KING OF THE NINE MOUNTAINS.

first year of the reign of... Shunzhi: 1644.

Eight Astrological Signs: These were not 'signs' in our sense of zodiacal signs, but four two-character combinations that represented the year, month, day and hour of the person's birth. One of the two characters was taken from the series known as the Ten Celestial Stems, the other from the series known as the Twelve Earthly Branches, these two series combining to form the basic cycle of sixty used in the Chinese calendar and in fortune-telling. There were many methods of deriving a person's fortune from his Eight Signs or Characters.

Liu Bei... the Three Kingdoms: Liu Bei was the Pretender to the throne of the disintegrating Han dynasty, during the period of civil war known as the Three Kingdoms (22180).

the Dragon Throne: The dragon was throughout the ages the emblem of Imperial power. The Imperial dragon can be distinguished by its fifth claw.

56.

THE FOX OF FENZHOU.

a fox cannot cross the river: It is part of traditional fox-lore that 'when crossing a frozen river or lake he [the fox] advances very slowly and deliberately, putting his head down close to the ice and listening for the sound of water beneath' (Thomas Watters, 'Chinese Fox-Myths', Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society VIII (1874), p. 51).

57.

SILKWORM.

Dan Minglun (1842) comments: 'The whole story grows out of the one word "eunuch". But it is handled with skill and ingenuity, with delicacy and elegance, and with a wonderfully expressive style.' Zou Zongliang points out (in Ma Zhenfang, 1996) that in one way this story follows the standard pattern (a recurring one in Strange Tales and in much Chinese romantic fiction) of two beautiful women who end up both living with the same man. But unlike many of these romances it broaches the taboo subject of sex, and for this reason has rarely been included in the standard Strange Tales selections and has seldom been translated. Zou endorses Dan Minglun's high praise of the story's literary qualities, but goes on to launch a vehement and lengthy attack on what he sees as the story's unnecessary, indeed culpable, obscenity, its gratuitous dwelling on details of matters sexual. This he compares with the episode at the end of Tale 40, 'The Laughing Girl', where the scorpion stings the neighbour's penis. Alas, laments Zou, that such foul dross is to be found side by side with the wonders of Strange Tales. Zou recalls in this connection a thought-provoking question once put to him by 'a Japanese friend'. Why is it that in the Strange Tales, a girl and a man have no sooner set eyes on each other than they jump into bed? Zou blames the oppressive weight of feudal morality and Confucian prudish hypocrisy, which for centuries prevented normal contact between the sexes and thus created a breeding ground for alienation and perversion, an environment perfect for the growth of such abnormal sexual tendencies. How else, he asks, can one account for the way in which Clever has no sooner opened the door to young Lian than she wants to have sex with him? Or the way in which Auntie Hua, having cured his unfortunate deficiency, locks the young man up and treats him as a sex object? Or the way in which his own feelings of love towards Clever are reduced to base lust? Nonetheless, Zou commends Pu Songling as a progressive element, for having reflected with such accuracy this socially regrettable phenomenon.

silkworm: T. H. Gray writes: At the time of their birth the worms are black and so small as scarcely to exceed a hair in breadth. Owing to their diminutive size, those in charge of them cut the leaves of the mulberry tree into very small pieces... When they have reached the age of thirty-two days they are full grown, each being about two inches in length, and almost as thick as a man's little finger.

(China: A History of the Law, Manners and Customs of the People (London, 1878), pp. 2223) cakes of tea: During the Song dynasty (9601278) a very high-grade 'tribute tea' was made in this form, the leaves compressed into the form of thin circular cakes. Its full name was Dragon Phoenix Cake tea.

not that rude: In the Chinese, she refers by name to a famous ruffian of the Three Kingdoms period, Chen Yuanlong, who had no regard for common courtesy and made his guests sleep on the floor while he slept on a proper bed.

58.

VOCAL VIRTUOSITY.

Wang Xinyi: An astronomer and mathematician who lived during the reign of the Manchu Emperor Shunzhi (164461), gaining his jinshi degree in 1647. He was a native of the Shandong county of Changshan.

59.

FOX AS PROPHET.

shameless greed: The allusion is to a character in a Tang-dynasty story who shamelessly shared his wife's favours in exchange for gifts in cash.

the eleventh year of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor: 1672.

Wang Fuchen: The Provincial Commander-in-Chief of Shaanxi, who in 1674 rebelled against the Manchu Emperor Kangxi, allying himself with the ambitious Satrap Wu Sangui in the south. Wang surrendered to the Manchu army in 1676.

61.

FOX CONTROL.

Lao Ai... Empress Dowager of Qin: Lu Buwei, the powerful Prime Minister of the King of Qin (who subsequently became First Emperor of the Qin dynasty), needed to find a way of satisfying the desires of his sovereign's mother, who despite her increasing age 'did not cease her wanton behaviour'. (She had originally been Lu's own concubine, and showed signs of wishing to renew their relations.) Lu found a man named Lao Ai, gifted with an unusually large penis, and took him on as a servant, instructing him 'to stick his member through the centre of a wheel made of paulownia wood, and walk about with it, making certain that the report of this feat reached the Dowager's ears, so as to excite her interest'. To get himself smuggled into the palace, Lao Ai agreed to undergo a mock castration. He then proceeded to make the Empress Dowager pregnant twice, and she grew to love him greatly. In 238 BC, their clandestine relations were eventually discovered and he was executed, together with many of his relations, including the two sons she had borne him. Three years later, Lu Buwei himself was dismissed and committed suicide. See Records of the Grand Historian, I, pp. 1634.

62.

DRAGON DORMANT.

Commissioner Qu: Qu Qianqiao, a native of Changshan in Shandong, passed his jinshi degree in 1577. He rose to be a commissioner in the Office of Transmission.

63.

CUT SLEEVE.

the Cut Sleeve persuasion: Emperor Ai, last ruler of the Former Han dynasty (206 BCAD 9), had a number of boy-lovers, the best-known of whom was a certain Dong Xian. Once when the Emperor was sharing his couch with Dong Xian, the latter fell asleep lying across the Emperor's sleeve. When the Emperor was called away to grant an audience, he took his sword and cut off his sleeve rather than disturb the sleep of his favourite. Hence the term 'Cut Sleeve'(duanxiu) has become a literary expression for homosexuality among men. (See Robert van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden, 1961), p. 63.) Shao-yin Meridian: The meridian of the kidney, running up from the lower front part of the foot, the meridian associated with sexual dysfunction. 'Anyone who is easily tired, easily confused or upset, is likely to be suspected of some deficiency in this area, and a prolonged depletion of the energy of this function circle [meridian] is thought to result in the disintegration of the personality, total disorientation and insanity' (Manfred Porkert, with Christian Ullmann, Chinese Medicine (New York, 1988), pp. 10910).

pretty boys: Timothy Brook writes: The practice of hiring 'singing boys' to entertain at banquets and then letting the guests fondle them after their performance was already known in the most exclusive circles in the capital in the mid-Ming, but few subscribed to this confusing pleasure... A county magistrate in Fujian paid fifty taels of silver for 'a beautiful boy' in the 1580s, for which his upright provincial governor had him fired.

(The Confusions of Pleasure (Berkeley, 1998), pp. 2312) Devil's Dance: A dance performed at court by a group of sixteen female dancers, during the Mongol dynasty (12791368).

Jesting Judgement: Pu Songling's witty envoi, as I read it, pokes fun at the anti-homosexual lobby, in the form of a brilliant and highly lascivious parallel-prose pastiche of pedantic neo-Confucian prudery. It is roundly condemned as vulgar and obscene by no less a scholar than Zhu Qikai (see his edition, note 85, p. 317), who refuses to interpret its real sense, obliging the reader only to the extent of providing the raw meaning of individual allusions (most of which he takes straight from the nineteenth-century commentator Lu Zhan'en). This strange little piece should surely be seen as a humorous counterpart to Pu Songling's more famous tour de force, the Author's Preface. It is certainly just as crammed with literary allusions. Judith T. Zeitlin calls it 'an amazingly arcane and rather hostile parody in parallel prose on homosexual practices' (Historian of the Strange, p. 91). I find it not so much hostile, as a deliberately exaggerated spoof.

A close parallel can be found in the preface to the album of erotic paintings and poems published by Robert van Gulik, in his Erotic Colour Prints, 'Variegated Positions of the Flowery Battle': This preface is a literary tour de force. It is composed according to the Chinese stylistic technique known as jiju 'assembling phrases', by stringing together various quotations from some ancient literary work. In this case the text consists entirely of quotations from the Five Classical Books. Correct translation is uncommonly difficult because these disconnected phrases are extracted from the Classics at random with a view to fitting the author's particular purpose purpose which often completely ignores the meaning the phrase had in the original context.

(pp. 2089) Pu Songling's time was one of considerable sexual tolerance. For the extraordinarily rich and ambivalent world of late-Ming/early-Qing erotic fiction, see Keith McMahon's two books, Causality and Containment (Leiden, 1988) and Misers, Shrews and Polygamists (Durham, 1995). The classic homosexual collection Tales of the Cut Sleeve was most probably published during the seventeenth century. While homosexual practices are described in other stories in Strange Tales, this is the principal full-length story devoted to the love between a man and a male fox-spirit.

Line 12 Of Half-Eaten Peach: Mi Zixia, one of the most celebrated homosexuals in Chinese history and the favourite for a time of Duke Ling of Wei (534493 BC), 'was strolling with the ruler in an orchard and, biting into a peach and finding it sweet, he stopped eating and gave the remaining half to the ruler to enjoy' (Bret Hinsch, Passions of the Cut Sleeve (Berkeley, 1990), p. 20).

Line 15 bird-track: This is playing with expressions from the famous poem by Li Bo (70162), 'The Road to Shu Is Hard': 'West on Taibo Mountain, take a bird road there... When earth collapsed and the mountain crashed, the muscled warriors died' (Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, I, pp. 7235). The Chinese character for 'bird', normally read niao, when read diao, is a slang expression for the penis.

Line 17 Peach Blossom Spring: The title of the famous idyll by Tao Yuanming (365427), in which a fisherman stumbles upon an earthly paradise. (See Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, I, pp. 51517.) The relevant passage in Tao's original reads: The fisherman left his boat and entered the grotto, which at first was extremely narrow, barely admitting his body; after a few dozen steps it suddenly opened out on to a broad and level plain.' 'Grotto' was one of the standard terms for the vagina.

Lines 256 the up and down... manual masturbation: Here Pu Songling is playfully quoting from the Zuo Commentary, where a man questioning a prisoner first raises his hand, then lowers it. (See The Chinese Classics, V, pp. 51920.) Line 31 Flowery Pool: Suggestive of the many expressions for the female genitalia such as Dark Garden Jade Terrace.

Line 37 One-Eyed Marshal: The One-Eyed Marshal was Li Keyong (d. 908), a famous general of Turkish origin at the end of the Tang dynasty, known as the One-Eyed Dragon. (One is tempted to say One-Eyed Trouser-Snake...) This literary and historical reference is full of homosexual double entendres.

Line 39 Red Hare: The great horse of Lu Bu (d. AD 198), General of the Eastern Han dynasty. Here it has a sexual connotation, as does the rear gate of the barracks.

Line 43 to steal the Great Bow: Another mischievously witty reference to the venerable Zuo Commentary, where 'Yang Hu threw off his armour, went to the duke's palace, and took from it the precious symbol of jade and the great bow' (The Chinese Classics, V, p. 770). It is not that hard to interpret the sexual innuendo here, bearing in mind that Jade Stalk is one of the many terms for the penis.

Lines 478 Yellow Eel... student's thighs: Lu Zhan'en (1825) refers to a story about the prominent Academician Wang during the Ming dynasty, who had a homosexual liaison with a student in the Imperial College. The young man dreamed of a yellow eel that appeared between his thighs.

Lines 5053 The plums sold by Wang Rong... posterity: Wang Rong (235306), one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove (see Minford and Lau, Classical Chinese Literature, I, pp. 4456), was proverbially mean and bored holes in his plum stones so that no one else would be able to grow such a delicious variety. Here the plums are being used as a metaphor for childless homosexual relations.

Lines 546 Black Pine Wood... Yellow Dragon Palace: Zhu Qikai (1989) follows Lu Zhan'en (1825) in interpreting these place-names sexually. The (very sketchy) contemporary paraphrase by Yuan Lukun et al. (1992, pp. 2889), which turns Pu Songling's wit into a heavy moralistic tirade, is extremely blunt here: 'And when the passive male partner suddenly empties his bowels, there is nothing his aggressor can do to stop it.'