It's been too long...

...since I've written about sexy things!

One particular component of late imperial notions of gender and sexuality that fascinates me is that of gender transformation: in other words, how and why people (and sometimes nonhumans) move from one apparent gender to another, and what happens to them afterward. Today, I'll present a couple of translations of "weird tales" relating to this subject; afterward, I'll offer some thoughts.

As an undergrad, I wrote on the Zi bu yu [What Confucius did not Speak Of*], a collection of tales by the gentleman-poet Yuan Mei that first circulated in the 1780s. My favorite of the tales was "False Woman," alternately translatable as "Woman-Pretender."** A translation:

False Woman
A beautiful man by the surname of Hong, from Guiyan County [NB: In modern Hunan province], pretended to be a seamstress and traveled in the provinces of Hubei and Guizhou as a itinerant embroidery teacher for women. A licentiate scholar in Changsha named Li invited Hong to embroider, and then tried to seduce him. Hong told him the truth [about his sex]. Li laughed, saying, "If you really are a man, even better! I've always thought it stupid that one of the emperors of the Northen Wei [4th-6th century CE], when he called two beautiful nuns who served at his mother's side for his pleasures, found out that they were men and executed them. What an idiot that Wei lord was! Why didn't he just make them his male favorites, to have them at his pleasure while not hurting his mother's feelings?" Hong eagerly consented after this speech, and Li loved him well.

Some years later, Hong was in the Jiangxia region [in SE modern Hubei] when a man named Du also tried to seduce him. Hong tried to do with Du as he'd done with Li, but alas, the man was not one who knew the way of things, and took Hong to court. Deported back home to Guiyang, Hong was examined by the Provincial Judge: his voice was delicate and soft, his throat lacked an Adam's apple, his hair was so long that it touched the floor, his skin was like jade, and his waist was just one foot and three inches around. Yet his privates were as thick and heavy as a large, fresh mushroom. He said that he'd been an orphan since childhood and had been taken in by a widowed neighbor, with whom he later carried on a liaison. He grew out his hair and bound his feet, calling himself a woman. When his adopted mother died, he became an embroidery teacher; he left his adopted household at seventeen and was now twenty-seven, having encountered innumerable women in a decade. The Judge asked for the women's names, but Hong replied, "Isn't it enough that I'll be punished? Why must you injure those ladies?" Torture was applied, and he could not help but give up a few names. The Governor wanted to sentence him to distant exile [a codified punishment for fairly serious crimes, at distances of, say, 2000 or 3000 li, or about 660 to 1000 miles], but the Provincial Judge, calling Hong a "demon-person," insisted that he be beheaded. The sentence was approved.

The day before his death, Hong said to one of his guards, "I die without regrets, having enjoyed so much of the forbidden pleasures of this world! And that Judge will not be spared, either. I only had consensual affairs; keeping my hair long and seducing people are offenses that don't warrant execution under the law. Those affairs I had with women were all secret things that could be covered up--why did he force me to confess and embarrass them? They had to be called in and beaten; the snowy, jadelike skin of the daughters of rich men in tens of town and counties had to suffer the red sticks, for what?" The next day, he was executed in the market square. Before he died, Hong pointed at the spot where he knelt and said, "Three years hence, the man who tried me will be here, too." Indeed, three years later the Judge was executed for corruption, and all were astounded.

In a sort of postscript, Yuan Mei wonders that this story is similar to that of Sang Chong, a "demon-person" from the Jiajing period of the Ming dynasty. Judith Zeitlin's Historian of the Strange discusses the Sang Chong figure, tracing him to another collection of "strange tales," the Geng Si Bian [庚巳編] by Lu Can,*** published in the late 16th century. This "demon-person" story is a lot nastier than the exploits of our brave pretty-man hero Hong, though--get ready to cringe much harder:

The Legal Case of the Person-Demon
The Central Censorate views reports of men masquerading as women to commit evil deeds as abnormal events. A report from Jinzhou county in Zhending prefecture in Zhili province [modern Hebei] runs: criminal Sang Chong confessed that he is the nephew of Li Dagang, part of a military-affiliated household in Shanxi province, Taiyuan prefecture. As a child, Sang was sold to a man named Sang Mao of the neighboring county as an adopted son. During the first year of the Chenghua reign [1465], he heard that a man named Gu Cai, from Shanyin county in Datong prefecture, had masqueraded as a woman and taught handicrafts to women while secretly sleeping with them for eighteen years without being caught. Sang Chong decided he wanted to emulate Gu, and traveled to take Gu as his master. He trimmed his brows and face, arranged his hair into three parts and put on a hairpiece to pass himself as a woman. He learned, too, how to cut and trace patterns, sew and embroider shoe uppers, cooking and other such occupations. Afterward, Sang gratefully left for home.

Thereafter, men from nearby counties [omitting some details of proper names for sake of brevity] came to visit Sang and ask him to teach them, as well. Sang told them all, "When you go to people's homes, enter and leave carefully. If something happens, don't say a thing about me." So they each went their ways.

In the third month of the third year of the Chenghua reign, Sang had been away from home for ten years, doing nothing but corrupting people. He'd been through forty-five prefectures and counties, and seventy-eight towns and villages. Everywhere he went, he carefully sought word of pretty girls of good family, and then called himself a runaway beggar-wife, first moving into a poor household nearby to help with chores. In a few days, Sang would then make up pretenses to enter the girl's chambers to teach her womanly crafts. At night, he would retire with her, cajoling and joking with her while having his stealthy way. If she were upright and resisted, he would wait until very late and use a little trick. He carried with him an egg, the white of which he removed; also seven peaches, and seven sticks of willow, all of which he burned to ashes. He smashed a new needle with an iron hammer, and adding a mouthful of liquor to all this, concocted a drug, which he then sprayed onto the girl while silently chanting a sleeping-spell. The girl would then be paralyzed and unable to speak. After having his evil way with her, Sang would incant the release spell. Upon waking, if the girl stridently rebuffed him, Sang would plead and wheedle until the girl suffered in silence.

After three or five days of living in one spot, he feared discovery, and would move to a new place. He did this for about ten years, seducing one hundred and eighty-two women of good households, without discovery. In the thirteenth year of Chenghua, at about five in the afternoon on the thirteenth of the seventh month, he came to the house of a licentiate scholar, Gao Xuan, in Nie village, Jinzhou county, Zhending prefecture. Sang called himself the concubine of one Zhang Lin, of Zhaozhou prefecture, and said that he had run away because of his husband's abuse, and begged for shelter. He was settled in the southern rooms. That night, the son-in-law of Gao Xuan, Zhao Wenju, crept into Sang's rooms and tried to seduce him. Sang pushed and hit Zhao, but Zhao pushed him onto the kang [a heated bed platform, typical in North China] and groped at his chest; feeling no breasts, Zhao moved downward and found that Sang had testicles. Thus he brought Sang to court in Jinzhou.


The rest of the account recounts how the case unfolded: Sang's confession was corroborated, and a list of the girls he'd violated was compiled. His "master" and "students" were all brought to court and tried together "to warn those who follow." But the women were spared any punishment, for they had all been coerced with Sang's "trickery"; plus, there were too many of them. In the eleventh month of Chenghua, the emperor himself wrote an edict: "Yes, this fellow has committed a vicious and ugly crime that damages custom. Punish him with lingchi [the infamous "thousand cuts" form of execution, reserved for the worst capital crimes]. No need to submit a reply. As for the other seven, prosecute them strictly and bring them to justice."

Translating these have already taken up a huge chunk of space (not to mention time I was going to spend working), so I'll reserve some observations for next time. Brief note before I go to do "useful" things, though: if you search any of Sang Chong's case on the Chinese Internet (tm), you'll turn up bunches of Reader's Digest-type sensational stories about this "Strongest Pervert in History."

*One of those Classical allusions so well-loved by people of letters even today. The reference is to a passage from the Analects: "Confucius did not speak of oddities, feats of power, disorders of nature, or spirits." [子不语怪力乱神] Thus, Yuan let people know that his book was in fact about all of these things.

** Readers who are just dying to see the text in its original can look here; the story's a little less than 1/4 of the way down the page. Kam Louie and Louise Edwards have done the fullest English translation of the collection, as Censored by Confucius: Ghost Stories by Yuan Mei, and you can read this tale, which they translate as "The Female Impersonator," therein.

*** Enterprising (or masochistic readers not caring about their vision) can see the original here
as part of the Gutenberg Project. The tale is about 2/3 of the way down the page.

On the tragedy of coercion

Can I just tell you how good Watase Yuu's Sakura Gari is? (Yes, the Fushigi Yuugi woman. No, it's not as hackneyed, obviously.*) Warning, may spoil you, though this "sneak preview" color page from 2007 could give some things away as it is.

(On the right, our hardworking protagonist Masataka. On the left, our charming failed hero Souma.)

It combines the best dramatic trademarks of Yuki Kaori's work--gothic houses, hopelessly beautiful psychotic aristocrats, fancy clothes (in this case Taishou-era period wear, which is thumbs-up for sure), violence, and sex. The last is perhaps where some readers would have issues with the manga, because though this is an exceedingly sexy work, not very much of it is warm or fuzzy.

I've been thinking about why I can stomach some types of coercive sex--what I could probably call "non-sex-positive" sex--and not others (for instance, what apparently occurs in the Twilight series). The reason here may be that Watase manages to tread the delicate line between inspiring disgust at sexual violation and cathartic, tragic sympathy for the inability of the characters to escape their pasts. In this sense, the visuality of manga gives it a distinct advantage: it can convey horror and despair even as unspeakably violent, destructive acts are being perpetrated. It can accomplish a degree of psychological revelation that is almost certainly harder for the novelist. And it is that insight into the souls of Watase's dramatis personae that makes this less a suspect piece of rape apologetics than an excruciatingly well-executed piece of tragic drama that is almost Greek in its amounts of helpless self-destructiveness. The best Yuki Kaori manga have also this sense of epic personal failure. Thus we the readers can sympathize.

Another possibility might be that the players of this sad game are male. Some time ago, I read one person's account of how, as a gay man, he felt violated and horribly objectified at Yaoi-Con, "A Celebration of Male Love and Beauty" that happens not too far away from here annually. What if the target of the sexual violence here were a young woman? I suppose that would generate more distaste, at least personally, if only because (a) young women are still by far the target of most reported sexual violence and (b) the biological capacity for childbearing adds another, highly unpleasant layer onto the already problematical physical and psychological domination. In this case, then, I am siding with the explanation for "why is yaoi so popular (especially among female fans)" that attributes it to a leveling of the sexual playing field between partners. The baseline power differential is smaller than if Masataka were Masako. Furthermore, there is certainly physical force in this coercion, but much of it is in manipulative mind-games--just as abusive, but with less potential to viscerally revolt the reader than the kind of purely physical power that is all too often the basis of "normal" (that is, not same-sex) erotic manga.

Of course all this could perhaps be seen as my self-justification, but I truly feel that this work is not a massive attempt to allow prurient readers to revel in sexual exploitation. But maybe I'm the only one who sees the echoes of Classical tragedy--everyone else's just enjoying the power play and admittedly technically polished sex scenes...

*Actually, several of her lesser-known works (Ayashi no Ceres, Imadoki) are supposed to be quite good in contrast to the very, very mainstream and much less challenging FY.

Briefly...

It may be a little less thrilling than sex or monkeys (or sexy monkeys for that matter), but this confirmation of the connection between climate patterns and political situations as derived from Chinese stalagmites (or is it the other? I can never get them quite right) is pretty impressive. That link continues to this day, I would say, but certainly in a less obvious manner.