modern scholars have
agreed that the mid-Ming witnessed the rise of independent lineage temples
in this gentry stronghold (see Appendix B).151
The 1693 edition of the Xiu-
ning gazetteer lists sixty-six important zongci within the county. Most of
them were obviously pre-Qing buildings, and the focus of worship was the
apical ancestor or a prominent gentryman in the ancestry.152
Bao Xiangxian
(jinshi 1529) of the Tangyue Baos in Shexian wrote a stele memorializing
the Hall of the Great Descent-Line, built in 1522 by the Gulin Huangs in
Xiuning. After describing the huge lineage temple complex, he invoked the
authority of Cheng Yi and even Zhu Xi: “It was fine for Yichuan [Cheng
Yi] to extend family rituals to remote ancestors. [This practice] coexists
with the rites established by Kaoting [Zhu Xi].”153
Couched in the justi-
fication was an awareness of the tension between Zhu Xi’s regulation and
local ritual practices. But for Bao Xiangxian, and for many fellow lineage
elders as well, it was fine to worship the apical ancestor so long as they up-
held Zhu Xi’s ritualism. As another prominent Shexian scholar, Wang
Daokun (1525–93), reported, most Huizhou gentry families preferred
to worship in the apical ancestral hall or the hall of the great descent-
line.154
In yet another place, Wang described the huge complex of the Hall
of Purifying Origin of the Xinan Wus in Shexian. Comparable in size and
located in the same county were the Golden-Purple Hall in Qiankou, the
Hall of Benevolence and Filiality in Tangyue, and the Lineage Temple of the
Tangmo Xus.155](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25971411-250520105832-ae6d0a33/85/Ritual-Opera-And-Mercantile-Lineage-The-Confucian-Transformation-Of-Popular-Culture-In-Late-Imperial-Huizhou-Qitao-Guo-53-320.jpg)
Ritual Opera And Mercantile Lineage The Confucian Transformation Of Popular Culture In Late Imperial Huizhou Qitao Guo
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- 5. ritual opera and mercantile lineage
- 7. Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage the confucian transformation of popular culture in late imperial huizhou Qitao Guo stanford university press stanford, california 2005
- 8. Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Guo, Qitao. Ritual opera and mercantile lineage : the Confucian transformation of popular culture in late Imperial Huizhou / Qitao Guo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-5032-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Mercantile system—China—Huizhou (Anhui Sheng) 2. Popular culture—China—Huizhou (Anhui Sheng) 3. Opera—China—Huizhou (Anhui Sheng) 4. China—History—Ming dynasty, 1368–1644. 5. China—History— Qing dynasty, 1644–1911. I. Title. hb91.g86 2005 306.4⬘848⬘0951—dc22 2004018559 Typeset by G&S Book Services in 10/12.5 Sabon Original Printing 2005 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
- 9. In memory of my mother, Xu Suizhen റỰ╶ (1927Ð1996), and my father, Guo Haochu ⵗᙯӮ (1927Ð2004)
- 11. Contents List of Map, Figures, and Tables ix List of Abbreviations xi List of Reign Periods of the Ming and Qing Dynasties xii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 Part One. The Setting 1. A Gentrified Kinship Society 9 2. Huizhou Merchants and Mercantile Lineage Culture 50 Part Two. The Script 3. The Mulian Legacy 89 4. The Confucian Transformation of the Mulian Tradition 103 Part Three. The Performance 5. An Integrated Tradition: Mulian Scripts and Female Chastity 151 6. A Shared Culture: Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage 178 Conclusion 211 Appendix A: Extant Mulian Operatic Scripts 221 Appendix B: Huizhou Ancestral Halls (ca. 1500–1644) 223 Appendix C: Homophonic and Graphic Substitutions and Sardonic Characters in Mulian Scripts 225 Notes 227 Glossary 299 Bibliography 317 Index 351
- 13. Map, Figures, and Tables Map 1. Map of Huizhou in the Late Imperial Yangzi River Delta. xiv Figures 1.1 Mountainous Huizhou (1725). 14 1.2 The Lineage Temple of the Yingzhou Hus, Jixi (late Ming). 34 1.3 The interior courtyard of the Lineage Temple of the Yingzhou Hus, Jixi (late Ming). 35 1.4 The lineage temple of the Tangyue Baos, Shexian (late eighteenth century). 36 1.5 Seven memorial archways honoring loyal officials, filial sons, and chaste widows of the Tangyue Baos, Shexian (Ming and Qing). 37 1.6 A late-Ming illustration of a freestanding ancestral hall. 38 1.7 A High-Qing illustration of a freestanding ancestral hall. 39 1.8 The model of an ancestral shrine from Zhu Xi’s Zhuzi Jiali. 40 1.9 The offering hall in the living quarters, with an ancestral shrine in the upper left, in Xidi village, Yixian (Qing). 41 4.1 Unfilial son Zhao is being judged in the first hall of Hell. 118 4.2 The Forest of Swords in Hell. 119 4.3 The ten-thousand-pound Copper Mill in Hell. 120 4.4 The Bed of Nails in Hell. 121 4.5 The Lake of Blood in Hell. 122
- 14. 4.6 The Cauldron of Oil in Hell. 123 4.7 The Mirror of Karma in Hell. 124 4.8 The Looking Home Terrace (wangxiang tai). 127 4.9 The original cover design for Zheng Zhizhen’s script (ca. 1582). 138 5.1 The main hall of the female shrine of the Tangyue Baos, Shexian (Qing). 171 5.2 The side-facing door of the female shrine of the Tangyue Baos, Shexian (Qing). 172 5.3 The Treading-Fortune Hall (Lüfu tang) in Xidi village, Yixian (Qing). 173 5.4 The Auspicious Jade Hall (Ruiyu ting) in Xidi village, Yixian (Qing). 174 6.1 A three-tiered stage in the county seat of Yixian (early nineteenth century). Photograph 1927. 200 Tables 2.1 Chaste and Martyred Widows in Shexian 75 5.1 Various Categories of Virtuous Women in Huizhou 166 5.2 Virtuous Women and Huizhou Lineage-Dominated Communities 167
- 15. Abbreviations CXAHTZ Chongxiu Anhui tongzhi (1878) HZF Huizhou fuzhi (1502) HZZ Huizhou fuzhi (1566) JNTZ Jiangnan tongzhi (1737) JXZ Jixi xianzhi (1755, 1810, and 1963) LHYF Lianghui yanfa zhi (1693) MLBY Mulian jiumu: Yiyang qiang liantaibenxi, 7 vols. (the Boyang version, 1871; reprint, 1982) MLCB Mulian xi: Gaoqiang, 3 vols. (the Changbiao version, 1868) MLNL Mulian xi juben, 3 vols. (the Nanling version, 1957) MLZZ Zheng Zhizhen, Mulian jiumu quanshan xiwen, 3 vols. (1582) MQHS Ming-Qing Huishang ziliao xuanbian (1985) NLZ Nanling xianzhi (1924) QXZ Qimen xianzhi (1873) SXH Shexian zhi (1771) SXZ Shexian zhi (1937) XNLKCS Xiuning Lükou Chengshi xubian benzong pu (1570) XXZ Xiuning xianzhi (1693) YXZ Yixian sanzhi (1870)
- 16. Reign Periods of the Ming and Qing Dynasties ming (1368–1644) Hongwu 1368–1398 Jianwen 1399–1402 Yongle 1403–1424 Hongxi 1424–1425 Xuande 1426 –1435 Zhengtong 1436 –1449 Jingtai 1450–1456 Tianshun 1457–1464 Chenghua 1465–1487 Hongzhi 1488–1505 Zhengde 1506 –1521 Jiajing 1522–1566 Longqing 1567–1572 Wanli 1573–1620 Taichang 1620–1620 Tianqi 1621–1627 Chongzhen 1628–1644 qing (1644–1911) Shunzhi 1644–1661 Kangxi 1662–1722 Yongzheng 1723–1735 Qianlong 1736 –1795 Jiaqing 1796 –1820 Daoguang 1821–1850 Xianfeng 1851–1861 Tongzhi 1862–1874 Guangxu 1875–1907 Xuantong 1908–1911
- 17. Acknowledgments I want to thank the following for their contribution to this book: Muriel Bell, Bo Songnian, Carmen Borbón-Wu, Cynthia Brokaw, Shana Brown, Samuel Cheung, Ned Davis, Joseph Esherick, Andrea S. Goldman, Steve Gosch, Robert Gough, Judith Hibbard, Hu Yimin, David Johnson, Karen Jolly, Harold Kahn, David Keightley, James Kettner, D. W. Y. Kwok, Christopher Lind, Cynthia Lindlof, Mao Gengru, Harold McArthur, Tom Miller, Cyndy Ning, Brett Sheehan, Andy Sieverman, Michael Szonyi, Fred- eric Wakeman, Wang Ch’iu-kuei, John Williams, Wen-hsin Yeh, Zhao Guo- hua, Zhu Wanshu, Harriet Zurndorfer, and the outside reviewers. I owe a special debt of gratitude to several people. Professors David John- son and David Keightley were instrumental in bringing me from Beijing to Berkeley, and went out of their way to ease my culture shock in the early years of this long “Journey to the West.” David Johnson, while charting out the new field of traditional Chinese popular culture, shaped my career as a sociocultural historian of late imperial China. Frederic Wakeman’s high de- mands on scholarship drove me back to libraries and Anhui archives again and again to search for the social dimensions of popular Mulian perfor- mance and the broader implications for Huizhou social history. Harold Kahn was a gentle and generous mentor to a Berkeley interloper and also played a key role in bringing my work to publication. Last but not least, Mao Gengru, a genuine old-school Chinese scholar, provided me with a key Mulian script in the early phase of my research, which helped to sustain my Huizhou focus. This book would not have been possible without the sup- port of all of the above. The following institutions or organizations have helped at various stages to fund this project: The China and Inner Council and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation of the Association for Asian Studies; Department of History and Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California at Berke- ley; The National Endowment for the Humanities; Stanford University East Asia National Resource Center; University Research Council, History De- partment, and Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. They have my deepest appreciation.
- 18. N • ANHUI . ,. --......__ _j ...--, .___,· j ( 25 Contemporary China JIANGSU Yellow Sea 50 75 100 Miles Huizhou in the Late Imperial "'a 0 06 Yangzi River Delta
- 19. ritual opera and mercantile lineage
- 21. Introduction This study rests upon two related convictions I have gained through aca- demic training and empirical research: Historians need to study popular culture in light of its interactions with elite culture as well as with the social context. They also must pursue such a sociocultural history within a lo- cal setting, for only a reduced scale allows us to more accurately analyze the complex transmission of beliefs and practices over time and space and thus understand—with the slightest possible deterministic reduction—the changing patterns of interplay between systems of values and social affilia- tions and between lower and high cultures. This book, which focuses upon a popular genre of ritual opera in a local society of late imperial China, is such an attempt. The highlighted region is Huizhou, a Jiangnan prefecture famed empirewide since the sixteenth century for its Confucian gentry so- ciety, strong practice of kinship organization, and far-reaching mercantile influence. The genre is Mulian, arguably the greatest of all Chinese religious dramas, featuring the epic journey by Buddhist monk Mulian through the underworld to rescue his sinful mother. This study explores two chief ques- tions: How did Huizhou local society and popular Mulian performance in- teract, and what were the characteristics of traditional Chinese popular cul- ture as revealed in Huizhou Mulian? The performance of Mulian ritual opera did not fully mature until the late sixteenth century, although the myth, first introduced to China with In- dic Buddhism in around the third century c.e., and enjoying further devel- opment in the subsequent centuries, had been performed in various genres prior to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). A Huizhou scholar named Zheng Zhizhen (1518–95) produced the first full-length script, Mulian Rescues His Mother: An Opera for Goodness (Mulian jiumu quanshan xiwen). This three-volume libretto, designed for three nights of consecutive performance, marked the completion of a new Mulian tradition. It was, in essence, a Con- fucian transformation of a Buddhist value system that had syncretized ele- ments of Daoism and popular religion. Incorporated in Zheng’s script were a large number of secular stories, mirroring the daily and spiritual life of his local kinsmen and kinswomen. These stories, as well as the Mulian myth, were selected or remade to illustrate the governing theme of Mulian perfor- mance: “encouraging goodness and punishing evil” (quanshan cheng’e). Al- though the criterion of defining “goodness” or “evil” was ultimately Con- fucian, the means of “encouraging” or “punishing” was to appeal to the
- 22. supernatural power of divinity. Conveying Confucian ethics by means of eclectic pantheons of the spirits and gods and in the popular format of rit- ual opera, the new Mulian dramatically empowered and enriched a distinc- tive ethico-religious discourse. The significance of Zheng Zhizhen’s work lies also in its influence upon later librettos and performance of Mulian, because Zheng’s transformation of the ritual opera into a scripted performance set a pattern for subsequent Mulian scripts and manuscripts. Soon after Zheng’s manuscript was com- pleted, high local demand led to its printing in 1582. Its publication helped further promote the style of Mulian performance that had been popular be- fore Zheng’s time. In terms of the fundamental orientation of socioreligious values, if not plot, Zheng Zhizhen virtually unified the ritual opera, both in his home prefecture and other centers of Mulian performance in the south- ern provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, and Sichuan. But nowhere was Mulian more popular and more revealing of the nature of traditional Chinese popular culture than in the Huizhou region.1 “Jiangnan people are truly distinctive,” as a local proverb puts it, “even their dogs can howl out three volumes of Mulian opera.”2 Twenty-one known Mulian operatic scripts, out of fifty-two listed in a recent survey, are from the Huizhou region; four of them are extant. They, along with Zheng’s master copy, constitute one set of key sources for this study.3 In a more folk- like style than Zheng’s script could possibly reveal, the performance based on these later and longer scripts featured the following characteristics of tra- ditional Chinese popular culture: the ritual embrace of operatic entertain- ment, the role of divine force in the transmission of public ideas of good and bad behavior, and the encrustation of Confucian values with popular and syncretic forms. This study seeks to historicize and contextualize Mulian performance— that is, to study the ritual opera as a historically evolving and socially grounded cultural tradition. Many of the materials I analyze here have their origins or parallels in other genres of both elite and folk nature (as well as pre–Zheng Zhizhen Mulian literature), and wherever they are relevant to my concerns, I have explored these avenues. For the most part, however, I have assumed that once these materials made their way into the network of Huizhou Mulian, they could be used to shed light upon the consciousness of Huizhou people in a given historical period without constant reference to their existence in other genres. For example, although originating in the Song dynasty (960–1279), the ethico-religious discourse found in Huizhou Mulian was also present in many other genres of sixteenth-century and later vernacular literature and popular religious tracts, which nevertheless in- dexed the permeation of Confucian values into local culture and popular re- ligion. Yet in Mulian performances, such a popular Confucian discourse— 2 Introduction
- 23. or what I will call “popular Confucianism”—was most completely repre- sented, most effectively transmitted by the means of ritual opera, most pow- erfully conveyed by the supernatural, and most deeply rooted in local cus- toms and social institutions. At the center of my analysis is the Mulian tradition, but I also engage in Huizhou social history for its own sake, as well as for making better sense of the ritual opera. I treat Mulian performance as part of Huizhou social history, investigating one to illuminate the other. Huizhou was a remark- able place, showcasing many important developments of late imperial China.4 As the ancestral home of Zhu Xi, the leading Song dynasty synthe- sizer of neo-Confucianism, Huizhou was a center of Confucian ideology and scholarship throughout late imperial times. The local social fabric served to enhance and crystallize this intensive Confucian milieu. In the six- teenth century, in particular, the region underwent a dramatic strengthen- ing of Confucian lineage culture, featuring the establishment of corporate lands (partly used to sponsor ritual operas) and lineage temples (often with a newly built ritual operatic stage), the elaboration of ancestral rites used to convey filial devotion and propriety, and the promotion of female mari- tal fidelity. At about the same time, Huizhou emerged as a major cradle of mercantilism within the context of the rising money economy. Of great sig- nificance is the cooperative relationship between the educated gentry elite and merchants within the lineages, in local society, and outside Huizhou, in terms of both cultural orientation and social behavior. Fully supported by their ancestral lineages and gentry kinsmen, Huizhou merchants spread throughout China, amassing enormous fortunes, significant portions of which were channeled back home to enhance lineage infrastructure. All of this led to the construction and maturation of what I call “mercantile line- ages,” gentry-guided and merchant-based kinship communities that domi- nated the Huizhou social landscape. In this land of mercantile lineages, moreover, ritual operas flourished to promote Confucian ethics as well as cultural syncretism and popular cults. Most spectacularly, all of these facets of Huizhou social history found their expressions in one way or another in popular Mulian performance. All of this allows us to root the analysis of popular cultural representa- tion in the local social order. Moving back and forth from text to context, I strive to seek out the social dimensions of Mulian and the social mecha- nism that facilitated the interplay of higher and lower culture in the making of the ritual opera tradition. We shall see, for instance, how the new Mulian first codified by Zheng Zhizhen reflected new trends in the economic, intel- lectual, religious, and sociocultural spheres of the sixteenth century and how these trends were particularly manifest in Huizhou. Zheng Zhizhen was not an inventor of the Mulian ritual opera, although he played a vital Introduction 3
- 24. part in remaking the tradition. The concurrent social and cultural develop- ments in Huizhou paved the way for our playwright to reorient popular Mulian performance, and it was those developments, as recorded by Zheng Zhizhen, that made his script a new tradition. The new Mulian tradition prevailed thereafter in large part because it met the needs of Huizhou mer- cantile lineages, which ultimately determined both the scripting and staging of the ritual opera. This social dimension of Mulian requires a new look into the nature of ritual opera as well as popular culture. Mulian opera was always staged in a ritual context of thanking the gods for their protection and exorcising ghosts. According to Piet van der Loon, Mulian was staged simply and solely to “cleanse the community of all impurities” or “the malevolent forces of contagion,” but not to convey morality lessons and religious pre- cepts “by threatening people with the punishment of their sins.”5 This study, while taking into account the exorcising function of Mulian, seeks to illuminate the content and context of the ritual opera and, especially, their interaction in a given historical era. Although Mulian performance did evolve from ancient exorcism rites, Mulian exorcism had undergone a fun- damental transformation by the sixteenth century. This arguably most pop- ular genre of ritual opera had become the most powerful arena for local lin- eage elites to convey kinship values as well as religious precepts. The new Mulian served to both exorcise malevolent influences of ghosts and bolster socioreligious norms; in the process, orthodox values penetrated the ritual opera and cult symbols originally mobilized to exorcise ghosts. Given this elite penetration, was Mulian still an artifact of popular cul- ture? By way of giving a quick answer here, let me first note that the first full-length script in the history of Mulian operatic performance, though compiled by a local scholar, came from and returned to local popular cul- ture.6 Zheng Zhizhen’s rewriting did not alter the popular nature of Mulian performance but rather helped transform the nature of popular culture. A printed script further promoted the trend of popular Mulian performance, making it more widely shared among all social groups within local kinship communities. The shared nature of popular Mulian discourse is embodied even more evidently in later anonymous scripts, for they are collective rep- resentations resulting from long negotiation between “authors” and audi- ence or between elite and folk sentiments. Culture is marked by simulta- neous integration and diversity.7 Thus, “popular culture” in my usage is not an exclusive manifestation of folkways. Rather, it designates a tradition that is publicly shared, although it may be appropriated in different ways by dif- ferent people, or by the same person for different purposes under different circumstances.8 Our task with the Mulian performance, then, is to puzzle out what was shared and what was used for different purposes. Certain 4 Introduction
- 25. messages and images of Mulian, or what David Johnson has called “cultural vocabulary,”9 may have been interpreted differently by different people sit- uated in the local lineage hierarchy, or the ritual opera as a whole might be appropriated on various occasions for different purposes; but the core Con- fucian ethico-religious discourse was shared by all Huizhou people, regard- less of their social status—it was the “grammar” of traditional Chinese popular culture. However, the significance of this study lies not just in a reinterpretation of traditional Chinese popular culture or an alternative perspective on the Confucian tradition. Its biggest contribution is the quest per se, by which I strive to integrate social, cultural, intellectual, religious, and gender history within a local setting.10 More specifically, this book studies Confucian ide- ology as culture and culture as history by weaving popular performance of Mulian ritual opera into the social fabric of Huizhou gentrified mercantile lineages. I examine Mulian not only to illuminate the nature of traditional Chinese popular culture but also to shed new light on the social history of its birthplace. Just as Huizhou merchants cannot be fully understood with- out linking them to their home lineages, the gentry society of mercantile lin- eages cannot be fully understood without taking into account local popular culture (and vice versa). Differing from current scholarship, which seems to have irreversibly moved away from the gentry society and Confucian tra- dition, this study returns to these two seemingly “outdated” paradigms of late imperial China—but through the channels of mercantile lineage and popular culture.11 I have discovered in Mulian a living history of gentri- fied Huizhou lineage culture, a culture that was quickly absorbing, and in turn thoroughly influenced by, increasing commercialization and develop- ments in popular culture (including local cults) from the sixteenth century onward. I explore how local lineage elites of both gentry and merchant extraction manipulated various social and gender relations via the medium of Mulian performance within the social context of a rising money econ- omy. I show, as one example of this cultural manipulation, how lineage- sponsored ritual opera was used to convey Confucian notions of filial piety, female chastity, bond-servant loyalty, and a newly shaped mercantile ethic among villagewide audiences composed of both kinsmen and kinswomen. These were concerns of no small importance to elites in a region whose eco- nomic sustenance was largely predicated upon the wealth of sojourning merchants. The accumulated result of elite manipulation, at times conscious and at times instinctive, was a subtle but thorough Confucian remolding of local popular culture. The new Mulian was the staged form of Confucian ideology and social praxis of local kinship communities. Popular Mulian performance or discourse in late imperial Huizhou was gentrified mercan- tile lineage culture in practice. Introduction 5
- 26. All in all, this study is about both “ritual opera” and “mercantile line- age,” with particular emphasis on their interaction and its cultural product: the Confucian transformation of popular culture. The book is composed of three parts, each with two chapters. The first two chapters focus on the so- cial history of Huizhou lineage institutions and merchant culture both to set the context for the new Mulian tradition and for the sake of its own significance. These two chapters, I wish to emphasize, are by no means con- ventional “setting” chapters, but central to both the subject matter and the sociocultural approach of this historical study. No historian has yet por- trayed such a detailed, localized, and coherent picture of Chinese mercan- tile lineage culture, let alone its integration with popular Mulian perfor- mance.12 To illuminate the newness of Zheng Zhizhen’s contribution—and make full sense of it—the pre-Zheng legacy of Mulian literature and per- formance is first examined in Chapter 3. The new Mulian codified in Zheng Zhizhen’s script and its place in concurrent Chinese popular culture form the subject of Chapter 4. This chapter also demonstrates a massive Confu- cian reorientation of other popular genres in the sixteenth-century context of vast socioeconomic and intellectual changes. Chapter 5 explores the fur- ther development of Mulian performance in the Huizhou region over the course of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). It compares Zheng’s script to two later and lengthier versions of Mulian from local villages in the Huizhou re- gion, focusing on the similar formulation of women’s virtues in these scripts. The comparison reveals the integration of local popular culture by demon- strating how Zheng Zhizhen virtually unified Mulian performances with his Confucian ethico-religious discourse. Chapter 6 examines the actual Mu- lian performance in local communities. It first considers ritual dimensions of the opera, focusing on so-called Mulian / Wuchang performance, one particularly important ritual moment that most focally staged Huizhou mercantile lineage culture. It then concludes with an analysis of the social ingredients of Huizhou Mulian performance as a shared lineage discourse. The ultimate concern of both Parts 2 and 3, and indeed of the book as a whole, is to integrate both the scripting and staging of Mulian into Huizhou social history by seeking out social meanings of the ritual opera in light of local mercantile lineage culture. The Mulian of Huizhou or the Huizhou of Mulian may be a key to unlocking the rich treasury of late imperial Chinese society and culture. Integration of these two investigative strands reveals significant new dimensions of gentry society and popular culture that have not yet been seen or properly understood. 6 Introduction
- 29. 1 A Gentrified Kinship Society In the spring of 1718, a Yangzhou poet named Cheng Ting set off for the first time, at age forty-seven, to fulfill a dream he had nurtured since he was “capped” at age twenty: to visit his ancestral home. His family had lived in Yangzhou, the center of China’s salt business, since the time of his grandfather, but now he was sojourning to Censhan village in Shexian, the capital county of Huizhou prefecture, about two hundred miles south of Yangzhou. The main activity of the trip was to offer sacrifice to his ances- tors, and thus an auspicious day to begin the journey was first divined. Af- ter eleven days traveling by boat, he arrived at Shexian on the fourteenth day of the second month. All members of the Cheng lineage, including all “elders and children,” came out to greet him as he walked into Censhan. He was deeply moved by the scene. Nothing could have pleased him more than “holding sleeves and shaking hands” with his kinspeople, he wrote. In Cen- shan it appeared that he finally breathed some fresh air, which, nevertheless, somehow seemed very familiar to him. On the same day he noted in his travel diary, The Recorded Journey of a Spring Boat, certain “customs of Huizhou,” which he certainly would have read about and heard of many times before. The language of the diary passage conveys a profound sense of pride and certainty, as if the social landscape of his ancestral prefecture was as exquisite as Huizhou’s Mount Huang, one of the most popular tour- ist spots in China. It is the custom in Huizhou that scholar-officials and prominent households settle in the countryside. Each village is occupied by a certain lineage whose members live together, with no men of other surnames dwelling there. In each village a temple is built for the earth god and an ancestral hall for the descent-line. Genealogies are written for lineage branches so that their origins and lineal order are not con- fused. Lords and servants are clearly differentiated, and everyone is distinctly dressed [according to social status]. This is what distinguishes Huizhou customs from any other prefecture’s. Men uphold integrity and righteousness, and women cherish uprightness and chastity. Even in straitened circumstances, they never aban- don their [husbands’] villages. There are maidens whose husbands travel far [to do business] immediately after the wedding, and, in some cases, never return. But still
- 30. 10 the set ting they judiciously care for their parents-in-law, uphold high aspirations and behave flawlessly. Throughout their lives they make no complaints. This is another unique custom of Shexian that is better than that of other prefectures.1 The following day, the fifteenth day of the second month, Cheng climbed up Cen Hill to the location of the earth-god shrine and ancestral hall. There, after paying tribute to Buddha and offering sacrifices to the Cheng ances- tors, he met all members of the Cheng lineage formally. During the following half month, Cheng Ting’s basic schedule was “to sweep the graves” of his great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather and to visit his relatives and friends in nearby villages. The ceremonial proce- dure of paying a formal visit to their ancestral halls was repeated. Some of those lineage ancestral temples, he noted admiringly, were “ravishingly magnificent.” Cheng Ting himself had planned to purchase a grave site in this “pure” environment, and he surveyed some of the surrounding lands. But none was divined “propitious.” This saddened him but did not lessen his enjoyment of his ancestral home. The Censhan Cheng lineage treated him frequently to good wine and delicacies, and one evening even called upon a troupe to perform two literary chuanqi operas for him, the ro- mances called Kunlun and Hongxian.2 Soon came the Qingming festival, the fifth day of the third month, when people went out to “sweep the tombs of the ancestors.” Qingming was “most seriously regarded in Xin’an,” Cheng Ting noted, referring to Hui- zhou by its ancient name. Three days later, on the evening of the eighth day, the Censhan Cheng lineage called upon actors and had Mulian Rescues His Mother staged within the village, obviously as part of the operatic rituals of the Qingming celebration. Cheng Ting did not mention any details regard- ing the performance other than that its “countrified and folksy” (lisu) man- ners were laughable. But the Mulian story, he quickly added, was “based on Sanskrit sutras” and was already “popular in Tang times.”3 Clearly, he was not too disturbed by the “folksy” ways of the performance. After all, unlike the two literary operas enacted especially for him, Mulian was simply part of the Qingming ceremony of his kinspeople, which he happened to see and thought worth mentioning. The folk performance of Mulian attended by Cheng Ting in Censhan was in fact a fundamental feature of traditional Chinese popular culture. Simi- lar scenes took place throughout late imperial times, as part of Qingming festival celebrations and on other ritual occasions, not only in Huizhou but also in the countryside and market towns of other prefectures of southern Anhui, as well as throughout south-central China. The significance of Cheng Ting’s account lies not in his mention of Mulian but in the way he documents the social setting of Censhan and the larger Huizhou region.
- 31. A Gentrified Kinship Society 11 Censhan was a gentry community of mercantile lineage throughout late imperial times. In the Ming dynasty, the Censhan Chengs produced six met- ropolitan jinshi and six provincial juren degree holders; and from the late Ming through High Qing, they, along with ten or so other Shexian lineages, dominated the salt business in Yangzhou, one of the most lucrative trades in the realm.4 By the eighteenth century, the Censhan Chengs had grown into one of the most prosperous descent groups in the prefecture.5 This gen- trified lineage, as implied in Cheng Ting’s observation, showcased entire Huizhou, a prefecture that was thoroughly saturated with Confucian norms and customs. Indeed, the strict Confucianism of Huizhou had caught the attention of numerous other visiting literati as well, not to mention self- congratulatory native sons. For example, Yao Qiyuan, when appointed magistrate of Qimen in 1683, offered his first impressions of this Huizhou county in terms similar to Cheng Ting’s. In “this land of propriety and righ- teousness,” Yao noted, gentlemen were modest and had a sense of honor, whereas commoners were obedient and had a sense of sincerity—they all showed the “cultural heritage of the ancient sage-kings.”6 This Confucian land was nevertheless also home to the “countrified and folksy” Mulian performance. In fact, Huizhou was the very birthplace of what I will call here the new tradition of Mulian ritual opera performance. The Huizhou man of letters Zheng Zhizhen first scripted the performance into a three-volume text, Mulian Rescues His Mother: An Opera for Good- ness. This script, though written by a well-educated literatus and pro- fessionally printed in 1582, was still quite “folksy” in its style, especially as enacted during its three-night performance. Qi Biaojia (1602– 45), a met- ropolitan degree holder from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, despised both the script and its performance in Jiangnan: “An Opera for Goodness (Quanshan): It shows no awareness whatsoever of operatic melodies. Just like blind beg- gars, [the performers] do nothing but yell and sing from house to house. However, foolish people worship Buddha. Totaling 109 scenes, the perfor- mance lasts three days and three nights, stirring up the whole rural com- munity.”7 Qi Biaojia was one of leading dramatic critics in the art world of late-Ming China. His criticism of Mulian may be sound, if considered from a literary or artistic perspective, but his personal experience might have also fueled the rebuke. In Qi’s diary on the thirtieth of the fifth month, 1639, he noted: “It has been extremely hot for a couple of days. Tonight the village of Ke again staged the Mulian opera, [it was so noisy that I] couldn’t fall asleep the entire night.”8 Here we have a puzzle that is critically important for a proper under- standing of traditional Chinese popular culture and its relation to gentry society: Why was the “noisy” performance of “folk” Mulian so popular in “a land of propriety and righteousness”? The key to answering this ques-
- 32. 12 the set ting tion lies not only in the Mulian tradition per se but in Huizhou local soci- ety as well. Part 1 of this study focuses on the social history of late imperial Huizhou, setting the stage for analyzing the Mulian ritual opera. Although I treat the late imperial period from the 1500s to 1912 (or up to the 1930s) as a co- herent whole, the two chapters of Part 1 concentrate on the sixteenth cen- tury to show how a series of socioeconomic changes transformed Huizhou local society. In Huizhou at least, virtually all major social forces and cul- tural patterns that remained powerful or relevant up through the early de- cades of the twentieth century took full shape over the course of the six- teenth century. Part 1 is a discrete essay on Huizhou social history for its own sake, though often reconstructed in light of illustrating the social di- mensions of Mulian performance. First, Chapter 1 describes how, especially in the eyes of local elite, the prefecture was a model of Confucian gentry so- ciety. The thrust of the chapter lies in examining the lineage organization, the institutional foundation for gentry rule that partly explains the preva- lence of Confucian values in local life. Chapter 2 explores other aspects of Huizhou society, highlighting the rise and gentrification of Huizhou mer- chants and two of their cultural products, namely, the new mercantile code and the cult of female chastity, while briefly considering operatic and reli- gious traditions to prepare for subsequent investigations of Mulian ritual opera in Parts 2 and 3. It demonstrates how seemingly non-Confucian so- ciocultural developments could serve local gentry lineages and enhance Confucian moral teachings. In particular, the gentrification of merchants was the surest manifestation of the prevalence of Confucian ideology in kin- ship communities and is the key to understanding Huizhou mercantile lin- eage culture. But what is particularly relevant to the Mulian performance is how merchant gentrification contributed to the Confucian remolding of lo- cal popular culture. Mulian is used in this study to shed new light on Hui- zhou mercantile lineage culture, just as the social fabric of the local kinship community is used to make full sense of the ritual opera tradition. The “Southeastern Zou-Lu” In late imperial China, Huizhou prefecture comprised the six coun- ties of Shexian, Xiuning, Jixi, Yixian, Qimen, and Wuyuan.9 The prefec- ture, deep in southern Anhui, lay toward the southwestern end of Jiangnan, the great economic and cultural heartland of the realm.10 Unlike other re- gions in Jiangnan that were largely flat, the ecology of Huizhou and its sur- rounding areas, including Ningguo and Guangde in the north, Chizhou in the northwest, and Raozhou in northeastern Jiangxi in the south, was dom- inated by a series of high, densely forested mountains. At least half of
- 33. A Gentrified Kinship Society 13 Huizhou’s six counties were named after local peaks, and the very name of the prefecture, it is believed, had been taken from Peak Hui in Jixi.11 Ris- ing highest was Mount Huang (1,841 meters), animating literati em- pirewide to compose poems and travel accounts about its stunning beauty. Mythmakers even link the mountain to the ancient sage-king, the Yellow Emperor.12 Other mountains were invested with particular religious signifi- cance, including Mount Jiuhua (lying just outside Huizhou) and Mount Qiyun. Home to great Buddhist monasteries or Daoist temples, they con- veyed an aura of mystery, inspiring legends about Heaven and Hell, gods and ghosts.13 The mountainous scenery of course enlightened local literati as well. A scene in Zheng Zhizhen’s Mulian Rescues His Mother titled “Black Pine Forest,” for instance, was set in High Crimson Peak in west- ern Qimen, the home county of the playwright.14 Encircling the mountains were meandering watercourses, including the Xin’an and Chang rivers. The waterways and mountain ranges produced moving seas of clouds, creat- ing an atmosphere of natural charm and mystery (Figure 1.1). With such a scenic setting, Huizhou came to be known as a veritable Peach Blossom Spring (taoyuan), the legendary paradise where “gentlemen love to live and settle.”15 The mountains also shielded Huizhou during times of war, but it was not isolated.16 A few transportation arteries moved local residents to the outside world and outside people to the hilly region. It could be reached by a com- bination of water and land routes from the regions of Hangzhou, Yanzhou, Raozhou, Chizhou, Ningguo, and Jiangning, noted the geographer Gu Zuyu (1624–80).17 So did Huizhou merchant Huang Bian, in an illustrated route book he published in 1570.18 Reachable but secure, scenic Huizhou steadily attracted immigrants from the Jin dynasty (265– 420) onward. The Huang Chao rebellion (875–84) is often highlighted in local genealogies as the period when a substantial number of aristocratic clans migrated to Xin’an from a devastated northern and central China. They settled there and, partly out of the pride in their family pedigree and partly due to the need to band together to fight natural disaster or beasts in the mountainous region, they kept their kinship settlement intact throughout the following centuries.19 In Ming-Qing times Huizhou also became the destination of landless peasants crowded out of coastal areas in eastern Jiangnan, even though the hilly prefecture itself had limited arable land. In 1600, Huizhou had a population of about 1.2 million; and by 1820, the population had sur- passed 2 million.20 The security, combined with Huizhou’s natural beauty and the social eminence of its great families, bred in its residents a profound love for their homeland.21 The same ecological features, however, could also spark a strong desire among local residents to leave home and eke out a living in other places. Philip Kuhn, in his celebrated Soulstealers, sketches an abject picture of
- 34. 14 the set ting figure 1.1 Mountainous Huizhou (1725). Source: Gujin tushu jicheng, 123.2a. hilly Huizhou, which ironically became the home base of the most vigorous mercantile group of late imperial China.22 Only a few small plains and river deltas dotted the rugged region, leaving about one-tenth of its land arable.23 To make things worse, the land-man ratio decreased steadily with continual increases in population. The average amount of land, in mu (about 0.0667 hectare), that each taxable man (ding) owned in 1391 was 4.15; in 1600 it had decreased to 2.2; in 1850, to a mere 1.5. This tight land-man ratio con-
- 35. A Gentrified Kinship Society 15 trasted sharply with the empirewide average, which ranged from 6.5 to 20.6 mu in the Ming dynasty.24 Huizhou’s land scarcity in part explains why, to quote a local proverb, “every boy upon the age of sixteen needs to go out to do business.”25 For Xin’an men, indeed, leaving home to enter a trade was a typical economic behavior, which earned them the title Huishang (“Huizhou merchants”). From about 1500 to 1850, the merchants of Huizhou dominated the highly developed commercial scene in southern and central China.26 As a popular saying put it: “No market town can emerge without [the presence of merchants from] Huizhou,” especially in Jiangnan and the Middle Yangzi Valley.27 For those who stayed home, the mountains became the source of their livelihoods, in some cases even fortunes.28 Tea, lacquer, lumber, and bam- boo products, all mountain-related in one way or another, became major commodities for Huizhou merchants. Some locals were masters of handi- craft, especially good at manufacturing the “four treasures of the study” (wenfang sibao), essential for Confucian literati life. Chengxintang paper, Wang Boxuan brushes, Li Tinggui ink, and Jiukeng inkstones of Huizhou were famed throughout the realm in pre-Qing times.29 Also famous was Huizhou-style woodblock printing. Of special interest is its organization, as certain consanguineous groups dominated the print- ing industry.30 Most notable among these was the Huang lineage of Qiu vil- lage in Shexian. From 1436 to 1832 the Qiu Huangs produced about four hundred block cutters. Their prints covered a variety of subjects, often with well-cut illustrations. On the top of their list were the four major categories of traditional Chinese writing: classics, history, philosophical works, and belles lettres (for example, Rites of the Zhou and Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals, Sima Qian’s Records of a Historian, the philosophical master Xun Kuang’s Xunzi, and Songs of Chu [Chuci]). Other texts printed by the Qiu Huangs, and by other lineage-based printers as well, included county gazetteers, Buddhist and Daoist scriptures, manuals of trade routes, and family ge- nealogies. They also printed moral handbooks that simplified or popu- larized Confucian ethical teachings, such as Female Exemplars (Guifan), Records of Model Women (Nüfan bian), and Records of Male Duty and Female Fidelity (Yilie ji). Another major category of publication was ver- nacular literature, including Zheng Zhizhen’s Mulian opera script and the semierotic Plum in the Golden Vase (Jinpingmei), one of four masterworks of the late-Ming novel.31 This list of publications, far from exhaustive, re- flects the richness and complexity of local cultural life. It might also indi- cate the savvy business strategy and cultural tastes of Huizhou merchants, because these books were printed primarily for export to other places. The single most notable heritage of Huizhou culture was its unique con- nection to Song-dynasty neo-Confucianism, which became the state ortho-
- 36. 16 the set ting doxy during the Ming and Qing. Xin’an was the ancestral place of Zhu Xi (1130–1200), the great synthesizer of neo-Confucian philosophy and morality.32 Members of the Cheng lineage of Huangdun in Shexian even claimed themselves to be descended from Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, im- portant forerunners of Zhu Xi. In Shexian and Xiuning counties, large numbers of ancestral halls were constructed in memory of the two Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi. Known as “the native place of Cheng-Zhu” (Cheng- Zhu quili), Huizhou came to be called “Southeastern Zou-Lu,” with Zou- Lu referring to the native places of Mencius (Zou) and Confucius (Lu).33 These labels, legitimate or apocryphal, conveyed enormous symbolic mean- ing, for the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi were widely viewed as the legitimate transmitters of the Way established by Confucius and Mencius. By the early Ming, the Zhu Xi school (or the Cheng-Zhu school) had be- come synonymous with neo-Confucian orthodoxy, and the curriculum set down by Zhu Xi formed the basis for the civil service examinations, the pri- mary route for educated men to enter officialdom.34 All students aspiring to examination success had to master the Four Books annotated by Zhu Xi. They were also required to follow a particular sequence in reading these four Confucian classics, tackling first Great Learning, followed by the Analects and then the Mencius, and ending with Doctrine of the Mean.35 Before coping with Great Learning, however, most students needed first to master Zhu Xi’s Elementary Learning, a primer that formulated in specific terms the social and moral discipline required for more advanced studies.36 Whereas Elementary Learning prepared students for reading the Con- fucian classics, Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals simplified and standardized the classical rites of capping, wedding, funeral, and ancestral sacrifice.37 The two texts became important tools for the Ming state to “purify” local cus- toms and ethical behavior.38 Confucian literati, too, worked hard to per- petuate Zhu Xi’s teachings on public manners and morals. Hu Guang in- cluded Family Rituals in his Complete Repository of [Teachings About] Human Nature and Principle (Xingli daquan), and Li Guangdi included it in Essential Ideas of Human Nature and Principle (Xingli jingyi). Both anthologies were compiled under imperial order, in 1415 and 1715, respec- tively.39 The Zhu Xi school, whose Huizhou branch came to be called Xin’an lixue (the Xin’an school of principle), naturally had a special appeal to residents of the area. A native of Wuyuan named Jiang Xuqi in 1626 rec- ommended to the Ming court that Elementary Learning, along with Clas- sic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing), be added to the civil service examination cur- riculum.40 The Complete Repository, including Family Rituals, had already become a required text for the examinations.41 Family Rituals, however, was widely read and practiced by those outside the narrow circle of exam- ination candidates. It was in fact Zhu Xi’s best-known work and contrib- uted to his reputation as the greatest Confucian authority after Confucius.42
- 37. A Gentrified Kinship Society 17 Partially because of Zhu Xi’s persistent influence, Huizhou emerged as a center of both neo-Confucian scholarship and morals in Ming-Qing times and was proudly perceived so by the local residents.43 “Southeastern Zou- Lu” plaques were hung on the gates of the numerous schools and academies that dotted the prefecture.44 In 556 local schools (shexue), boys read primers such as Elementary Learning and Three Character Classic to ac- quaint themselves with the basics of education and propriety. In over 120 academies, advanced scholars pondered philosophical ethics and historical wisdom.45 The Ziyang Academy of Shexian, the most famous in the prefec- ture, frequently held lectures to “scrutinize and edit Confucian classics and their annotations.” Two of the lecture halls at Ziyang were named, respec- tively, Zun dexing (honoring the moral nature) and Dao wenxue (following the path of inquiry and study).46 Given this balanced approach to knowl- edge and ethics, Huizhou not only became a stronghold of Confucian mor- ality but also nurtured Jiang Yong (1681–1762) and especially Dai Zhen (1724–77), two intellectual giants who founded a major discourse of Qing evidential scholarship.47 More important, in a sociological sense, Huizhou produced a large num- ber of jinshi and juren, the higher examination degree holders who com- posed the upper echelon of local gentry society. In late imperial times more than one-fourth of Anhui jinshi were from Huizhou, which had only one- tenth of Anhui’s population.48 In the Qing, Xiuning and Shexian each pro- duced two Top Examination Graduates (zhuangyuan) out of nine from the entire province, which means that the prefecture produced more zhuang- yuan than most other provinces.49 A key mechanism for Huizhou’s exami- nation success was the lineage, in both social and intellectual terms. The Cheng lineage in Censhan, as already noted, produced six jinshi and six ju- ren in the Ming. The Huaitang Chengs, also dwelling in Shexian and patri- lineally related to the Censhan Chengs, generated even more, claiming seven jinshi and eleven juren in the same period.50 Most remarkable of all, the Pans in Pancun village, Wuyuan, claimed more than forty jinshi over two hundred years from the Chenghua to Chongzhen reigns.51 Probably to an even greater degree than in Tongcheng county in central Anhui, as described by Hilary J. Beattie, Huizhou exhibited strong links between the abundance of degree holders and the support from local lineages.52 This support was often spelled out in lineage documents. During the Jiajing reign (1522–66), for example, the Ximen Wangs of Xiuning used their “family injunctions” to urge schoolboys to study hard so that they would pass the examinations and “glorify the kin.”53 The Family Code of the Wus in Mingzhou of Xiu- ning (1733) stated in the lineage rules: “For offspring who are well-behaved and intellectually gifted but have no means to study with a teacher, the lin- eage will house and instruct them, sending them to the lineage school or giv- ing them allowances. To foster one or two good people, to be used as mod-
- 38. 18 the set ting els [for the poor], is the hope of our kinship community. This is indeed the honor of our ancestors, with no small significance.”54 The genealogy of the Xiaoli Huangs in Tandu, Shexian, first compiled in the Ming, expressed the same concern regarding lineage progeny: “Offspring over the age of 15 who are intelligent by nature and working hard on their books should all be encouraged, and properly given brush, paper, and subsidies. In addition, a charity school will be set up to teach the poor offspring of the kinship community.”55 In addition to support through financial aid and the maintenance of lo- cal schools and academies, family traditions of scholarship played an im- portant part in training Huizhou literati. For instance, the Xies in Qimen excelled at the Spring and Autumn classics, and their offspring continuously succeeded in the exams during the Ming.56 Combined with more tangible support, this family-based erudition created a love for learning in local com- munities. “[People from] the four directions call Xin’an the Southeastern Zou-Lu,” the 1693 Xiuning gazetteer quoted a Ming source, “and scholar- ship flourishes especially in Xiuning. In the years of great examinations, participants reached a thousand.”57 In his preface to Prominent Lineages in Xin’an (Xin’an mingzu zhi, 1551), Cheng Shangkuan called his native place “a renowned prefecture under Heaven,” famous for both family pedigree and learning, which enhanced each other to produce prominent lineages.58 These gentrified kinship communities were the social fabric of the “South- eastern Zou-Lu.” With so many eminent literati came stories about their unusual accom- plishments. One of them has to do with Wang Daokun (1525–93), a lead- ing scholar-official of the late Ming from a prominent Shexian lineage. When his friend from eastern Jiangnan, Wang Shizhen (1526 –90), made a tour of Mount Huang, Wang Daokun made special preparations. Shizhen apparently attempted to “make a show in our county,” as the Shexian lit- eratus Zhang Chao (1650–?) later noted, for this equally famed scholar- official brought over one hundred “guests” from his home region, each spe- cializing in an artistic skill. Wang Daokun, as “the host of Mount Huang,” called upon native talents in all fields to wait upon Shizhen and his guests in several “famed gardens.” When Wang Shizhen and his followers arrived, each of them was attended by one or two of what Joseph Levenson might have called “amateur specialists”—a calligrapher matched with a calligra- pher, a painter with a painter, and so on. Seeing that the talents from all of eastern Jiangnan could be well matched by one county, Wang Shizhen could not help but leave Shexian with “plenty of admiration.”59 Many famous outsiders joined in their admiration of Huizhou, in their awe of the beauty and eminence of the prefecture’s natural and cultural landscape. The leading Ming playwright, Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), “dreamed” of traveling in Huizhou, which he called “the most fabulous
- 39. A Gentrified Kinship Society 19 place” under Heaven.60 Even emperors poured praise upon this remarkable place. The Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, for instance, handwrote pairs of couplets for the Ziyang Academy where Zhu Xi had lectured. One of them reads: “Learning reaching the mind and Heaven / The tradition of the Way lasting forever.”61 The everlasting influence of Zhu Xi contributed to Huizhou’s reputation as, to employ a term Wang Daokun and many others used with affection, “a land of propriety and righteousness.”62 This unique heritage, according to various sources, conditioned local people “even in solitary villages and humble rooms” to “practice the sage’s Way”; and the reading aloud of Con- fucian classics could be heard “even in a ten-household hamlet.”63 What is more, the texts they studied had to be annotated by Master Zhu. The Dao- guang (1821–50) edition of the Xiuning gazetteer noted: From living quarters and farming fields up to remote mountains and deep valleys, as long as people live there, there are students, teachers, and collections of classics and history books. Their learning is all based on the time-honored teacher of our prefecture, Master Zhu. Annotated versions of the Six Classics, and books from other philosophers of the hundred schools, if not endorsed by Master Zhu, will not be taught by fathers and elder brothers. Neither will these books be studied by sons and younger brothers. Therefore, although the school of Master Zhu has spread un- der Heaven, it is Xin’an scholars who teach it most masterfully, explain it most meticulously, and adhere to it most firmly.64 Such rigorous schooling, stated the Kangxi (1662–1722) edition of the Huizhou gazetteer, was intended “to clarify human ethical relations, purify local customs, uplift filial and fraternal feelings, and promote the sense of shame.”65 Local gentry, of course, fully understood the efficacy of neo- Confucian moral teachings in binding communities together. “The lasting order of the prefecture,” said Fang Hongjing, a Ming-dynasty man of the gentry from Shexian, “relies not on the steep [mountains]. Rather, it can be well maintained by the fastened indoctrination of moral bonds.”66 With “village elders’ unceasing inculcation,” as Cheng Huaijing observed upon his arrival in Huizhou as the prefect during the Daoguang reign, “local cus- toms became thickly refined.”67 For the native elite, and for local officials (non-Huizhou natives) as well, their prefecture was a genuine gentry soci- ety, that is, the “Southeastern Zou-Lu.” Lineage Institutions and Rituals Compliments for Huizhou such as the ones cited above, made by both insiders and outsiders, fill all kinds of historical documents concerned with this prominent gentry society. They are, of course, all statements made by the elite and should not be taken at face value. There is always a dis-
- 40. 20 the set ting crepancy between elite description and social reality, especially as experi- enced by commoners. But how should we account for the discrepancy? How, in other words, did the “thickly refined” culture, presumably elite- initiated and elite-oriented, affect local folk culture, and vice versa? To be sure, “local elders’ unceasing inculcation” through schools and “readings” of classics were not sufficient and, in most cases, were not even relevant, as many rural people were illiterate or nearly so. Rather than school the lo- cal people in ideology, elites found it more effective to mold their con- sciousness by co-opting folklore. But this co-option could also put local elite under the influence of folk culture. One of the best scenarios to illus- trate this dialectic interplay is Mulian. We will turn to the popular ritual opera in Parts 2 and 3. Here we will first explore a one-way process: how local elite created and perfected social institutions that, while facilitating Mulian performance, worked directly to mold popular consciousness and plebeian behavior. This section focuses on the lineage organization, the institutional foun- dation of Huizhou gentry society and of its popular culture as well. It ex- amines three interconnected threads of the development that matured in the mid-Ming. First, it briefly considers the influence of Song-dynasty neo- Confucianism and portrays the centrality of the patrilineal kinship settle- ment to the Huizhou social landscape. Second, it moves on to document, in great detail, the mid-Ming development of various lineage institutions, ranging from the composition of genealogies, the setting up of ritual land, the construction of freestanding ancestral halls, the rise of lineage authority (zuquan), and the development of lineagewide rites. This detailed analysis is meant to show, on the one hand, how gentry values permeated kinship life and, on the other hand, how mature institutions were able to accom- modate the steady increase in kin population and incorporate kinfolk into lineage rituals. The inclusive rather than exclusive nature of lineage institu- tions and rituals, I will argue, made it possible to integrate local culture, an integration that helped bridge, thereby enhancing but not eradicating, the stratification of various socioeconomic groupings within the kinship com- munity. Third, in the process I will also show how commercial wealth was key to strengthening lineage infrastructure (or the material base for ritual opera performance), thereby setting the stage in the following chapters for an analysis of the concurrent rise and gentrification of merchants and the elite remolding of popular culture.68 The lineage was probably the most effective social institution in spread- ing neo-Confucian values in rural society.69 It began to emerge during Song times as ancient aristocratic clans declined, but arguably did not fully ma- ture until the mid-Ming.70 Many prominent Song neo-Confucians con- tributed to the formulation or reformulation of what has been called the
- 41. A Gentrified Kinship Society 21 “social control” organization, the kinship system of the late imperial epoch. They included such famous scholar-officials or prominent literati as Fan Zhongyan (989–1052), Ouyang Xiu (1007–72), Su Xun (1009–66), Su Shi (1036 –1101), Sima Guang (1019–86), Zhang Zai (1022–78), Cheng Yi (1033–1107), and Zhu Xi.71 Zhang Zai said, “In order to control the hearts of the people under Heaven, to bring together agnates, and to enrich social customs so that people never forget their origins, it is necessary to clarify the genealogical order of descent groups and institute the system of the descent-line heir (zongzi).”72 The zongzi refers to the firstborn son of the main wife in the main line of a descent group; and the system dictated that only the heir be vested with the ritual authority to preside over sacrifices to the ancestors. This rule can be traced back to the institution of the Zhou- dynasty patriarchal clan. Notably, however, Zhu Xi stressed the principle of the “lesser descent-line” (xiaozong) with a fixed depth of five generations, in contrast to the ancient “great descent-line” (dazong), which refers to a descent group with an unlimited generational depth and hence an infinite number of ancestors. The heir of a lesser descent-line worshipped his an- cestors only up to the great-great-grandfather, four generations before. Nei- ther Zhu Xi nor any other Song neo-Confucians attempted to revive the great descent-line system with its clan temple for the worship of the first or apical ancestor, which they believed was an inalienable right of the ancient hereditary aristocracy.73 This particular thread of new kinship ideology would eventually lose its appeal in practice, as will be discussed later. Still, the neo-Confucians ex- erted an indelible influence upon lineage building in the post-Song era.74 Fan Zhongyan provided a model for later lineages with the charitable estate he set up for the Suzhou Fan kin in 1050, and Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi reini- tiated the compilation of genealogies.75 As for Zhu Xi, he provided moral principles and ritual norms, especially with his Elementary Learning and Family Rituals. In Ming-Qing times, the imperial state also encouraged the kinship organization as a way to maintain control in local society.76 By the sixteenth century, the lineage institution had matured, featuring written ge- nealogies, corporate estates, and freestanding ancestral halls.77 Thereafter, it continued to grow and spread throughout virtually all of southern and central China. But the contour of lineage construction differed in various regions. Ac- cording to Western anthropological and historical scholarship, three types of kinship organizations existed in late imperial China. The first, in the south, consisted of the huge lineages with large corporate estates that Mau- rice Freedman found in Guangdong and Fujian in the twentieth century. In the second type, most commonly found in the north, descent groups nor- mally had few or no corporately endowed property and only occasionally
- 42. 22 the set ting had a freestanding ancestral hall. The lineage of the Jiangnan type, consid- ered to fall somewhere in between in terms of communal infrastructure, ex- hibited the strongest leadership by local gentry.78 Although it is not my in- tention to verify this general distinction, I think it important to keep in mind that many Huizhou lineages could grow to very large size. Gentry were dominant, but merchants played a key part in the making of Huizhou kinship history. In fact, the two elite groups were hardly separable in both social relation and cultural outlook. But social forces aside, no historian has hitherto examined how popular culture contributed to the making of gen- trified mercantile lineage in late imperial times.79 Huizhou was a stronghold of lineage organizations (zongzu or zu) throughout late imperial times.80 Everywhere kinspeople sought to main- tain solidarity and pure bloodlines by settling together, generally in the same village. Within the village, a descent group was normally divided into several branches (fang) composed of dozens of nuclear families. But the fang branches, after enjoying further expansion of kinship population, often spread out to several villages to form a multivillage lineage. Cheng Ting’s ancestral agnates in Shexian and Xiuning, including those residing in Cen- shan village, appeared to be such a multivillage lineage. In 1695, Zhao Jishi, a meticulous observer of Huizhou customs, noted: “In Xin’an [agnates of] each surname reside together under the lineage system (juzu er ju); no single family with a different surname lives among them. This is a custom that closely follows the ancient tradition.”81 Zhao Jishi’s account is somewhat exaggerated. Most Huizhou villages did have residents with different surnames, but not every surname made up a lineage. The Shaxi jilüe, a collection of lineage documents prepared in var- ious eras by the Shaxi Lings in Shexian, contains a short account called “Yixing kao” (An examination of other surnames). According to this ac- count, people of three other surnames resided in the village of Shaxi in the early nineteenth century: the Fangs of less than ten households, the Wus of several households, and the Wangs of two households.82 These families did not make up lineages of their own in Shaxi; rather, they were attached to the Ling lineage that dominated the village. And, as the compiler Ling Ying- qiu proudly noted, his Shaxi Lings were “a famed lineage under Heaven.” The prominent scholar-official Zhang Ying (1637–1708) of Tongcheng handwrote the gate plaque for their ancestral hall, first built in the Jiajing reign (1522–66).83 The demographic composition of Shaxi was probably typical of that of Huizhou villages. According to the 1809 gazetteer of Jiangcun village, also in Shexian, there was only one lineage surnamed Jiang in the village, sharing space with a small number of people surnamed Wang, Huang, Xiao, Gu, and Nie.84 These sources do not indicate whether those other surnames were sub-
- 43. A Gentrified Kinship Society 23 ordinate to the main descent groups in Shaxi or Jiangcun. But sources from other Huizhou villages suggest that the distinction between the lineage sur- name and other surnames of the same village had significant social implica- tions. The former was a “big or prominent surname” (daxing), whereas the latter often referred to a “little or humble surname” (xiaoxing) of “tenants or bond-servants” (dianpu) who made up a menial class legally or illegally subordinate to the main lineage. For instance, the Wangs that resided in Chawan village in Qimen formed a prominent lineage, having produced three jinshi degree holders in the Ming. Their so-called lineage landlords (zongfa dizhu) also engaged in trade from the mid-Ming onward. Accord- ing to a local doggerel, the Chawan Wangs once owned 3,800 households of tenants or bond-servants. In the early twentieth century the lineage still had 208 households of tenants or bond-servants, all with two “humble sur- names,” Hong and Ni. In other words, Hong and Ni were not “big sur- names.” Neither did they live within the village (cun)—they resided in the village’s surrounding areas called zhuang. For this reason, tenants or bond- servants in Huizhou were also called zhuangpu (village servants) and their households, xiaohu (little or humble households). In short, in Chawan there was only one lineage surnamed Wang, and the Hongs and Nis were tenants or bond-servants of the Wang lineage.85 The Chawan Wangs, like the Shaxi Lings, the Jiangcun Jiangs, and the Censhan Chengs, typified what Fu Yi- ling called the xiangzu (village-based lineages or simply village-lineages), bound by the combined ties of the bloodline (xueyuan) and native place (diyuan).86 A large number of Huizhou villages were simply named after the main descent groups that occupied them (such as Jiangcun), where both lin- eages and their merchants used the menial class of bond-servants.87 Zu lin- eage and cun village tended to be identical, as the lineage head and village head were often the same person.88 The cun-zhuang arrangement helped en- hance kinship solidarity and social stratification throughout the late impe- rial period.89 Within the lineage-village the most powerful force was the gentry. Gentry-dominated lineage culture partly evolved from the pre-Song aristo- cratic clans that had migrated to Xin’an from northern and central China. Their descendants made up sixty-six among eighty-four eminent lineages listed in Prominent Lineages in Xin’an. After settling in Huizhou, these de- scent groups managed to maintain their political privilege by promoting their offspring through the civil service examinations, maintaining and de- veloping their traditional ties with the state.90 As Huizhou literati prevailed in the examinations, gentry rule was confirmed in local society. They set out to strengthen their translocal power by consolidating the home kinship base.91 But in Huizhou, lineage building did not fully mature until around the mid-Ming; and the development was mainly a response to the develop-
- 44. 24 the set ting ing money economy that began to destabilize the paternalistic order of the agnatic community. At the same time, ironically, commercial wealth made it possible to perfect various lineage institutions, thereby helping assure gentry home rule (see Chapter 2 herein). Let us start with the genealogy, one of the most notable hallmarks of the Chinese kinship organization. Huizhou was famed for having produced a large number of genealogies. According to recent statistics, Anhui ranks fourth, following Beijing, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu, in the number of extant ge- nealogies, totaling 1,005. Most of them came from Tongcheng county and Huizhou prefecture (mainly from Shexian, Xiuning, and Wuyuan).92 Hui- zhou was one of a few prefectures that in post-Song times still produced pre- fectural or county genealogies for its “great or renowned or prominent lin- eages” (dazu, shijia, or mingzu). These included Chen Li’s Xin’an dazu zhi (1316), Zheng Zuo et al.’s Shilu Xin’an shijia (1549), and Cao Sixuan’s Xiuning mingzu zhi (1625), in addition to Cheng Shangkuan et al.’s Promi- nent Lineages in Xin’an. They were publicly compiled, and the compilers were all renowned native literati.93 But a large number of Huizhou ge- nealogies were privately compiled by and for those notable xiangzu, though such a village-lineage was often also recorded as a branch in a more com- prehensive genealogy that covered all branches of the common ancestor scattered in several villages within a county or throughout the prefecture. The first peak of genealogical compilation in Huizhou came in the sixteenth century. Of more than two hundred rare editions of Huizhou genealogies stored in Beijing Library, 10 percent are from the pre-1505 period, 50 per- cent from the period 1506 –1619, 10 percent from the period 1620– 44, and 10 percent from the early Qing (up to 1820), with the remaining 20 percent undatable.94 Huizhou genealogies tended to claim illustrious ancestry, and many did so legitimately, which helped generate a sense of distinction and thereby in- crease kinship solidarity. In distinction from pre-Song genealogies that highlighted the family pedigree, however, their late imperial counterparts from Huizhou stressed the unity of the whole descent group in yet another way: they covered all agnates of the same village-lineage or all descendants of a common prominent ancestor spread out in many places.95 It is not pos- sible to date this subtle shift, but the new emphasis prevailed in Ming and Qing times. The Longqing (1567–72) edition of the genealogy of the Xin’an Xus claims that the new tradition started with Cheng Minzheng (1444– 99), an eminent scholar-official from Xiuning who converted the limited ge- nealogical diagrams of Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi into an expanded format linking all kinspeople.96 Sources indicate that locals had a similar idea even earlier, however. The Luos in Chengkan village, Shexian, were patrilineally related but later divided into two autonomous lineages. The Front Luos dis-
- 45. A Gentrified Kinship Society 25 tinguished themselves by their examination success and the Back Luos in commerce. Both lineages began to compile their own genealogies in the Song. Su Shi wrote a foreword and Zhu Xi wrote a preface for them. But it was Luo Rongzu (flourished late Yuan) of the thirteenth generation of the Front Luos who set down the principles for compiling the genealogy: “The compilation of the genealogy is to clarify generational status, distinguish agnates from outsiders, illuminate human ethics, and purify customs. No kinspeople should be left out even if they are ragged; no non-kinspeople should be included even if they are celebrated.”97 The genealogy Luo Rongzu put together is not available. Yet his fellow compilers in Ming-Qing Huizhou clearly used the same principle in draw- ing up their own genealogies. For instance, Xiuning Fanshi zupu (Geneal- ogy of the Fan lineage of Xiuning, 1600), covering a period from 750 to 1600, gives genealogical details for over 2,690 males and some 2,500 fe- males surnamed Fan, the majority of whom dwelled in three of nine villages in Xiuning.98 The newly discovered Kaochuan Mingjing Hushi tongzong pu (Comprehensive genealogy of the Mingjing Hus [originating] from Kao- chuan) covers all main branches descended from the apical ancestor Hu Changyi, spanning the period from 904 to 1755 (when the genealogy was compiled). Hu Changyi was (or was claimed to be) a prince of the Tang- dynasty royal family, who changed his surname and earned the top exami- nation degree called Mingjing (Clarifying the classics) while settling in Kaochuan village, Wuyuan.99 By the High Qing, his descendants had spread throughout Huizhou and further split into huge lineages, such as the branch in Xidi village in Yixian. In 1826, the Xidi Hus, distinguished for having produced both higher-degree holders and wealthy merchants, wrote up their own branch genealogy, covering all agnates while claiming descent from the same illustrious Tang ancestor. By then, the Xidi Hu branch had nearly three thousand members, whose unified identity was confirmed by their own independent genealogy as well as their celebrated ancestry.100 A genealogy was not just a list of kinspeople up to the apical or the first migrant ancestor; it was the written network of social control as well as in- tegration. It was intended, as stated in the genealogy of the Lükou Chengs, to uphold “the principle of the lineage”: “revere ancestors, honor the line- age, and bind kinspeople (zunzu jingzong shouzu).”101 To “bind kinsfolk,” gentry compilers invoked neo-Confucian ethics and rituals and included prefaces and lineage rules that elaborated on kinship ideology. Chen Li, sounding like his contemporary Luo Rongzu or the Song-dynasty Zhang Zai, said in his preface to Eminent Lineages in Xin’an (1316), “The [func- tion of a] genealogy is . . . to pass on the spirit of ancestors, to purify social customs so that [kinspeople] never forget their origins.”102 A common source of inspiration for Huizhou genealogies, especially sections on lineage
- 46. 26 the set ting rules and rites, was Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals. The aforementioned Family Code of the Wus in Mingzhou, as stated in a 1733 preface, was “based on the Ziyang Family Rituals, but newly titled Jiadian (Family code).”103 It urged kinsfolk to follow Zhu Xi strictly: “Since our Xin’an is the ancestral place of Master Zhu, we should read Master Zhu’s books, follow Master Zhu’s teachings, and perform Master Zhu’s rituals. We should behave our- selves according to the inherited style of Zou-Lu, and hand this down to our progeny.”104 Other lineages made similar demands. A lineage rule included by the Xiuning Fans in their 1600 genealogy urged offspring to study first Ele- mentary Learning and then Great Learning.105 So did the Ming lineage rule laid down by the Xuanren Wangs in Xiuning.106 The Huizhou specialist Zhao Huafu has demonstrated that the compilation of lineage rules or fam- ily instructions, included in the genealogy, began to emerge around the mid- Ming in Huizhou. The compilations often featured the Hongwu emperor’s Six Injunctions: Be filial to your parents; be respectful to your seniors; live in harmony with your neighbors; instruct your sons and grandsons; be con- tent with your calling; and do no evil.107 These so-called Sacred Edicts, in- cluding the Sixteen Injunctions of the Kangxi emperor for the Qing-dynasty genealogies, were succinct expressions of Confucian teachings as well as other imperial concerns.108 Gentry compilers also stressed neo-Confucian ethics of a more general nature, the “three moral bonds” and the “five con- stant virtues” (sangang wuchang).109 In 1494, a local elder named Wang Dao wrote a postface to the genealogy of the Lükou Chengs in Xiuning, urging them to attend to his advice: “Ah, kinsmen, listen to my exhortation. Benevolence, righteousness, propriety-and-ritual, and rationality (Ren yi li zhi) are the constant virtues of human beings. As a son, one should be filial; as a father, one should be benevolent. While serving the emperor [or lord] and making friends, one should behave with loyalty and good faith. Men and women should be differentiated.”110 The Confucian norm was the moral idiom of genealogies. These moral exhortations were not just written down in lineage rules but were frequently read aloud to kinspeople (and more subtly conveyed through ritual and dramatic performances). The reading assembly known as the village lecture (xiangyue) was popular in the mid-Ming and through early Qing and often coincided with lineage as well as the lijia and baojia systems of local taxation and social service (as some xiangyue associations were organized also for the purpose of self-protection).111 The xiangyue as- sembly was already in place in the Song. Zhu Xi, for instance, wrote one such village lecture, which was adapted from the one used by a family for- merly associated with Cheng Yi.112 This institution of local indoctrination, however, did not flourish until the sixteenth century. Wang Yangming
- 47. A Gentrified Kinship Society 27 (1472–1528), the leading neo-Confucian philosopher of the Ming, was ea- ger to promote the village lecture for its practical use in transforming local customs.113 During the Jiajing reign (1522–66), the Board of Rites formally proclaimed the use of xiangyue throughout the empire. In 1567, the Chief Surveillance Bureau ordered each prefecture to establish the xiangyue asso- ciation. One of the most enthusiastic proponents of the reading assembly was Lü Kun (1536 –1618), an influential scholar-official who believed that “nothing works better than the village lecture for encouraging goodness and punishing evil.”114 In Huizhou, local officials or top gentry such as Zheng Zuo, He Dongxu, Li Qiaodai, Gan Shijia, and Zhang Tao were all enthusiastic about the vil- lage lecture, especially after the Jiajing reign.115 Before discussing local xiangyue organization, the compilers of the 1566 edition of the prefectural gazetteer drew on the authority of the famous Xiuning scholar Cheng Dachang (jinshi, 1151) by including his essay “On Thickening Customs” (Housu lun). The gazetteer then described how in Huizhou one tu (cover- ing several villages) or one lineage normally made up an administrative unit of the village lecture. Within the unit, small villages or descent groups were attached to larger ones. The xiangyue assembly was presided over by a yuezheng (village lecturer), a “virtuous elder” elected by all constituents. Under him were two deputy village lecturers (yuefu), several other villagers skilled at rituals and lecturing on the Sacred Edicts, and some dozen young male singers. The gazetteer’s account also mentions a general Xin’an xiang- yue, which included several Hongwu edicts stipulating the colors or styles of clothing to be worn by women, peasants, and merchants.116 There were also larger Associations for Explicating Village Lectures (jiang xiangyue hui) composed of several large lineages, often sharing the same surname. For example, the Chen lineage established their xiangyue association in 1572, which encompassed the three lineage branches totaling thousands of kinspeople across three villages in Wentang, Qimen. According to the lineage rule of the Wentang association (Wentang xiangyue jiafa, 1572), village lectures focused on the “exhortation of virtues and the practice of rituals.”117 Normally, local gentry presided over the association and read village lec- tures aloud to kinsfolk, often within or in front of ancestral halls. They were held regularly, on the shuowang (the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month), the same days for the two semimonthly rituals prescribed by Zhu Xi in Family Rituals.118 Twice every month, kinspeople assembled in the an- cestral halls to listen to the reading of the Sacred Edicts and lineage rules. After the readings, participants discussed the good behavior and misdeeds of the kinsfolk, which were then recorded separately in a shanbu (the book recording virtues) or an ebu (the book recording misdeeds) for reward or
- 48. 28 the set ting punishment. The shanbu and ebu format was most likely a metamorphosed form or an extension of Hongwu’s Pavilion for Declaring Goodness and Pavilion for Extending Clarity (shenming ting, which published the names and wrongdoings of criminals as warnings to others). Hongwu’s pavilions, according to Timothy Brook, fell into disuse after the mid-fifteenth century, although we occasionally see that in Huizhou, such as Tangyue village in Shexian, the Pavilion for Extending Clarity was still intact and in use up through the early nineteenth century.119 A village lecture was often accom- panied by ritual and music; and in Wentang, it ended with boys singing a song called “The First Chapter of Filial Devotion and Obedience.”120 The lecture assembly translated moral desiderata into living social values. The 1693 Xiuning gazetteer noted: After it was in practice for some time, the unobservant and outlaws dared not go to the village lecture upon hearing it was to be assembled. They hurried to their parents and the lineage head to confess their transgressions, and [promised to] re- mold themselves before participating in the lecture. If others raised even a slight crit- icism, they would blush with deep shame. [The village lecture] aroused the good na- ture of people’s mind (ganfa renxin) so effectively that moral teachings (jiaohua) prevailed.121 No wonder Jin Sheng (1598–1645), the Huizhou hero in the war of resis- tance against the Manchus, came to see the village lecture as an all-purpose solution to whatever ailed local society.122 The xiangyue reading assembly fell out of fashion after the High Qing. Yet there were always other tools in the lineage repertoire to instill Con- fucian ethics into the consciousness of common kinsfolk. One of them, constantly in use, was the performance of lineage ritual. This format of in- doctrination was less imposing and often less “pure” in its orientation, but more effective and subtler, than the reading of village lectures or lineage rules. Needless to say, Confucian literati appreciated the significance of rit- ual. “Above all, the lineage institution stresses ritual,” said a High-Qing scholar from Linchuan in northern Jiangxi.123 The Jiangxi governor Chen Hongmou believed that ritual performances worked better than family rules in transforming popular morals. He quoted the late-Ming Lü Kun: “Today’s prominent families are all fond of promulgating household rules, but do not give similar emphasis to family ritual. Rules inspire only respect, whereas rituals inspire moral transformation. Rules may motivate out of fear, but rituals motivate out of personal affection.”124 But prominent local families, in Huizhou at least, certainly understood the transformative power of ritu- als as well. Most Huizhou genealogies included a section called cigui (reg- ulations for sacrificial rituals, mainly ancestral rites) or the equivalent.125 In 1605, the Cha lineage of Ximen village in Xiuning even compiled a separate volume regulating family rituals and recording important precedents in
- 49. A Gentrified Kinship Society 29 the ritual history of the lineage.126 The most detailed of all written ritual regulations in Huizhou was probably the Family Code of the Mingzhou Wus. It contains one volume on family rituals, another on ancestral rites, and still another on sacrifices to various deities called waishen (outer gods), as distinguished from the neishen (inner spirits of ancestors).127 The prefect even wrote a foreword to the Family Code, saying that “the essence of rit- ual permeates human life, mediating emotion and reason, negotiating so- cial relations. It meets the spiritual needs of the people and integrates [local customs].”128 Rituals, of course, can be traced back to the dawn of China’s recorded history and were used constantly throughout imperial times, everywhere in the empire. But lineage rituals in Huizhou attained maturity during the six- teenth century and were fundamentally reoriented in the process. This re- orientation was directly embedded in the concurrent practice of setting up ritual lands and the rise of new-style ancestral halls. The physical infra- structure of the reoriented lineage rites (and ritual opera performances as well) therefore should be considered first. People in Huizhou, as in many other areas in southern and central China, began to set up corporate estates (zutian) in the Song, but the trend did not reach its zenith until the sixteenth century.129 This particular landown- ing pattern was in part inspired by the writings of Zhu Xi (as well as Fan Zhongyan), as Zhu’s authority continued to grow in society at large (if not among some philosophers) in late imperial times. Family Rituals stipulated that every descent-line should have a shrine for making sacrifices to the four preceding generations of ancestors and therefore should establish ritual land (jitian) as a jointly owned source of revenue reserved for ritual ex- penses.130 In 1190, Cheng Dunlin of the aforementioned Lükou Chengs left a testament to remind his offspring to set up land to fund rituals and the maintenance of ancestral grave sites.131 It is not clear whether Zhu Xi in- fluenced his contemporary Cheng Dunlin. In Ming-Qing times, however, the most important ritual manual was undoubtedly Family Rituals, espe- cially in Zhu Xi’s ancestral place.132 Gentry, landlords, and merchants were all eager to follow Zhu Xi in setting up corporate ritual land. In the late- fifteenth century, the Yongxi Wang lineage in Wuyuan produced eight jin- shi and juren degree holders in a row. While establishing archways to extol “Gathered Brilliance” (juying), each of these elite gentry members donated handsome sums of silver to purchase corporate land, called “Righteous Land of the Archway for Gathered Brilliance.” In addition, they stipulated in the lineage rules that all degree holders thereafter must follow suit in con- tributing to ritual land. Gentry aside, landowners as well reserved acre- age for corporate use. In 1556, landlords of the Xie lineage in Huizhou set aside seventeen plots of land (including ninety-eight mountain fields and
- 50. 30 the set ting 44.515 mu of arable land) as ritual land. “The annual rent” collected from these plots, they decided, “is to be stored in the Shanze Hall, for covering forever the expenses of ancestral sacrifices and the maintenance of halls and temples.”133 Merchants, too, were eager to mimic the gentry, and their con- tribution was essential in establishing the sixteenth-century trend of creat- ing corporate land. Xu Puweng, a Shexian merchant living in the Jiajing reign (1522–65), was the first kinsman to set up ritual land for the Xu lin- eage. The genealogy recognized his contribution: “The ancestral hall had had no ritual land, which was started with Puweng.”134 In 1558, a Qimen merchant named Ma Lu donated three hundred taels of silver to his ances- tral lineage for the purchase of ritual land.135 This trend continued in the Qing. As a local gazetteer noted, “The wealthy branches of any lineage an- cestral hall all establish ritual land, annual rents of which are collected to cover the expenses of the ancestral hall. The surplus is used to provide re- lief for orphans and widows.”136 This gazetteer account suggests the multiple use of ritual land or corpo- rate estates. Accordingly, the corporate land often had different labels. The xuetian was set up to maintain lineage schools or help pay for the education of lineage offspring, and the yitian to support poor kinsfolk, orphans, and widows, similar to the charitable estate Fan Zhongyan founded in 1050. But these various estates could likewise be used to provide for expenses nor- mally covered by jitian (alternatively called citian, mutian, or simiaotian) es- tates set up to maintain the ancestral hall and graves as well as to finance ancestral rites and funerals.137 This complex terminology partly explains why the amount of land categorized under “ritual land” differed so sharply between various lineages. In 1950, for example, whereas Dong’e village in Shexian had 100.5 mu of ritual land, which accounted for only 5 percent of the total amount of Dong’e land (2,005.35 mu), the aforementioned Chawan village had 1,762.5 mu of ritual land, which accounted for 75.2 percent of the total amount of Chawan land (2,344.3 mu).138 This difference aside, each Huizhou lineage must have had ritual land, given the centrality of rituals to kinship life.139 One notable mechanism for accumulating corporate capital was the so- called shenzhu ruci, perfected by the Tangmo Xus in Shexian. In this promi- nent lineage, all kinspeople had to pay for the honor of having the spiritual tablets (shenzhu) of their immediate ancestors established in the lineage an- cestral temple (ruci). The money thus collected was earmarked for the pur- chase of ritual land. The Tangmo Xus had three major branches, each of which had already established its branch ancestral hall by the mid-Ming. “At the end of the Ming,” recorded a later Xu lineage document, they “again pooled efforts to build a corporate lineage temple (yinci) at the en- trance of the village, to unite all kinspeople of the three branches.” The Qing Dynasty Rule for Setting Up Ancestral Tablets in the Xu Lineage
- 51. A Gentrified Kinship Society 31 Temple (Qingdai Xushi zongci shenzhuli) stipulated: “In order to have the spiritual tablets of the branch ancestors established in the lineage temple, each descendant of the Xus pays three to five taels of silver, which are ac- cumulated to purchase ritual land for permanently providing sacrifices to ancestral tablets.” The Tangmo Xus, as will be noted in Chapter 2, were one of the Shexian lineages that provided the “head merchants” for the Yang- zhou salt administration during the High Qing, and their new yinci was large enough to display about four thousand spiritual tablets. This suggests that the lineage could have accumulated over ten thousand taels of silver through the shenzhu ruci method. By the early nineteenth century, the Xu lineage had set up 650 mu of ritual land. About half of it came from the poor kinspeople of the Xus, who mortgaged their land (and sometimes houses) to the lineage temple for the money needed to send in their ances- tral tablets. The mortgaged land was usually rented back to the mortgagors, who agreed to pay a certain amount of rent in kind each year.140 About 17 percent of the income from Xu lineage’s corporate estates was used to finance ancestral rites held on the New Year and during the spring and au- tumn, and 24 percent was put toward maintaining ancestral halls, grana- ries, and operatic stages.141 Ritual land provided a solid material base not just for regular lineage rituals but also for popular ritual opera perfor- mances (see Part 3). The shenzhu ruci method, although a veiled form of ex- ploitation, incorporated all kinspeople into ancestral worship and helped co-opt local popular culture as well.142 In addition to covering lineage rituals and other corporate concerns, the development of ritual land was consequential in several other respects. It limited the growth of private landlords, which in turn helped to maintain the relative stability of peasants who were small landholders through- out late imperial times. In 1949, corporate land accounted for 14.32 per- cent of total land in Huizhou. This was not an enormous percentage, but large enough to make the “lineage-landlords” (zongfa dizhu) the largest landowners in the region. They controlled the corporate estate, which was nominally owned by the whole lineage. The system made rural paternalism possible and helped keep the institution of the menial class intact, as bond- servants normally tilled corporate land. Furthermore, the growth of ritual land lured donations or investments from merchants, thereby leading to the rise of merchant-landlords (shangren dizhu), or the gentrification of com- mercial wealth. But the top echelon of the lineage-landlords was made up of gentry-landlords (jinshen dizhu).143 In other words, the corporate estate was an economic manifestation of gentry rule. Gentry families in this re- gion, however, were skillful in exploiting the newly emerging opportunities in the commercial sector, especially after the mid-Ming, as will be explored in the following chapter. Another Ming-dynasty development that was to have a profound impact
- 52. 32 the set ting upon both lineage building and rural popular culture, including Mulian per- formance, was the rising vogue of freestanding ancestral halls. This phe- nomenon was closely linked with, but more complex than, the concurrent trend of setting up corporate land. Zhu Xi, based on the principle of the lesser descent-line system, had decreed that a family offering hall be built with four shrines (kan) for the tablets of the ancestors of the preceding four generations in the “east [left] side of the main chamber.”144 This format of ancestral ritual was probably a compromise with ancient customs in which commoners offered sacrifice to their ancestors only up to the deceased grandfather and father in the main chamber and officials offered sacrifice to unlimited ancestors in the clan temple.145 According to Gu Yanwu (1613– 82), the ancestral hall modeled on Zhu Xi’s protocol was in fashion in the Yuan and early Ming, when “customs were pure” and “the Way of caring for kinsmen and revering elders was widespread under Heaven.”146 Zhu Xi’s model was eventually surmounted in practice, as ancestry ex- panded to accommodate the growth of the patriline from five to scores of generations. Already in the Yuan, the agnates of Xu Heng (1209–81) had founded an ancestral hall dedicated to the first migrant ancestor of their lin- eage, apparently different from Zhu Xi’s model of the lesser descent-line family hall. Xu Heng, a prominent follower of the Cheng-Zhu school, wrote an essay to commemorate his kinspeople’s innovation. He legitimated it by invoking the Book of Rites. In fact, his Song mentors seem to have harbored a similar idea. Cheng Yi had introduced the annual worship of the “first an- cestor” (shizu) at the winter solstice. Zhu Xi included Cheng Yi’s idea in his Record of Reflections at Hand and Elementary Learning in spite of his per- sonal injunction against it. But for Xu Heng, the first ancestor meant the first migrant ancestor or the first winner of official post within an ancestry. Xu’s elaboration of Cheng Yi’s idea for the worship of the first ancestor was to have significant consequences on later lineage building. Shizu in Xu’s sense became the most common term for apical ancestor in late imperial ge- nealogies. It justified the construction of the “apical ancestral hall” (zongci) and thus the development of a new type of kinship organization capable of embracing a much larger lineage than the five-generation model.147 By mak- ing an office holder a candidate for the first ancestor, moreover, Xu’s defini- tion provided a genealogical and ritual foundation for gentry hegemony in kinship communities. Prior to the mid-Ming, however, the common arrangement for ancestral halls appeared to be a combination of Zhu Xi’s quaternary system and Xu Heng’s idea of honoring the first migrant ancestor. Wei Ji (1374–1471), a onetime vice president of the Board of Personnel, set up a separate niche for the tablet of the first migrant ancestor while founding an ancestral hall en- shrining his four immediate lineal ascendants. Wei Ji’s move must not be
- 53. A Gentrified Kinship Society 33 considered an isolated case limited to the privileged alone. In 1536, Grand Secretary Xia Yan recommended to the Jiajing emperor that both officials and commoners be allowed to worship the first ancestor as well as the four immediate ancestors. Clearly an official recognition of a widespread prac- tice, Xia’s suggestion in turn must have fostered the worship of the first an- cestor and stimulated the construction of the apical ancestral hall in society at large.148 But the zongci or lineage temple of the sixteenth century was not the type built by either Xu Heng’s kinspeople in the thirteenth or even Wei Ji’s in the fifteenth century.149 Lineage temples and even most ancestral shrines (citang or jiamiao) of branch descent-lines were now independent buildings, separate from residences.150 Such an independent hall was often a new construction located in a strategically important spot within the vil- lage, although it could also be the expanded house of a distinguished an- cestor, often a scholar-official. The freestanding nature allowed the new lin- eage temple to grow in size and called for more corporate endowment for maintenance. It was able to incorporate a growing number of kinsfolk for formal assemblies, including large-scale ritual performances and festival celebrations. The ancestral hall assembly was no longer a private family cer- emony but a public lineage ritual. All of this was particularly manifest in Huizhou. Modern scholars have agreed that the mid-Ming witnessed the rise of independent lineage temples in this gentry stronghold (see Appendix B).151 The 1693 edition of the Xiu- ning gazetteer lists sixty-six important zongci within the county. Most of them were obviously pre-Qing buildings, and the focus of worship was the apical ancestor or a prominent gentryman in the ancestry.152 Bao Xiangxian (jinshi 1529) of the Tangyue Baos in Shexian wrote a stele memorializing the Hall of the Great Descent-Line, built in 1522 by the Gulin Huangs in Xiuning. After describing the huge lineage temple complex, he invoked the authority of Cheng Yi and even Zhu Xi: “It was fine for Yichuan [Cheng Yi] to extend family rituals to remote ancestors. [This practice] coexists with the rites established by Kaoting [Zhu Xi].”153 Couched in the justi- fication was an awareness of the tension between Zhu Xi’s regulation and local ritual practices. But for Bao Xiangxian, and for many fellow lineage elders as well, it was fine to worship the apical ancestor so long as they up- held Zhu Xi’s ritualism. As another prominent Shexian scholar, Wang Daokun (1525–93), reported, most Huizhou gentry families preferred to worship in the apical ancestral hall or the hall of the great descent- line.154 In yet another place, Wang described the huge complex of the Hall of Purifying Origin of the Xinan Wus in Shexian. Comparable in size and located in the same county were the Golden-Purple Hall in Qiankou, the Hall of Benevolence and Filiality in Tangyue, and the Lineage Temple of the Tangmo Xus.155
- 54. 34 the set ting figure 1.2 The Lineage Temple of the Yingzhou Hus, Jixi (late Ming). Source: Yu Hongli et al., Lao fangzi, vol. 2, photo 335. Notably, lineage merchants made significant contributions to the con- struction of all of these magnificent ancestral halls.156 It is indeed no co- incidence that the sixteenth century witnessed the rise of both Huizhou merchants and gigantic lineage temples. The ancestral hall built by the prominent mercantile descent of the Yingzhou Hus (Hushi zongci) in the late Ming was absolutely stunning (Figures 1.2 and 1.3). The most mag- nificent of all extant lineage temples in Huizhou was the Hall of Luo Dong- shu, constructed by the Front Luos in Chengkan with significant merchant input. It covered 3,300 square meters, memorializing Lord Dongshu (that is, the aforementioned Luo Rongzu) and his wife. To its left was a “women’s memorial shrine” (nüci). The construction began in 1542 but was not com- pleted until 1617. It is interesting to note that in spite of its size the hall was only a branch memorial hall (zhici), alternatively called the New Ances- tral Hall. A century earlier, in 1498, the Front Luos had built their Apical Ancestral Hall (shici), covering 1,462 square meters. Two wealthy mer- chants of the lineage, Luo Misi and Luo Zhensun, proposed to the line- age head Luo Shangben that the first lineage temple of the Front Luos be constructed.157 The descent groups that built the aforementioned lineage temples were all renowned lineages, noted for both examination fame and
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