Southeast Review of Asian Studies
Volume 34 (2012), pp. 25–42
In His Thievish Eyes: The Voyeur/Reader in
Li Yu’s “The Summer Pavilion”
JING ZHANG
New College of Florida
The paper examines the voyeuristic and telescopic motifs in Li Yu’s 李漁 (1611–80)
“The Summer Pavilion” (“Xiayi lou” 夏宜樓). It argues that the novella’s voyeuristic
themes reflect important preoccupations of the seventeenth-century Chinese literary
culture. Sophisticated uses of the voyeur and voyeuristic symbols such as the mirror are
notable in the era’s novels, literary criticism, paintings, illustrations, often
metaphorizing the act of reading and suggesting the self-consciousness that had come to
characterize it during the Ming era.
Introduced to China in the 1620s, the telescope made its first appearance in
Chinese literature in Li Yu’s 李漁 (1611–80) comic novella “The Summer
Pavilion” (“Xiayi lou” 夏宜樓), one of twelve stories in his anthology
Twelve Structures (Shi’er lou 十 二 樓 ).1 Li deploys the telescope, or the
“thousand-li glass from the Western Seas” (xiyang qianli jing 西洋千里鏡),
not merely as an exotic curio but as a pivotal element in the plot. Through
its magic lens, Li’s protagonist, a young student named Qu Jiren 瞿吉人, or
“The Lucky Qu,” spies on his ideal woman and her household, reads texts
written by her and her father, and eventually wins her hand, triumphing
over her father and her other suitors. At once an optical device and a phallic
symbol, the telescope symbolizes the protagonist’s modes of seeing and
reading, implicitly drawing a parallel between the two.
Jiren and his telescope have a symbiotic relationship: the telescope
functions simultaneously as the sign, the magnifier, and eventually the
parody of Jiren’s gaze. Jiren’s “magic eyes” and the tricks he plays with
them give rise to “one surprising development after another” (Hanan 1988,
78). Not least among these developments, Jiren and his telescope undergo
reverse transformations. Descending the scale of being, Jiren is first an
immortal (xianlang 仙 郎 ), then a man of flesh and blood, and finally
“Master Thievish Eyes” (zeiyan guanren 賊眼官人), whom his wife’s maids
ridicule. Contrarily, the telescope ascends through several incarnations: it
© 2012 Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies
26
J. Zhang
is first a seemingly fallacious “god’s eye” (shenyan 神眼), then an exotic
treasure (yibao 異寳), then a public utensil (gongqi 公器), and finally an
oracle worshipped in the ancestral hall (jiatang xianghuo 家堂香火). This
playful naming of this powerful eye calls attention to the story’s emphasis
on gazing. The telescope mobilizes an interpretive game both within and
beyond the story, and the magic eye ultimately serves as a figure of the selfconscious reading act.2
Li’s figurative use of the eye draws from a rich commentarial culture
that was an important part of the larger literary culture of the late Ming and
early Qing eras, when Li himself played an active role as a well-known
critic.3 Influenced by the fiction commentaries of Jin Shengtan 金聖歎
(1608–61) and others, Li created a new kind of narrator, who, as David
Rolston puts it, “combines within himself both author and critic” (Rolston
1997, 301). Li thus broke away from the conventional model of
storyteller/narrator that derives from the oral storytelling tradition.
Previous academic studies have focused on Li’s playfully discursive
narrator, who is a master of linguistic dexterity and a parodist fond of
mixing genres, voices, and sources. This study draws attention to his subtle
visual metaphors of the reading act and speculates on the influence of visual
culture and in particular illustration (increasingly seen as a visual form of
commentary in recent scholarship) on his fictional narrative.4 This
investigation will focus on the textual and visual presentation of the
voyeuristic eye, often called the “thievish eye” (zeiyan 贼眼). A recurrent
motif in fiction and paintings of this period, the concept of the thievish eye
also found its way into the terminology of fiction commentary. Li’s
attention to the eye that probes the interior and the private space requires a
reconsideration of the general impression that voyeuristic characters and
motifs are relatively insignificant in the development of Chinese art during
this era.5
Attempting to contextualize the figurative meaning of voyeurism in
“The Summer Pavilion,” this study discusses visual metaphors in
vernacular fiction, considers the figurative use of voyeurism in seventeenthcentury fiction commentaries, and traces Li’s intricate use the telescope as a
voyeuristic motif. Lastly, the discussion will turn to the analogous function
of visual props in the era’s “vernacular painting” (Cahill 2010, 1–29) and in
book illustrations. These contexts illuminate the interplay of images and
texts, viewing and reading, in “The Summer Pavilion.”
Voyeurs in Fiction & Fiction Commentary
Narrators in Chinese vernacular fiction generally emphasize the act of
seeing. The narrator addresses the reader as kanguan 看官 (spectator) and
introduces new scenes and characters with cues that encourage
In His Thievish Eyes
27
visualization, such as danjian 但見, zhijian 只見, and qiekan 且看, meaning
“as seen.” This stereotypical “mode of description” (Hanan 1974, 305)
received “increasingly sophisticated use” in late Ming and Qing novels,
serving as a subtle method of filtering information and indicating
differences between the narrator’s and the characters’ points of view. The
discrepancies between points of view give rise to irony (Rolston 1993, 130).
Afraid that such authorial manipulations might elude the reader’s attention,
fiction commentators developed terms, such as “fleshly eye” (rouyan 肉眼),
“enlightened eye” (huiyan 慧 眼 ), and “Buddha’s eye” (foyan 佛 眼 ), to
distinguish different levels of knowledge and suggest a hierarchy of
comprehension among fiction readers.6
The “thievish eye,” a variant of the Buddhist “hungry eye” (eyan 餓眼),
most likely derives from the emergence of the voyeur as a character type in
late Ming novels and most prominently in Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin ping
mei 金瓶梅). Voyeurs are typically characters of low social status, such as
maids and boy attendants, who eavesdrop from behind a door or wall, or
peek through a crack at a domestic and often sexually-charged scene. One
general function of such characters is lending validity to depictions of
private moments. More sophisticated performances by such voyeurs in the
intricate world of crowds in major Ming novels give rise to figurative uses
of their image in fiction commentaries.7 Compared to other kinds of “eye,”
the “thievish eye” is an especially prevalent motif in fiction commentary.8
In chapter 55 of Shi Nai’an’s 施耐庵 (ca. 1296–1372) Outlaws of the
Marsh (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳), for instance, the commentator Jin Shengtan
uses the terms “thievish eyes and mind” (zei yannao 賊眼腦), “thievish
heart and liver” (zei xingan 賊心肝), and “thievish arms and legs” (zei
shoujiao 賊手腳) to commend the novelist’s “thievish writing” (zei wenzhang
賊文章) (Chen et al. 1987, 1024). This is to say that Jin compares Shi’s
shrewdness and ingenuity to the voyeur’s physical nimbleness and his
mental control. In this chapter, one of the outlaws, Shi Qian 時 遷 ,
nicknamed “Flee on a Drum” (Gushangzao 鼓上蚤), tries to steal a family
heirloom, a golden breastplate, from the imperial military instructor Xu
Ning 徐寧 in order to lure him to Mt. Liang. In contrast to the lusty
combat that characterizes this novel, this scene presents a serene daily
ritual, Xu’s departure for his office at twilight, all through the
knowledgeable eyes of the master thief crouching on the rafter of Xu’s
bedroom. The novelist’s elaborate depiction of Xu’s attire, its ornate colors
and intricate accessories, stimulates the reader’s imagination of the
legendary vest stashed in a black box. His presentation of Xu’s sympathetic
wife and maids also elicits the reader’s sympathy for Xu, who is unaware of
his immanent loss of station, and ironizes the heroic codes that the narrator
seemingly celebrates.
28
J. Zhang
An example of the voyeuristic eye deployed as a metaphor of the
reading act appears in Zhang Zhupo’s 張 竹 坡 (1670–98) extensive
comments on Plum in the Golden Vase. Mostly set in private and semiprivate compounds where risqué parties are constantly hosted, the novel
features numerous acts of peeping and eavesdropping. In one of his
prefatory pieces, Zhang lists the voyeurs and eavesdroppers who witness the
sexual activities of the female protagonist Pan Jinlian (“Pan Jinlian yin guo
renmu” 潘 金 蓮 淫 過 人 目 ). Equating these voyeurs and their organ of
voyeurism, he refers to “Yunge’s mouth, the monk’s ears, Chunmei’s eyes,
the cat’s eyes, Tiegun’s tongue, and Qiuju’s dream.” He groups these
voyeurs under the title of “Hibiscus Mirror of Hidden Spring” (“Cangchun
furong jing” 藏春芙蓉鏡) and adds them to his list of Pan Jinlian’s sexual
partners (Xiaoxiaosheng 1991, 6).9 Among these voyeuristic characters are a
peddler, a monk, a servant’s son, and two maids, all from the lower and
poorly educated social strata so often associated with naïve readership and
spectatorship in critical arguments for the baneful influence of theater and
fiction. Moreover, the spectators of Pan’s lascivious acts, in their enthralled
voyeurism, represent the kind of reader whom an earlier commentator,
“Pearl Juggler of Eastern Wu” (Dongwu Nongzhuke 東吳弄珠客), derides
as “beasts” (qinshou 禽獸) in his preface to the Wanli edition of The Plum in
the Golden Vase (Zhu 2002, 177). Significantly, Zhang’s “cat” echoes Pearl
Juggler’s “beasts.” Reinforcing the point, Zhang’s list moves gradually from
the sense organs (mouth, ears, eyes, and tongue) to the mind (metaphorized
by dream). This progression slyly cautions against a merely sensuous
response to the novel. Zhang’s repetitive references to eyes (those belonging
to the cunning maid Chunmei and to Jinlian’s vicious cat, which eventually
kills the baby of Jinlian’s rival) inform the reader that physical eyes are the
most powerful sensual organ. By contrast, the mental eyes most effectively
engage and interpret the text; through these eyes, the reader may perceive
the illusory nature of human desire the novel exhaustively portrays.
The heading of “Hibiscus Mirror of Hidden Spring,” enigmatic as it
seems, plays importantly into the significance of Zhang’s metaphoric
perception of voyeurism. In item 96 of his “How to Read Jin ping mei” (“Jin
ping mei dufa” 金瓶梅讀法), Zhang advises the reader to hang a bright
mirror in front of himself while reading the novel, so he can see himself
fully revealed in it (Xiaoxiaosheng 1991, 49).10 In “The Implied Meaning in
Jin Ping Mei” (“Jin ping mei yu yi shuo” 金瓶梅寓意説), Zhang accounts for
the repeated appearance of the hibiscus image in the novel and associates it
particularly with peeping (sikui 私窺) and destructive desire (Xiaoxiaosheng
1991, 13). The term “hidden spring” is the name of the grotto in a crucial
scene in chapter 23, in which Jinlian eavesdrops on the fornication of
Ximen Qing 西門慶 and Huilian 蕙蓮, a servant’s wife and Jinlian’s double.
These complicated self-allusions shape the allegorical meaning of the
In His Thievish Eyes
29
mirror that Zhang uses to caution readers against imitating the problematic
behaviors featured in the novel.
Zhang further promotes his mode of critical reading by comparing
himself to the “Mirror of Qin” (Qin jing 秦鏡), a legendary mirror of the
Qin court said to reflect the inner organs: “Having been commented on by
Mr. Zhang Zhupo, who not only reveals the nuances of the author’s golden
needle, but also sees clearly the true forms beneath the thick powder and
strong perfume, just as the Mirror of Qin reveals the foxy, and Wen’s
rhinoceros horn shows the monstrous” (Xiaoxiaosheng 1991, 1).11 In other
words, by contrasting the deceiving “Hibiscus Mirror of Hidden Spring”
and the revealing “Mirror of Qin,” Zhang pits reading for crude, sensuous
pleasure against reading for intellectual pleasure achieved through a
discerning eye for narrative subtlety and strenuous endeavor to uncover the
moral and philosophical truth. Ultimately, the ideal reader is the mirrored
twin of the author whose erotic scenes, as Zhang argues, embed didactic
messages.
Voyeurs in Pictures
The paintings of this era also innovatively deploy the peeping motif. The
mirror is a particularly pervasive figure of this motif, simultaneously
functioning as an item of decorative art, an indication of feminine space,
and a metaphor of “gazing.” Mirrors often face away from the viewer,
revealing their backs, which are often beautifully decorated and inscribed
with didactic messages. A mirror thus positioned leads the viewer’s eye into
the interior of the woman’s boudoir and by extension into her mind.12
Furthermore, it serves as the focal point of the self-gaze of the painted
figure and of the gaze upon her, both within and without the picture. In
more sophisticated works, the “peeping” motif adds significantly to the
tension between the attempt to visualize sensuality and the intent to convey
a didactic message as discussed above. The three examples that I discuss
below, well known images of the seventeenth century, use the mirror to
explore this tension at different levels, from the playful, to the historical, to
the psychological.
Our first example is the illustration of “A Random Note” (“Outi” 偶題)
by Sikong Tu 司空圖 (837–908) in Illustrated Tang Poems (Tangshi huapu 唐
詩畫譜) (fig. 1), a widely circulated manual for painters printed between
1573 and 1627 and influential among illustrators.13 The poem explores the
peeping motif in both spatial and temporal terms, the line between an
anticipated tryst and an incidental encounter blurred. Similar to the cat in
Zhang Zhupo’s list, the peeping bird and the galloping horse in the second
couplet symbolizes sexual desire, or “spring sentiment” (chunqing 春情):
30
J. Zhang
A Pavilion by the water where flowers grow dense,
A sunny day in spring just before noon—
A bird peeps at the mirror facing the rail,
A horse passes by—the crack of a whip beyond the wall. (Lo and Liu 1975,
286)14
水榭花繁處
春晴日午前
鳥窺臨檻鏡
馬遇隔墻鞭 15
In the poem, the stillness of the mirror stationed by the railing contrasts
with the movement of the whip, yet both images are presented as transitory,
associated with a bird that flies away at the crack of the whip and by a horse
that has already galloped past
the corner. The mirror’s
notable size and ornate frame
lend it a symbolic aura. Like
the peeping bird, the reader
sees himself as a voyeur in the
mirror/poem. The mirror also
symbolizes the gazing subjects,
the girl who might have been
examining herself in it before
moving to the door and the
voyeur/reader who desires her
beauty. The fact that the girl
does not stand in front of the
mirror, like her effacement in
the poem, suggests that she is
desired and fantasized more
than seen by the physical eyes
and
that
the
“spring
sentiment”
is
perhaps
imagined
rather
than
actualized. As indicated by his
title—“A Random Note”—the
poet manages a deliberate
ambiguity. The whole poem
captures a delicate yet rather
FIGURE 1 Illustration of “A Ramdon Note” (“Outi” whimsical
and
perhaps
偶 題 ) by Sikong Tu 司 空 圖 (837—908). In Newly
incidental
moment
of
stirred
Engraved Illustrated Tang Poems of Five Words
(Xinjuan wuyan Tangshi huapu 新鐫五言唐詩畫譜), youthful emotion that may
compiled, Huang Fengchi 黃鳳池. Jiyazhai 集雅齋 have nothing to do with
edition. Harvard Yenching Library.
In His Thievish Eyes
31
reality and therefore is not subject to moralism. This same ambiguity
allows the illustrator to portray the girl, the object of fantasy in the poem,
as an active agent who gazes beyond her proper domain.
If Sikong Tu’s poem and its illustration in Illustrated Tang Poems render
the lovers’ fleeting gaze as harmless fantasy, the famous gaze cast by the
eighth-century emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 on his favorite Consort Yang 楊貴
妃 taking a bath inevitably evokes moralistic reflection, as the scene is a
chapter in the narrative of the decline of the High Tang. The rendering is
not frivolous, even though the painting was commercial and therefore
susceptible to the principle that sensuality sells (fig. 2).16 Through his
subtle manipulation of a mirror as the topos of desire, the painter presents
the emperor’s gaze in an attempt to compel the viewer to reflect on his own
viewing pleasure. Consort
Yang and her mirror are
positioned in the middle of
the painting, separated by
maids and furniture. Yang’s
naked body, painted in cool
colors, contrasts with the
bright red and blue sashes
draped over the back of the
mirror. The opulent image of
the mirror evokes the
moment
when
Yang
undresses herself in front it.
Tellingly, the mirror “looks”
at
the
emperor,
who,
positioned at the top of the
painting, is watching Yang
while
himself
hiding.
Although
Yang
appears
demure, her eyes lowered
and her back to the emperor,
her surrogate, the mirror,
reveals her awareness of his
presence and hints that she
enacts a planned scene of
seduction. In other words,
FIGURE 2 Gu Jianlong 顧見龍 (1606—88 or after),
the mirror mobilizes a subtle Emperor Xuanzong Spies on Yang Guifei Bathing.
play of gazes within and Hanging scroll. Ink and colors on silk, 151.5 cm x
without the temporal and 87.9 cm. Yurinkan Museum, Kyoto. In Pictures for
Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing
spatial frame of the painting, China, James Cahill, 11. Berkeley: University of
through which the painter California Press, 2010.
32
J. Zhang
conveys an implicit criticism of Yang as the femme fatale and warns the
viewer of the dangerous nature of the infatuation visualized in his own eyes.
Given the conventional use of the mirror as a metaphor of history, the
mirror that confronts the peeping emperor evokes the notoriously selfindulgent emperors of the late Ming who, like Emperor Xuanzong, failed to
learn from the downfall of their predecessors. The portrayal of an
infatuated emperor turning his eyes away from the truth revealed in the
mirror therefore metaphorizes deluded spectatorship and warns the viewer
to guard against similar delusion. This portrayal of Emperor Xuanzong is
further unflattering in light of the fact that voyeurs in literature and art are
usually denizens of the lower classes.
An illustration of the play The Story of the Western Wing (Xixiang ji 西廂
記 ) depicts a mirror that reflects the act of reading and embodies an
intricate interplay of reading and viewing within and beyond the printed
play. In one of the play’s most illustrated scenes, the heroine Yingying 鶯鶯
reads Scholar Zhang’s 張生 love letter, which was secretly delivered and left
on her makeup box by her maid Hongniang 紅娘 (fig. 3). Pretending to be
offended by Zhang’s letter, Yingying falls secretly in love. In the
illustration in the Min Qiji 閔齊伋 edition, Yingying is simultaneously
concealed by a screen that stands diagonally in the middle of the picture
and revealed by a large round mirror on her dressing table, while
Hongniang is shown peeping at her from behind the screen.17 The mirrored
image of Yingying suggests that she is the object of the other’s gaze and
indicates Zhang’s and Hongniang’s attempts to fathom her mind and mood.
FIGURE 3
Min Qiji 閔齊伋 (b. 1580). “Peeping at the Letter” (“Kuijian” 窺簡).
Illustration for Act 10 of The Story of the Western Wing (Xixiang ji 西廂記), printed
by Min Qiji in 1640. Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne.
In His Thievish Eyes
33
By the side of her mirrored image is a river scene painted on the screen,
showing a tiny boat, vast spread of water, and a solitary house behind
autumn bushes, all emblematic of the loneliness and longing shared by
Yingying and Zhang.18 Veiled by her silence (the playwright assigns all
singing to her maid Hongniang in this scene), Yingying’s suppressed
emotion is powerfully visualized in this illustration. Moreover, the striking
image of the mirror connects reading and viewing, which the playwright
likewise emphasizes in his stage direction “the female lead faces the mirror,
sees the letter, and reads” (Wang 1954, 83). The envelope sitting besides the
mirror, a detail created by the illustrator, also hints at the relation between
reading and viewing. The envelope shows the two characters of the
compound word for yuanyang 鴛鴦 (mandarin duck, literally “male duck”
and “female duck”) as if they are reversed or mirror images of each other,
taking advantage of the pictorial resemblance between the two characters
and using their connotation of perfect couplehood to ironize the loneliness
that bonds the writer and reader of the letter. By portraying Yingying as a
reader who determines the fate of Zhang’s letter, the mirror underlines
Yingying’s agency as an interpreter and as an elusive player of words
herself, unlike the uneducated peeping Hongniang. In other words, the
ability to read is more authoritative than the ability to see. Originally a
stage prop, Yingying’s mirror becomes, in this illustration, an emblem of
the interpretative games of peeping and reading, and hints at the play’s
ongoing cultural transformation from a theatrical spectacle to a printed text
for quiet perusal.
An illustration of Li’s story “Tower of the Returning Crane” (“Hegui
Lou” 鶴歸樓) uses the back of a linghua mirror 菱花鏡 to frame the lines of
a huiwen 迴文 or palindromic poem (see Li 1992, vol. 4). In the story, the
poem plays a crucial role in the couple’s endurance of an eight-year
separation and in the revival of their love upon reunion. Imitating the
legendary Su Huiniang 蘇蕙娘 of the Eastern Jin dynasty, the famous
abandoned wife who wrote a huiwen poem to regain her husband’s love, the
husband in Li’s story writes his wife a poem that constitutes two entirely
different texts when read forward and backward. While a normal reading
shows the husband’s heartless attempt to persuade his wife to put aside
their passionate love in order to endure their separation and even
insinuates her possible betrayal, a backward reading reveals the husband’s
love for his wife and his longing for their final reunion. How the poem is
read therefore defines the relationship between the reader (wife) and the
author (husband) and determines their response to a challenging fate.
34
J. Zhang
Voyeurism Doubled & Twisted
In his poems, essays, and stories, Li frequently plays with the voyeuristic
motif to tease the dichotomy of the didactic and the erotic. For example, in
his poem “Guarding against Voyeurs” (“Fang kui” 防窺), Li depicts a
young lady’s strenuous attempts to conceal herself from unsolicited eyes,
which only results in the disclosure of her sweat-soaked body and loss of
innocence (Li 1992, 1.487). In the poem “Peeping at the Bath” (“Jian yu”
瞷浴), Li ends his voyeuristic fantasy with a facetious request that the
reader withdraw his eyes from such a sight (Li 1992, 463). In “Eyebrows
and Eyes” (“Mei yan” 眉眼), an essay on how to appraise feminine charm
written in the tongue-in-cheek tone of a connoisseur, Li recommends a
hilarious peeping position in which one lies at a woman’s feet to meet her
demurely downcast eyes (Li 1992, 11.111–12). Li suggests the opposite
position in “The Summer Pavilion” by having his protagonist climb to the
top of a pagoda. From this vantage point, he both peeps and reads through
the telescope. Much of the comedy arises from Li’s play with the dichotomy
of the didactic and the erotic, or, in Li’s own words, of “the serious”
(zhengjing 正經) and “the absurd” (huangtang 荒唐) by doubling the peeping
eye and confusing the moralistic and the erotic dimension of the images
and words revealed by the telescope.
In Li’s story, the telescope is too blatant either to miss or to take at face
value. As the American scholar Patrick Hanan rightly observes, Li manages
a “delicate eroticism” by recycling an erotic tableau revealed by the
telescope (Hanan 1981, 182). The male protagonist Jiren spots a group of
young maids frolicking naked in the lotus-flower pond hidden deep in the
compound of the Zhans’ garden. While relishing this sensuous sight, Jiren
sees and immediately falls for the young mistress, Zhan Xianxian 詹嫻嫻
(“the genteel girl”), who punishes the naughty girls for their careless
exposure after their giggling wakens her from her slumber. Later Jiren uses
his knowledge of this supposedly private scene to convince her of his
supernatural vision and of their predestined marriage. Besides its sensuous
imagery, the recurrence of this tableau symbolizes the compulsive and
repetitive voyeuristic gaze that plots the story: Jiren must constantly return
to the same spot, a pagoda in the “Temple of the High Mountain” (Gaoshan
Si 高山寺), to continue his visual game.
The irony lies in the nature of this “god’s eye,” which Jiren aligns with
moral rather than erotic purposes. In the first chapter, a matchmaker tells
Xianxian about Jiren’s panoptical eyes, which have witnessed her maids’
scandalous play in the water, peeked into her secrets, and observed her
recent illness. Using the matchmaker as an intermediary, Jiren conveys that
he knows her intimately. If she ends up marrying someone else, Jiren warns
that he would commit suicide and his soul, already inseparable from her,
In His Thievish Eyes
35
would never leave her in peace. Later, when the matchmaker asks why his
celestial eye failed to guide Xianxian when asked to draw lots to decide
which of her three suitors she will marry, Jiren reiterates his desire to test
her moral character: “That’s just where my brilliance comes in! In the first
place, I wanted to put her love to the test and see whether she would change
her mind after picking someone else” (Li 1992, 4.).19 Jiren’s moral pretext
for his voyeurism draws upon a familiar motif of fantastic vision associated
with legendary mirrors. In the aforementioned anecdote of the “Mirror of
Qin,” for example, the emperor uses the mirror to inspect his palace ladies.
Those ladies whom the mirror shows to have “a liver that expands and a
heart that jumps”—symptoms of subversive intentions—are executed (Li
1975, 717.3618). In a Tang story, a couple forced to part from each other
split a mirror, each taking a half as token of love and fidelity to the other.
When the wife commits adultery, her half of the mirror turns into a magpie
that informs the husband of her betrayal. Mirror makers were thus inspired
to carve an image of the magpie on the back of their wares as a warning to
women (Li 1975, 717.3619). In both stories, the mirror serves to guard
against moral transgression while revealing (and preserving the memory of)
female beauty, indicating both fascination and fear on the part of the
desiring man.
Li pushes this irony farther by eroticizing the moralistic model in
images and words. Jiren’s telescope initially represents both Xianxian and
her father, Zhan Bifeng 詹筆鋒 (“the sharp brush”), as moral paragons. In
comparison to her naughty maids, Xianxian impresses Jiren with her
composure and rectitude. Her father enters the scene, revealed in the
telescope as Jiren watches Xianxian’s poetic indulgence. Bifeng is described
as wearing “hempen cap, simple dress, and a stern look.” As framed by the
telescope, both characters are like the kind of painted figures that in
traditional Chinese painting theory conventionally serve as moral examples.
Both are seen as guardians of ethical order in the house, Xianxian acting as
the tutor of the young maids and Mr. Zhan as the head of the house who
imposes absolute segregation of males and females, i.e. the house’s inner
women’s quarter from the outer men’s quarter. If Jiren’s telescope frames
their first appearances in artistic terms, their images become problematic in
the context of the story. Although Xianxian stands apart from her maids in
the scandalous scene, the motif of a young woman slumbering on a summer
day was common in the erotic paintings of Li Yu’s era, the sleeping figure
often located in an open pavilion by a lotus pond.20 As for Bifeng, his
presence in the Summer Pavilion, a female enclave, is an obvious
transgression of the segregation maintained by himself. In other words,
Bifeng turns out to be the kind of voyeur he ostensibly reproves. The
seemingly moral scene that Jiren witnesses through the telescope is actually
36
J. Zhang
a moment of moral transgression. The irony created by Li Yu lies clearly in
the discrepancy between the meaning of the image and that of the word.
Jiren’s telescope reveals further incongruity between appearance and
truth. The matchmaker’s report having made it clear that the tale of his
magic eye has impressed Xianxian, Jiren decides to take his telescope to the
temple and play further supernatural tricks. As he peeps, “He sees that
[Xianxian] is leaning against the banister, and nodding her head. On her
table lay a brush, an ink stone, and a sheet of stationery for poetry—a
typical scene of poetic composition” (Li 1992, 11.145). This is not an
isolated tableau. Li Yu argues in his essay “Literacy and Art” (“Wenyi” 文
藝 ) that a woman writing poetry is first and foremost a spectacle of
feminine charm, while her artistic achievement is secondary (Li 1992,
11.145). Here, Xianxian manages to finish the following lines before her
father’s intrusion:
Locked deeply within the double gates, knowing not the spring has come.
A butterfly would know when a flower blossoms.
If the soul of a flower isn’t touched by a butterfly’s shade,
Why does the butterfly’s dream reach the flowery branches?
重門深鎖覺春遲，
盼得花開蝶便知。
不使花魂沾蝶影，
何來蝶夢到花枝? (Li 1992, 4.87)
This poem reveals Xianxian’s secret desire for Jiren. Not only does she
visualize their dream union in these lines, she metaphorizes her own
agency as the soul of the flower that allures and encourages the visit of the
shadow of a butterfly (i.e., Jiren). In her earlier attempt to explain Jiren’s
access to her secrets, Xianxian became convinced that Jiren’s spirit must
have visited her. The third line of the poem suggests this reasoning. The
poem further foreshadows her attempt to trick her father by lying about her
deceased mother’s dream visits to her after Jiren fails to interfere with the
drawing of marriage lots. Her initial image as a stern moralist is dissipated
in these lines of sensual imagery. Inviting the voyeur’s eyes within her gate,
into her flowery body and her soul, Xianxian’s poem also represents the
seventeenth-century viewers’ tendency to interpret and eroticize the image
of a writing woman, in an era when this image was increasingly prevalent
in vernacular pictures produced as commodities.21
Li does not merely exploit the erotic implication of a typical scene of
idealized femininity. On the contrary, Jiren plays with gendered practices
to question literary convention. Jiren compares Xianxian’s writing to the
legendary “red lines and green marks” (chiwen lüzi 赤文綠字), the mystic
writing on the back of a river dragon (or a tortoise) that inspired the Sage
In His Thievish Eyes
37
Kings to invent the Chinese writing system, a hyperbolic comparison that
ultimately derides ritualistic/public writing by confusing it with private
and frivolous writing. Jiren also celebrates his spontaneous completion of
Xianxian’s poem as a creative reversal of the tradition of the wife following
the husband’s lead in poetry writing. Too flippant to be sincere in these
celebrations of female writing, Li mocks the traditional conception of
authoritative writing, the mystical as well as quotidian. Earlier in the story,
the first piece of writing revealed by the telescope is a civil examination
essay written by a failed candidate on waste paper, which the owner of the
antique store uses to demonstrate the power of the telescope. He points out
to Jiren and his fellow students that the words appear as thick as the
inscriptions on the tablets hung on sacred sites, a sarcastic comment that
deconstructs the authority of both kinds of writing.
Li most sharply mocks orthodox writing. In his last “voyeuristic”
glance, Jiren catches Xianxian’s father Bifeng writing a petition to his
deceased wife, asking her to visit him in his dream and confirm their
daughter’s words. Bifeng had previously asked Xianxian to pick one of her
three suitors by drawing lots. Failing to affiance herself to Jiren by this
method and being at her wit’s end, Xianxian tells her father that her
deceased mother has visited her dreams and informed her that Jiren is her
predestined mate. Bifeng is suspicious and demands that his deceased wife
visit his dreams within three nights. His wife’s soul does not show up,
which Xianxian attributes to the presence of a concubine in her father’s bed.
To further convince her father of her dream vision, Xianxian recites
verbatim the petition he has written and burned in secret: “She opened her
ruby lips and parted her jade-white teeth and, in a voice that echoed the
warbling of swallows and the chanting of orioles, the petition was repeated
correctly in verbatim. Upon hearing it, her father, we need hardly say,
shivered with fright” (Li 1992, 4.95). Xianxian’s recitation renders her
father’s writing a spectacle depleted of its original meaning. With Bifeng’s
original text burnt, Xianxian’s recitation serves as the recreation of a work
that no longer exists. However, as not a single word of Bifeng’s appeal is
quoted in the narrator’s account of Xianxian’s recitation, or more properly
recreation, we can only take the narrator’s word for the verbatim accuracy
of her reconstructed text. This recreation, like Bifeng’s original creation, is
likewise non-existent. Playing with the material aspect of writing, which is
subject to the vulnerability of paper, Li creates a parody of writing that is as
empty of its material reality as it is empty of its content. Furthermore, Li
depicts Xianxian’s recitation in trite and sensual imagery; the narrative
thus eroticizes the father’s speech and deconstructs its didactic tone and
function. Xianxian’s verbatim recreation of her father’s text, a seeming
gesture of loyalty to his authority, loses its sincerity and becomes a parody
of patriarchal discourse, ironically turning the authoritative author into a
38
J. Zhang
terrified spectator. Last but not least, Xianxian’s memorization of her
father’s text by rote memory mimics the pedagogy of the Confucian Classics
practiced by students preparing for the civil service examinations. This
implicit mockery aligns Li’s story with the play Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting
牡丹亭) by Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖, in which a gentle daughter stages a
disruptive reading of “Guan Cries the Ospreys” (“Guan Ju” 關 雎 ) in
opposition to the Orthodox commentaries provided by her Confucian tutor.
Though Tang refuses to let the female disciple repeat verbatim the
discourse of the tutor, Li and Tang share the same satirical purpose: the
former by deliberate repetition subverts the intended effect, while the latter
by conscious rejection renders commonly accepted discourse an empty
cliché. Both methods achieve the same criticism through parody and irony.
Li’s final satirical twist occurs when the telescope is transformed from a
voyeur’s exotic prop into an oracle worshipped in the new ancestral hall,
which, ironically enough, is the former Summer Pavilion, and Jiren, now
the new master, is ridiculed by the maids as “Master Thievish Eyes.”
Previously the symbol and enabler of Jiren’s voyeuristic gaze, the enshrined
telescope now parodies the dominant position that Jiren occupies and by
extension the ritual that sustains its authority. Flippant as it sounds, Li’s
final warning that women should absolutely avoid nakedness, not only in
front of others but also in the privacy of empty rooms and secluded retreats
(Li 1992, 4.97), recalls the potential danger of the telescope and mocks its
eventual deification. The commentator is similarly facetious when he
dismisses the “thievish wisdom” (zeizhi 賊智) in his final comments on
those like Jiren who apply their talents to seduction and adultery, hence
adding another spin to the story’s game of interpretation.
Examined in the context of commentarial culture, Li’s seemingly ribald
story becomes richly referential. His “peeping Tom” of a protagonist draws
from both the common character type and the figurative uses of such
images and acts in vernacular fiction and literary commentary. Doubled by
the telescope, the voyeuristic eye becomes the object of our master parodist,
who constantly challenges the reader’s reading and viewing habits
conventionalized in the critical dichotomy of the didactic and the frivolous.
In his essays, Li plays with the same dichotomy by constantly comparing
his writings to the boudoir art of embroidery and promoting his literary
ingenuity in terms of female charm. A seemingly self-mocking gesture of a
professional writer conscious of his subservient social role, Li’s feminizing
presentation of writing ultimately challenges the established hierarchical
discourse on literary authority.
As shown in the above discussion of the peeping motif in late Ming and
early Qing illustrations and paintings, themes of voyeurism (often through
the use of mirror) add to the visual complexity and call for the viewer’s selfreflection. This heightened attention to the role of the spectator in the
In His Thievish Eyes
39
production of meaning suggests a certain anxiety about the possibility of
misreading or superficial reading implied by the era’s voluminous fiction
commentary. While the act of reading becomes the intriguing focus in the
illustration of a crucial yet unspectacular scene in The Romance of the
Western Wing, the obsessed viewer in Li’s story acts as a ferocious and
interfering reader. Both point to a paradox in Li’s literary world: while
vernacular fiction took increasing interest in domestic life and private
desires, the act of reading became more widespread and public due to the
spread of literacy across social classes and the thriving print culture (Huang
2001, 90). Li responds to this dilemma by making fun of the dichotomy of
the moralistic and the frivolous throughout “The Summer Pavilion.”
Li’s narrative problematizes the authenticity of both the moralistic and
the sentimental in the story. The telescope reveals that the ostensible moral
paragons, Mr. Zhan and Miss Zhan, merely perform roles for the benefit of
their social inferiors and cannot articulate an original thought. Likewise,
the drama of romance, as the telescope reveals, is a tissue of clichéd
imagery. The gradual divergence of the voyeur and his optical device, one
descending to the status of “thievish master” and the other ascending to the
status of ancestral messenger, celebrates the technique of plotting and
storytelling more than the construction of a genuine romantic subject,
which was the obsession of Li’s late Ming predecessors. Still, the pleasure
of reading, as Li Yu’s narrator and commentator remind us, lies in the
reader’s active engagement in the power game, here played between the
viewer and the viewed and more complicated than it first appears.
Notes
1
This collection appears in two early-Qing editions. The first, prefaced by Li Yu’s
friend Du Jun 杜濬 (1611–87) in 1658, was printed by Baoning Tang 寶寧堂 under the
title Famous Words to Awaken the World (Jueshi Mingyan 覺世名言). This edition was not
illustrated, but it includes post-chapter comments by Du Jun. The later edition was
printed by Xiaoxian Ju 消閒居. It was very finely illustrated and printed, included
interlineal comments. In this second edition, Li Yu inserted a long digressive talk, or
xianhua 閒話, on the features of five Western optical devices, including the telescope.
This addition was likely a result of the author’s fascination with novel objects or
prompted by his earlier readers’ curiosity (Li 1992, 1.98). Li Yu’s essays on his
connoisseurship of novel objects in everyday life are collected in his Casual Expressions of
Idle Thoughts (Xianqing ouji 閑情偶寄) (Li 1992, 11.155–228).
2
Robert E. Hegel observes there are as many voyeuristic as nonchalant minor
figures in illustrations, and suggests further study of such figures and their subversive
activities (Hegel 1998, 440, 62n).
3
Li Yu was a prolific and innovative critic of drama, the sponsor of a major
commentary on the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi 三國演義), and
the suspected anonymous commentator on the Chongzhen 崇禎 edition of the novel
Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin ping mei 金瓶梅). A “connoisseur” of such commentary, Li
40
J. Zhang
Yu solicited comments on his work and incorporated them extensively in his printed
books, sometimes for advertising purpose (Rolston 1997, 291).
4
For a book-length study on the commentary function of illustrations in Wanli
theatrical publications, see Hsiao 2007. Hegel discusses the illustrations’ role in assisting
the reader’s visualization in reading in his pioneering work Reading Illustrated Fiction in
late Imperial China. He pays more attention to fiction illustrations as commentary in his
more recent study on the novel Supplement to Journey to the West (Hegel 1998, 323–26;
2006, 175–185).
5
While following the predominant view on voyeuristic figures among the art
historians, Hegel also notes the exceptions among such stereotypical images and invites
further study of their subversive activities. See Hegel 1998, 440 n. 62.
6
Mei Chun discusses Li Yu’s use of “enlightened eye” as a metaphor of creative
agency in her recent study of the presentation of viewing in vernacular fiction (Mei
2011, 194–95). Critics of fiction also adopted painting terms to emphasize the visual
aspect of the reading act. Examples include “to open the eyes” (dianjing 點睛), “to
resemble the painting” (ruhua 如畫), “as if from the reader’s eyes” (rudu 如睹), and
“spectacular” (keguan 可觀).
7
Keith McMahon identifies three types of voyeurs: the detractor, the deprived, and
the participant in the erotic fiction of the seventeenth-century (McMahon 1988, 98–99).
There have been numerous insightful readings on the pervasive voyeurism in Jin ping
mei in relation to characterization, plotting, Buddhist themes, and the reading
experience; see Carlitz 1986, 92–93; Chen Jianhua 2009, 97–124; Huang 2001, 86-89;
and Plaks 1987, 149–50.
8
David Rolston gives a list of recurrent terms referring to the character’s focalizing
eyes. The “thievish eye” is the only one that emphasizes the characteristic of the eye
rather than the character’s name (Rolston 1993, 128–29).
9
This is Andrew Plaks’ translation with one correction. Plaks found Zhang’s
heading obscure (Plaks 1987, 149, n. 276); I have attempted to decode it here.
10
See also Zhu 2002, 443.
11
Although the author of this preface appears to be a certain Xie Yi 謝頤, he was
generally believed to be Zhang Zhupo himself.
12
For several examples, see Cahill 2010, 11, 24, 135, 137.
13
For a study of its numerous seventeenth-century editions, see Han 2012, 145–48.
14
I have revised Lo’s translation slightly.
15
I follow the version in The Complete Collection of Tang Poems (Quan Tang shi 全唐
詩). The illustrator of Illusrated Tang Poems used qing 情 (emotion) instead of qing 晴
(sunny) in the second line, and bian 邊 (side) instead of bian 鞭 (whip) in the last line.
See Huang 1982, 47.
16
See figure 1.4 in Cahill 2010, 11. Cahill identifies the artist as Gu Jianlong 顧見龍
(1606–88 or after), a professional painter whom Cahill also suspects produced the set of
two hundred illustrations to the novel The Plum in the Golden Vase. This set was
reprinted in the 1940s under the title Pictures of A Hundred Beauties in the Qing Court
(Qinggong zhencang Baimei tu 清宮珍藏百美圖). See Cahill 2010, 137–38. This set can
be seen as a reworking of the illustrations found in the Chongzhen edition of the novel,
with which Li Yu is suspected to have been associated.
17
The illustrations in this edition and this scene in particular have attracted a
number of studies. Jiang Xingyu considers the illustration outstanding in its conception
and composition in comparison to the illustrations of the same scene in other editions
(Jiang 1997, 595–76). Wu Hung investigates how this illustration draws upon Chen
Hongshou’s 陳洪綬 (1598–1652) illustrations and analyzes the visual complexity and
In His Thievish Eyes
41
referentiality evoked by the screen (Wu 1996, 252–56). Focusing on the technique of
framing, Ma Mengching extends Wu’s point and gives a most detailed examination of
this illustration (Ma 2006, 225–226).
18
Wu Hung interprets the landscape as the visualization of Zhang’s letter (Wu 1996,
255–56). But Yingying reveals similar feelings as she listens to Zhang playing the zither
in the previous scene. As a projection of the feelings shared by the lovers, the screen
becomes a powerful symbol of their union through words.
19
This English translation draws on Hanan’s translation (Hanan 1992, 3–39).
20
See figure 5.24, Passing the Summer by a Lotus Pond, in Cahill 2010, 192. Cahill
identifies the painter as Cui Hui 崔徽 (active ca. 1720s or after) with reservations.
Particularly interesting is this painting’s eroticization of the talented woman, or cainü 才
女, with which Li Yu plays in his story. The lady in the painting, thinly veiled by a
translucent skirt and reclining on a veranda overlooking a lotus pond, takes a break
from reading, as suggested by the books on the desk behind her. A similar motif
involves the beauty slumbering on a spring day. Du Liniang’s 杜麗娘 dream encounter
with her love occurs on a spring day in Peony Pavilion. In Story of the Stone (Honglou
meng 紅樓夢), a painting called Spring Slumber under the Crab Flower (Haitang chunshui tu
海棠春睡圖), allegedly by Tang Yin 唐寅 (1470–1524) decorates Qin Keqing’s 秦可卿
room. The erotic implication of this painting is underlined by the presence of a mirror
once owned by Empress Wu, who was said to have used mirrors in her sex games. Like
the mirror in the painting of Emperor Xuanzong spying on Consort Yang, this mirror
plays a dual role as an erotic symbol and an admonition against sexual indulgence. I
thank a reviewer of this essay for reminding me of this reference.
21
See Cahill 2010, 175–83. In a Kangxi 康熙 edition of Plums in the Golden Vase,
illustrations tend to show women reading or writing, even when there’s no textual basis
for doing so.
References
Cahill, James. 2010. Pictures for use and pleasure: Vernacular painting in high Qing China.
Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Carlitz, Katherine. 1986. The rhetoric of Chin p'ing mei. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
Press.
Chen Jianhua 陳建華. 2009. Yu de ningshi: Jin ping mei de xushu fangfa, shijue, yu
xingbie 慾的凝視：《金瓶梅》的敘述方法，視覺與性別 ［The gaze of desire:
Narrative, point of view, and gender in Jin ping mei]. In Jingdian zhuanhua yu Ming
Qing xushi wenxue 經典轉化與明清敘事文學 [Transformation of canon and Ming Qing
narratives], 97-124. Taipei：Lianjing chubanshe.
Chen Xizhong 陳曦鍾, Hou Zhongyi 侯忠義, and Lu Yuchuan 魯玉川. 1981. Shui hu
zhuan hui ping ben 水滸傳會評本 [Shuihu zhuan with complete commentary]. Beijing:
Beijing daxue chubanshe.
Han Sheng 韓勝. 2012. Ming mo Tangshi huapu fanke zhi sheng ji qi wenxue yiyi 明末
《唐詩畫譜》翻刻之盛及其文學意義 [Reprinting Illustrated Tang Poems and its
literary significance in late Ming]. Wenyi pinglun (February): 145–48.
Hanan, Patrick. 1981. The Chinese vernacular story. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.
———. 1988. The invention of Li Yu. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.
Hegel, Robert E. 1998. Reading illustrated fiction in the late imperial China. Stanford:
Stanford Univ. Press.
42
J. Zhang
———. 2006. Picturing the Monkey King: Illustrations and readings of the 1641 novel
Xiyou bu. In The art of the book in China, ed. Percival David, 175–91. London:
London Univ. School of Oriental and African Studies.
Hsiao, Li-ling. 2007. The eternal present of the past: Illustration, theatre, and reading in the
Wanli period, 1573–1619. Leiden: Brill.
Huang Fengchi 黃 鳳 池 . 1982. Tangshi huapu 唐 詩 畫 譜 [Illustrated Tang poems].
Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.
Huang, Martin W. 2001. Desire and fictional narrative in late imperial China. Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Asia Center.
Jiang Xingyu 蔣星煜. 1997. Xixiang ji de wenxianxue yanjiu 西廂記的文獻 學研究
[Studies of the documents on Xixiang ji]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji.
Li Fang 李昉, comp. 1975. Taiping yulan 太平禦覽 [Imperial readings of the Taiping era].
Tainan: Pingping chubanshe.
Li Yu 李漁. 1992. Li Yu quan ji 李漁全集 [Complete Works of Li Yu]. 12 vols. Hangzhou:
Zhejiang guji chubanshe.
———. 1992. A tower for the summer heat. Trans. Patrick Hanan. New York: Ballantine
Books.
Ma, Meng-ching. 2006. Fragmentation and framing of the text: Visuality and
narrativity in the late-Ming illustrations to The Story of the Western Wing. PhD diss.,
Stanford Univ. Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI. (Publication No. AAT 3209049.)
McMahon, Keith. 1988. Causality and containment in seventeenth-century Chinese fiction.
Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Mei, Chun. 2011. The novel and theatrical imagination in early modern China. Boston: Brill.
Plaks, Andrew H. 1987. The four masterworks of the Ming novel = Si da qishu. Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press.
Rolston, David. 1993. “Point of view” in the writings of traditional Chinese fiction
critics. Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, Reviews 15:113.
———. 1997. Traditional Chinese fiction and fiction commentary: Reading and writing
between the lines. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press.
Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖. 1999. Tang Xianzu quan ji 湯顯祖全集 [Complete works by Tang
Xianzu]. Ed. Shuofang Xu 徐朔方. Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe.
Wang Shifu 王實甫. 1954. Xixiang ji 西廂記 [The Story of the western wing]. Ed. Wu
Xiaoling 吳曉鈴. Xianggang Jiulong: Zhonghua shuju.
Wu, Hung. 1996. The double screen: Medium and representation in Chinese painting.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Xiaoxiaosheng 笑笑生. 1900. Hui tu di yi qi shu 繪圖第一奇書 [The first masterwork,
illustrated]. Xianggang: Jiuxiao shuoshe.
———. 1991. Zhang Zhupo piping Jin ping mei 張竹坡批評金瓶梅 [Jin ping mei with
commentary by Zhang Zhupo]. Jinan: Qilu shushe.
Zhu Yixuan 朱一玄. 2002. Jin ping mei zi liao hui bian 金瓶梅資料匯編 [A collection of
sources on Jin ping mei]. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe.