Courtesans and Opium Read online

  The Shenbaoguan edition was quickly followed by editions from other publishers. Such was the ascendancy of the Shanghai pleasure quarter in the latter half of the nineteenth century that, in 1900, the novel was actually transplanted to Shanghai, in an edition that changed all of its place-names but retained the rest of its text.9 In recent years modern editions of Fengyue meng, based either on the Shenbaoguan edition or one of its immediate successors, have become available.10

  In his brief preface the author gives his name only as Hanshang mengren, which means something like the Ignoramus of Yangzhou or the Fool of Yangzhou, and says he is writing the book at the “south window of Red Plum Hall.” A Red Plum Hall appears in chapter 10 of the novel; it is the site of the riddle contest run by local littérateurs. Apart from that possible connection, nothing else is known about the author.

  I am grateful to Professor Liu Haiping, of Nanjing University, for arranging a visit to Yangzhou for my wife and me, and to the Chinese Literature Department of Yangzhou University for their hospitality during our stay. I am grateful also to Professors Huang Jinde and Huang Qiang, who gave up their time to show me the various places in and around the city that are referred to in the novel. I am greatly indebted to Professor Wang Ch’iukuei for help with the novel’s descriptions of religious practices; to Professor Che Xilun for information about some religious terms; to Professors Tobie Meyer-Fong and Lucie Olivova for advising me about, or providing me with, important material on Yangzhou; and to the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for their suggestions.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A libertine falls victim to courtesan wiles;

  Old Hand holds forth on romantic illusions.

  LYRIC

  I loved to sleep among the flowers1

  And daily take them in my arms,

  Entranced for years with the gorgeous throng

  And oft deceived by harlot charms.

  Last night we swore eternal vows;

  Today she’s run away from me,

  Her protestations all for naught;

  Illusion—that’s what love proves to be.

  In the Warring States period of the Eastern Zhou dynasty, Guan Zhong,2 the prime minister of Qi, set up three hundred brothels for the ease and comfort of the traveling merchant. Although the brothels were designed to enrich the state and facilitate commerce, the pernicious custom spread throughout the land and has continued ever since, in recent times even reaching beyond our borders. In the city of Yangzhou, which has always favored lavish display, the brothel quarter is the equal of any other, even those of Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Nanjing. Untold numbers of men, entranced by the Yangzhou courtesans, have squandered their property, ruined their families, and sacrificed their lives without ever repenting their ways. Instead they clung stubbornly to the notion that they’d “rather die beneath the peony blossoms,3 for the ghosts have always been romantic figures.”

  Although stringent laws may be laid down against prostitution, and although they may be promulgated by enlightened officials, the popular saying still holds true: “Turtles are in touch with the denizens of the deep.” No matter how strictly the official may enforce his prohibitions, those who run the brothels have ways of conveying a modest outlay in bribes to the official’s aides, relatives, and personal attendants inside his residence as well as to his clerks outside it. The campaign will then be reduced to an empty exercise, a mere formality.

  When boys reach the age of fourteen or fifteen and leave school, they are entirely dependent on their fathers and elder brothers for discipline and instruction. The first consideration must be their choice of friends. It is an age-old truth that “he who touches pitch is bound to be defiled.” But if a boy can make friends with someone of excellent qualities, the two friends will be able to mold each other’s characters, work hard at their studies, and succeed in the examinations, bringing honor to their families as well as to themselves. They will then serve diligently in whatever walk of life they find themselves in and establish their families in society. But if a boy takes up with the irresponsible sort of friend who tempts him into whoring and gambling; and if his parents are overindulgent and fail to monitor his behavior; and if, on top of that, the boy does not realize how hard it was for his parents to succeed in life, he will indulge in lavish expenditure and go from bad to worse, ending up among the dregs of society.

  Nonetheless, deplorable as gambling may be, those who gamble may win as well as lose. By contrast, whoring is an unmitigated disaster.

  Your narrator has personally observed youths who, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, while still dependent on the hard-won support of their parents and elder brothers, like nothing better than dressing up in brilliant clothes of the latest style. At first, their behavior is nothing worse than gathering in groups of three or four to drink tea at some teahouse along Lower Commerce Street4 and to gamble for porcelain, fruit, toys, and the like. But then they spot a pleasure boat emerging from the sluice by Tianning Gate, and perhaps there will be some prostitutes on board who are being taken on an outing, prostitutes dressed either as boys or as girls, wearing vivid colors and with their faces fully made up. They will be singing operatic arias or popular songs, and their lilting voices will be accompanied by the haunting notes of a flute. At this sight the boys will fairly ache with desire and, after a hurried consultation, decide to hire a boat and follow them. But even this amounts to nothing more than gazing at girls. It may cost them something for the boat, the food, and the drink, but no great harm has been done. The real danger is that there may be someone in the group who knows the house the girls come from and who takes his friends along for an introductory tea party,5 after which they gradually become better acquainted and go on to hold banquets there and stay overnight. No matter how stingy you are with your money, the prostitutes of the pleasure quarter have ways of sweet-talking that money right out of your pocket and into theirs. They can even beguile you into considering your wife as a stranger and these places as your permanent home.

  Some of the consequences are quite ludicrous. Parents tell their son to do something for them or to buy some item of clothing, and he answers back that he hasn’t the time or the money, offering a whole string of excuses. But when the prostitute he is in love with issues one of her requests for clothing or jewelry, even if he has no money, he’ll move heaven and earth to borrow some and lose no time in buying the item, solely to please her. The strange thing, however, is that no prostitute has ever been known to express any pleasure, even when her request is met. If it’s an item of clothing she asked for, she’ll complain about the material, the color, or the fit, or say that either the trim or the pattern is unsatisfactory, or that the garment is too long or too short. In the case of jewelry, she’ll say that the gold is too pale, or the silver too unsightly, or the design outdated, or the gold-plating or the kingfisher feathers unsatisfactory, or the hairpin too long or too short, or the bracelet too large or too small, or the headband too thin or too thick, or the ear pick too light or too heavy. In terms of the common saying, it’s like pouring good money down a bottomless pit.

  When the boy grows up, even if he fails to learn anything from his elders and proves irresponsible and goes wrong, his parents will still be reluctant to punish or scold him. If they are somehow driven to desperation and make a few critical or harsh remarks, the more incorrigible sons will answer them right back. By contrast, in the pleasure quarter the same sort of youth will find the prostitute constantly twisting his ears, hitting him, yelling at him, even biting him, while he sits there convulsed with laughter, pretending to be at his ease and enjoying the experience. Actually he is dead scared that if he is too critical he will anger her and be left with nowhere to go for his pleasures. If a man could only show his parents the same consideration that he shows the prostitute he is in love with, buying them clothes or food when they want it, not striking back when they hit him or answering back when they scold him, he would qualify as the world’s leading exemplar of filial piety.
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  There are some playboys who become so entranced with the brothel scene, its daily banquets and nightly concerts, that they completely ignore the fact that their own households are short of food and fuel. They truly “cut a dash in the world at large while at home they starve.” So enamored are they of the prostitutes of the quarter that they stay out night after night and forget that their wives are sleeping alone. The more virtuous wives will merely bemoan the sad fate that proverbially awaits the pretty woman and keep their frustration to themselves, reluctant to criticize their husbands in public lest it reflect badly on them. Other wives, ignorant of moral principle, will, when their husbands are constantly out pursuing their own pleasures, wait until they return and then start quarreling with them, cursing them up hill and down dale and threatening to commit suicide. But there is also a third kind of low, shameless wife who says to herself that if her husband can play around outside the house, she can do the same thing at home. She holds many a clandestine tryst and does a number of disgraceful things behind her husband’s back, and then, when people start making snide remarks, she talks about a “fair exchange.”

  The fact is that when a man first forms a relationship in these places, he is lavish with his money and responsive to all the prostitute’s requests, while she fawns over him and swears she will never leave him for an instant. Some prostitutes will want to live with him as his mistress, while others will want to marry him, wishing only that they might live and die together with him. But while he is still sitting in the prostitute’s room, she’ll be off entertaining a newly arrived client in another room and saying the very same things to him.

  There are also able and intelligent playboys who, after endless scheming and the sacrifice of a good deal of personal integrity, have acquired money that they then faithfully turn over to the prostitutes. These men know perfectly well that the prostitutes’ blandishments are all sweet talk designed to trick people out of their money, but they still insist that, while it may be flattery when addressed to the rest of mankind, it is perfectly sincere when addressed to them. Without this conviction, how could these men, who are by no means stupid, be so willing to part with their money? But no matter how much you have spent in these places, when the money runs out and you owe on your brothel tab or you haven’t responded to a request, the prostitute will show you an entirely different face, casting to the winds her usual loving attitude and fixing you with a cold, contemptuous eye. Even the brothel stewards will look down their noses at you. And not only will your lack of money expose you to the prostitute’s sneers, you will also be made to feel highly uncomfortable should your clothes start to look a little shabby.

  There is also a species of admirer who will get jealous and compete with you for a prostitute, even resorting to violence, which will lead to a tragic incident and a subsequent court case. And if in one of these places you offend some relative or aide of the magistrate, you may be arrested by the night patrol and sentenced to a beating or to exile. As soon as the prostitute sees you in trouble, despite all the love she has shown you in the past, she will either take off for home with all your possessions or else set herself up in some other city, leaving you to face the music on your own while she blithely disports herself beyond the reach of the law. Many a playboy regards his lavish expenditure in the brothel as of small consequence but is unwilling to spend much money on the particular prostitute he passes his time with. This incurs her deep loathing when in bed with him, which causes him to suffer a venereal disease, with its chancres and buboes, a disease that in its mildest form results in bleeding and suppuration and in its severest form in death. There are also fellows from the local yamen as well as other rascally characters who routinely use their power to extort free banquets and nights in the brothel. The prostitutes go in fear of them and make a show of currying their favor, but privately they are resentful and, if they can take up with the magistrate or one of his aides or relatives, they will lodge a “pillow accusation” against the freeloaders. When the latter find themselves investigated and hauled off to court, they still don’t know where their trouble originated—a perfect example of the saying “An open thrust may be easy to dodge, but a secret shaft is hard to avoid.”

  Let me put this question to you: How many of you who are enamored of prostitutes have ever come across one who gave you any money? Or who brought any of her own money into a marriage? Of course, no such beneficial event has occurred in recent times, but let us just suppose that by some remote chance a prostitute did bring a good deal of money into a marriage. You would still need to keep this thought in mind: she made that money with the body her parents gave her, and she was now using the money to join you with that same body of hers. Just imagine if your own wife, sister, sister-in-law, or daughter had been supporting a man and sleeping with him and had then gone off with someone else. Would you be inclined to let the matter rest there?

  Now, since whoring has all these liabilities and not a single advantage, it may surprise you to learn that there is an even worse scourge in existence: the currently fashionable use of opium, which is particularly prevalent in the pleasure quarter. No sooner has a playboy arrived at the door of a brothel—whether or not he is an addict, whether or not he has smoked before—than a lamp will be lit and a prostitute summoned to lie opposite and roast the opium for him. The addicts go without saying, but even someone who is not addicted will take the opportunity to enjoy a chat and a few laughs with the prostitute and perhaps prolong his visit. The first day he will inhale once or twice, the next day three or four times, and within a few days his addiction will have taken an unbreakable hold on him. It will then become a lifelong burden, one from which only death can free him. Truly a case of one menace giving rise to another!

  Your narrator himself, when young and naive, was much given to dissipation and spent upward of thirty years entranced with the brothel scene. I cannot tell you how many prostitutes have been close to me, so close that they couldn’t bear to be apart for an instant, nor can I tell you how many oaths of eternal fidelity they swore. Some wanted to marry me, others wanted to be set up as my mistress, but after cheating me out of my money, they either married other men or took off for home with all my belongings, or set themselves up in some other city. When the love they had professed for me came to an end, they scattered to the four winds. As a result, I have come to regard the pleasure quarter with a cold and critical eye, as a place too dangerous to visit. I once wrote a poem on the subject:

  Sirens await you in the house of joy,

  So beware the ambushes there deployed.

  You’re invincible, your banners claim,

  But insidious attacks you can’t avoid.

  Their smiling faces will entice your soul;

  Their carmined lips will suck your brains away.

  Once caught in their snares you’ll never escape,

  So for all your prowess don’t join the fray.

  One day, with time on my hands, I chanced to take a stroll outside the city. All of a sudden my thoughts turned to the brothels I had known and the love the prostitutes had shown me, and the more I thought about them, the more enthralled I became. Without quite realizing where I was going, I arrived at a place from which I could see in the distance a steep mountain with strange outcroppings of rock. I walked around the mountain’s base and came to a lake thousands of feet deep with waves roiling its surface as far as the eye could see. Circling the lake until I reached the foot of the mountain, I found a stone stele about five feet high with words carved on it in large characters. I looked closely: Mount Self-Deception, Lake Unfathomable. Curious as to what it might be like on top of the mountain, I started pulling myself up on the undergrowth. After climbing for a mile or more with many twists and turns, I reached the summit, which I found to be covered with towering, age-old trees. At the foot of one of them two old men were sitting opposite each other. One had silver hair, a ruddy complexion, and the look of a divine being. The other was white-haired and toothless, with gaunt, wi
thered features. In his hand he held a book of some kind that he and his companion were reading together.

  By this time I was footsore and weary, and since I didn’t know the way, I bowed low before the two men and asked, “Good sirs, I’m afraid I have lost my way. I beg you to tell me what lies up ahead.”

  The man with the silver hair and ruddy complexion looked up and gazed off into the distance. “The way ahead is long, while the road behind is far from certain,” he said. “But let me ask you something. Why do you have so much to say for yourself?”

  This remark struck me as very odd, so I gave another bow. “Let me ask Your Reverences your names in religion, your ages, and the ethereal abode in which you dwell. And what is that book you’re reading?”

  “I am the Old Man Beneath the Moon,” said the first one, “and I was born goodness knows how many years ago. I once lived in the realms above, where I was in charge of all the marriages on earth. Before boys and girls became engaged, I would bind their feet together with red thread, and their marriage destinies would forever depend on that thread. But I felt sorry for all those foolish men and women who had karmic involvements from previous existences that they needed to resolve in this one. Sometimes the involvement might take three or four years to resolve, at other times an incarnation or two. I felt pity for them and made a practice of tying the threads together and completing their marriages. I never anticipated the disastrous consequences that would ensue—the ruin of families, the death of individuals, the corruption of society. The Emperor of Heaven got so angry with me that he exiled me to earth. Only when mankind as a whole no longer indulges in lustful desire will I be permitted to return to the realms above. With nothing to occupy me on these mountains, I often spend time with Old Hand [Guo Lairen]6 here.”