“Wolves Shepherding the People”

This essay examines notorious crimes perpetrated by the military men during the chaotic Five Dynasties and Ten States period (907–979) based on both official histories and biji筆記‎ accounts. Rapidly shifting political rule, contested boundaries, an excessively premium on martial values, and tensions between the military (wu武‎) and the civil (wen文‎) all contributed to the violence and instability of the day. The unending wars and volatile politics fostered an environment wherein a widespread contempt for human life became commonplace, particularly among the military men who rose to power through combat and slaughter.

Running Amok in Early Chinese Narrative

This chapter discusses the penchant for suicidal depravity and violence observable in many characters in Zuozhuan左傳‎, the text which, above all others, stresses the paramount importance of ritual propriety as the determinant of all one’s actions. The chapter suggests that the characters concerned feel fully alive only when they act in open defiance of the rites. It is only through disobedience that they can feel sure that they are exercising the faculty of free will. This view is then briefly applied to tales in other early Chinese narrative contexts.

Martial Monks without Borders

The once formidable Korean kingdom of Goguryeo fell to invading Tang China after a Buddhist monk-general, Sinseong 信誠‎, furtively opened the gate to its besieged capital from within. Sinseong’s treachery, contravention of Buddhist monastic proscriptions, and subversion of longstanding martial codes are nevertheless graciously rendered in nearly every available Chinese and Korean historical record. This chapter seeks to examine the oscillating judgments of Sinseong’s bad behavior as the product of political—rather than purely moral—factors, as well as reassess Sinseong’s own perspective of his culpability as a compassionate collusion to extend Buddhism across borders.

Flouting, Flashing, and Favoritism

In 695, in the Zhou court of female emperor Wu Zhao 武曌‎, Xue Huaiyi 薛懷義‎, improbably risen from male favorite of humble origins to become a Buddhist abbot, an influential ideologue, a veteran general of many expeditions, a visionary architect of grand imperial ritual constructions, lay on a bench and bared his midriff (tanfu坦腹‎). The eccentric Huaiyi’s wanton disregard for protocol, for the dignity and solemnity of venue, scandalized and profoundly outraged the Confucian establishment, creating a furor in court. To better couch Xue Huaiyi’s bared midriff in the complex historical and ideological context of the times, the chapter examines different aspects of meaning underlying the eccentric and unorthodox monk’s irreverent gesture—Buddhist, Confucian, folk/popular, etymological.

Alcoholism and Song Literati

Crystallized in the alterity of an ancient Chinese past, alcohol use and abuse have often in the field of sinology become synonymous with romanticized literati affect: Tao Qian’s 陶潛‎ (365-427)’s “Twenty Poems on Drinking” and Li Bai 李白‎’s (701-762) “Drinking Alone Under the Moon” come immediately to mind. This glorification has precipitated a blind spot regarding the self-destructive effects of alcoholism in Chinese cultural history. Through an analysis of Song encyclopedia, anecdotes, and medical texts, I uncover a Song discourse on alcoholism: shijiu嗜酒‎. Reading poems of Mei Yaochen 梅堯臣‎ (1002-1060) and Yang Wanli 楊萬里‎ (1127-1206), the chapter reveals personal accounts of these literati’s struggles to stop drinking (zhijiu止酒‎). To define alcoholism, I employ the diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 (DSM-V), evincing the presence of five distinct diagnostic criteria of “Alcohol Use Disorder” amongst Song literati.

Negative Role Models

While unfilial behavior was touched on in the Confucian classics and disrespectful children were occasionally portrayed in earlier literature, it was not until the Song Dynasty when unfilial stories appeared in a large number, especially in biji筆記‎ writing. In representing sons and daughters-in-law from the ordinary class as susceptible to violating fundamental social norms and the efficacy of speedy and certain retribution, Song unfilial tales shed much light on elite perceptions of ordinary family life and of the shifting balance of power in the household. This attention to filiality in local society ran parallel to and eventually coalesced with the Neo-Confucian articulation of ideal moral, familial, and social order.

There Are Maggots in My Soup!

Medieval China generated numerous filial piety tales, yet only a few depict a child violating the dictates of xiao孝‎ (filial devotion). Nevertheless these narratives were well-known and often depicted pictorially. These tales provide us with striking testimony of the types of behavior patriarchs feared and loathed. Early medieval (220-589 CE) narratives are notable in that unfilial children are never allowed to stand alone. After they have committed an unfilial act, a filial son either corrects their mistake or punishes them. The unfiliality displayed in a tale must be contained. Sui-Tang (589-907) tales of the unfilial have a different emphasis. In these narratives, the main protagonist is the unfilial child – there is no filial son to save the day. However, Heaven steps in and supernaturally punishes the unfilial, often by means of a lightning bolt. The emphasis in these narratives betray the influence of Daoist and Buddhist ideas.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the three parts and thirteen chapters that comprise this volume, a series of focused case studies of personages and actions considered “bad” by early and medieval Chinese writers. The first part contains four chapters examining distinctive ways in which core Confucian bonds, such as those between parents and children and ruler and minister, were compromised and even severed. Through a colorful collection of ostentatious Eastern Han mourners, deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang Buddhist monks, and inebriated Song literati, the second part explores the elasticity of orthopraxy and heteropraxy in early and medieval China. The final part showcases four distinctive explorations of cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare. Collectively, the volume compels a serious reconsideration of larger questions of what and whom was considered aberrant, arguing that more often than not, definitions were based on personal taste, conflicting systems of values, and political and social expedience.

Wild Youths and Fallen Officials

The earliest substantiated evidence for the practice of falconry in China dates to the second century C.E. and by the fourth and fifth centuries the sport was widespread among the elite. During this time the use of raptors in the hunt is vividly depicted in tomb murals and bricks. Textual sources, on the other hand, emphasize the moral and social effects of the sport. Focusing on recorded falconry enthusiasts and passages in which the sport is criticized, this chapter argues that the majority of texts consider falconry to be a social vice associated with characters of dubious morals as well as symptomatic of the general breakdown of social order. Buddhist attitudes toward the hunt further augmented this tradition and inspired the first outright prohibitions of the sport in the fifth century.

Rituals without Rules

Through a close reading of Ying Shao 應劭‎’s second century essay, “Screwing up Ritual” (Qianli 愆禮‎), this chapter challenges conventional assumptions about mourning ritual in ancient times. Ying Shao did not regard ritual errors as the infringement of rules, but rather as the result of a lack of good ritual sense. Such a conception of error reflected Ying’s understanding of ritual as a type of fengsu風俗‎ or fashion rather than a set of timeless rules. Ying Shao’s theory of ritual error not only offers a window into the beliefs of the late Han elite, but it supplies a framework for understanding transgression more generally. For it explains why some behaviors were and are regarded as incorrect even in the absence of formalized codes of conduct.