The orphan of Zhao and other Yuan plays : The Earliest known Versions

100. From a story about King Zhao of Chu, who gathered duckweed seeds as he crossed the Yangtze to visit Confucius. Confucius told him that the seeds could be split and eaten and were an augury of good fortune. Later, duckweed seeds became a common metaphor for things that augur propitious events. Here, perhaps this is just a general reference to aquatic plants that are good to eat.

101. From the story of a certain Wen Qiao 溫嶠of the Jin who crossed the Yangtze to reach Buffalo Jetty (Niuzhu Ji 牛渚磯) and heard strange sounds underwater. He was told that there were monsters under the water, so he asked someone to light a rhinoceros horn (which was believed to go on burning below the water) so he could look in the water, where he saw many strange apparitions and monsters.

102. The term xiangling 湘靈 refers to the Spirits of the Xiang River (Xiang Shen 湘神). In some traditions, there are two spirits, the daughters of the sage-king Yao, who became the two consorts of his successor, the sage-king Shun, Nühuang 女皇 and Nüying 女英. The tears they shed on Shun’s death fell on bamboo stalks and permanently stained them, whence a new kind of bamboo, “tear-spotted bamboo,” began to grow along the riverbank. This allusion is implicit as well in the reference to Jiaofu of Zheng. See n. 225.

103. More equivalent to the English expression “What business is it of yours?”

105. King Ping of Chu, after heeding slander, slew Wu Zixu’s father, who had protested when the king took his own son’s fiancée as his wife. Wu Zixu escaped to the state of Wu, where he helped the King of Wu defeat Chu. The exacting of revenge involves Wu Zixu’s draining a lake to unearth King Ping’s grave and whip the corpse three hundred times. Here, the allusion is more clearly directed toward the death of Wu, who was slain because he remonstrated with the King of Wu. The constant remonstration caused the king to lose trust in him, and Wu Zixu was ordered to commit suicide. Wu’s body was then sewn up in a leather sack and dumped into the river. According to legend, Wu Zixu then became the “spirit of the waves.” For a detailed account, see Johnson 1980.

106. This is the famous poet Li Bai (701–762), whose many poems on wine and the moon earned him the sobriquet of “the Banished Immortal.” According to one legend, he died after drinking too much and trying to embrace the reflection of the moon in the river.

107. This refers to the banquets the Song emperors held at the Garden of Chalcedony Forest (Qionglin Yuan 瓊林苑) outside the eastern gates of Kaifeng, which was then known as the Eastern Capital or Bianliang.

108. This could be either Polygonum hydropiper, the mild water pepper, or Polygonum senticosum. No accepted English common name seems to exist for senticosum, according to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

109. Where the Bian Canal is diverted from the Yellow River.

110. The second watch corresponds to the period 9–11 P.M.

111. The wooden slip is a counter in the water clock, a notched stick that rises with the water level in the pot to mark time. Here, “You don’t need to calculate by human mechanical time.”

112. A conventional lyric sung to accompany drinking at banquets.

113. Conventional reference to attachment to one’s children.

114. This is where Qiu Chuji 丘處機 (1148–1227), the most famous of human Quanzhen Daoists, studied the Way.

115. The sun is inhabited by a three-legged metal raven, while the moon is the home of a jade hare pounding out the medicine of immortality: reference to the passing of time.

116. One of Liu Bang’s ministers whose glib tongue persuaded Ying Bu to defect from Xiang Yu and join Liu Bang.

117. That is, “Don’t think I am going to give up control and turn it over lightly to someone else” or “just go blithely along with someone else.”

118. Bare autumn hills, denuded of their foliage, are on occasion characterized in poetry as “emaciated.”

119. A reference to the last line of a famous parting poem by Wang Wei 王維 (701–761): “Beyond Yang Pass you will have no friends.”

121. These lines are spoken directly to Chen Jiqing.

122. The Beimang Hills north of Luoyang were the favorite location for graves during the Eastern Han dynasty.

123. This musical instrument is identified either as yugu 漁鼓 (fisherman’s drum) or, as here, as yugu 愚鼓 (a drum to enlighten the doltish), which appears to be a Yuan designation that rarely occurs in texts after the early Ming. Wang Qi 王圻, a late Ming compiler of an encyclopedia, described how they were made in the Ming: “Current method of construction: cut a bamboo tube three or four feet long and cover the head of it with skin (the thinnest portion [of skin] over the intestinal fat of a pig is superior). Strike with two fingers.” Wang Qi 1988, 154.9414–15.

124. That is, these two cities, one the capital of the Qin and the other the capital of the Eastern Han, were both burned to nothing.

125. The abode of immortals and the portal for them between heaven and earth.

126. There is the possibility “case” here may refer to a Chan (Zen) gong’an (koan).

127. This is probably a reference to the common saying “On a hundred-foot pole take one more step” (Baichi gan geng jin yibu 百尺竿更進一步), which means “to try for even more success even though one has reached a high level of accomplishment,” “to never be satisfied.”

132. The two essentials a scholar or student carries along with him when going somewhere to study or to take the examinations.

133. This refers to a feast given for Liu Bang by Xiang Yu, who planned to kill Liu Bang but hesitated and lost the opportunity and subsequently the empire as well. A “Goose Gate meeting” has come to mean any treacherous or otherwise unpleasant meeting where someone will metaphorically be killed.

135. Here the playwright rejects the discipline of exterior alchemy in favor of the meditation techniques of inner alchemy.

136. The Eastern Hills (Dongshan 東山) refer to the place where Xie An 謝安 (320–385) lived in opulent retirement before he joined the administration and rose to a high position.

137. The Silver Pylons were the two gates in front of the Jade Capital on Jade Capital Mountain in Great Canopy Heaven, where all the immortals gather.

138. This seems to be a name for Ge Hong, who refined cinnabar at Cinnabar Cliff.

139. Fei Changfang, whose biography is found in the biographies of magicians in the History of the Latter Han, was given a bamboo staff by an old herbal simples salesman, who told him, “Ride this and let it go where it will, and it will reach the place by itself. Once you have arrived, throw it on an overgrown bank.” Changfang rode it around and went home; he thought it had taken him fewer than ten days to make the trip, but it turned out he had been gone for ten years. When he got home, he threw it on the bank of a pond, and it turned into a dragon.

141. Shuangcheng 雙成 (“Double Complete”) was a serving girl of the Queen Mother of the West. Shuangcheng later became a common designation of beautiful dancers.

142. The palace of the moon goddess, Chang’e 嫦娥.

143. Magu is an immortal who descends as a girl of eighteen or nineteen and performs magic tricks at the house to which she was summoned. Her looks are deceptive, however, since she says she has seen the “mulberry groves change to blues seas” three times, which indicates she has seen the world transformed over a very long period. She comes from Penglai. See Penny 2008b, 731–32.

145. Penglai Galleries is an actual place on Cinnabar Cliff Mountain in Shandong that offers a vista over the sea. Here used to gesture toward the galleries of Penglai Island, an immortals’ isle in the Eastern Sea.

147. A historical Daoist noted for both his uncanny prognostications and his outspokenness, Xu Shenweng 徐神翁 (1033–1108) was honored at the court of Huizong of the Song. In texts of the Ming dynasty he disappears to make room for He Xiangu 何仙姑 (Immortal Maiden He) in the list of Eight Immortals, but here he has dislodged Cao Guojiu 曹國舅 (Imperial In-Law Cao).

148. He Xiangu, the only female member of the Eight Immortals.

150. The Huayang woman refers to Xie Ziran 謝自然, who was supposedly led to immortality by the Shangqing Daoist Sima Chengzhen 司馬承貞 (647–735). There are varying accounts of her life, and the one found in Shen Fen’s 沈汾 Continuation of the Biographies of Transcendents (Xu Xianzhuan 續仙傳) was purportedly written by Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824), the late Tang poet and essayist. See Penny 2008c, 1123–24; Kirkland 2008, 911–13. In this context the one who converted the Huayang woman must be Han Xiangzi.

153. The branch of government that in the Tang held the qualification examinations.

155. Jielang (潔郎 or 傑郎) is a Song and Yuan slang term for a monk, referring to monks’ baldness and celibacy.

156. The “bright heart” is a heart cleared of random thoughts and in which the Buddha-nature will appear. The flower represents a method of transmission of the Dharma outside language, from the story about the origin of Chan by the Buddha’s showing a flower to the progenitor of Chan, who smiled in understanding.

158. The “paths” are the roadways to the capital.

159. Playing on the fact of the bald head of monks, the term “little monk” is also a slang word for penis.

160. Che Yin 車胤, also known as Wuzi 武子 (333–401), was a man of Nanping 南平. His great-grandfather, Jun 浚, was the grand protector of Kuaiji 會稽 in Wu, where he lived with his entire family. Che Yin’s family was poor and could not always get lamp oil, so in the summer he would stuff dozens of fireflies into a gauze sack in order to have them reflect their light on his texts, and he went on into the night from there.

162. An altered version of famous lines quoted in various forms in classical texts, in which Zigong, one of Confucius’s disciples, went to visit another disciple, Yuan Xian, who lived in utter poverty. Zigong arrived on a fine chariot that was too large to enter Yuan Xian’s alleyway. Yuan greeted him, and Zigong asked, “What is wrong with you?” Yuan Xian answered that he had heard that “to be without wealth is called poverty; to study but be unable to effect the Way, this is an infirmity. Now I am poor, not infirm!” Zigong was shamed by his comments. See the one version of the story in “Confucius’ Disciples, Memoir 7,” in Ssu-ma Ch’ien 1995b, 77.

163. See Mencius 1A.7. Yi Yin 伊尹 was a farmer in the outskirts of Shen, where he “delighted in the Way of Yao and Shun.” King Tang the Completer 成湯王 asked him several times to enter his service, but he refused, being unmoved by any kind of reward. Finally, he joined Tang and helped establish the Shang dynasty.

165. This is the path toward an official career. The metaphor stems from the Zhuangzi, “In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is Kun. The Kun is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is Peng. The back of the Peng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven.” See Watson 1968, 28 (with changes in romanization)

168. That is, become a Daoist; for the sake of readability, we translate this phrase, in the following, simply as “follow me” or “go off with me.”

170. “Northern seas” (beihai 北海) is the area along the southern coast of China, just west of the peninsula that leads to Hainan Island. These lines are based on a poem attributed to Lü Dongbin in early Song works. Lü Dongbin does not appear in any Tang-dynasty materials and appears to have been a created figure during the early Song. For more information, see n. 37.

172. A term that makes a satirical jab at Daoist priests, whose swept-up hairdo looked like a cow’s nose.

173. Literally “windblown waves ten thousand feet high.”

182. These two texts are probably made-up titles. For instance, the Yuankan version of this song uses the term jinfu 金符 (golden talley) instead of jinjing 金精 for the first. The second title may refer to a section of the Inner Scripture of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi neijing黃庭內經) called the “Great Plainness” (Taisu 泰素), which exists in one copy only, an eleventh-century copy of an eighth-century manuscript.

185. The fairy island of Penglai in the Eastern Sea was graced with a mountain in the shape of a wine pot.

188. Zong Bing 宗炳 (375–443) was a painter and musician. He loved to travel through mountains. When he grew old, he painted remembered landscapes on the walls of his room and lived contentedly with his lute and brush, roaming in spirit through the many mountains he had traveled. See Bush and Murck, 1983, 105–31.

190. An unhappy translation for xianli 仙吏, immortals who hold various bureaucratic positions at the Daoist celestial court.

191. Yingzhou 瀛洲, a mountain in the Eastern Sea where immortals dwell.

193. To present to the emperor at the vermilion-lacquered steps of the palace.

194. There are two Earls of Lingyang 陵陽侯. The first was Boshen 波神 (Spirit of the Waves), a mythical figure. According to legend, the Earl of Lingyang was drowned in a flood and was then turned into a spirit who sometimes created violent waves. The second, clearly referred to here, was Ding Chen 丁綝 of the Eastern Han, who was enfeoffed by the Guangwu Emperor (r. 25–57) in the Eastern Han for his support of Guangwu’s campaign against Liu Mang. This granted him the right to collect taxes from ten thousand households under his aegis.

195. This is Guangchengzi 廣成子, who, according to legend, was the Yellow Emperor’s teacher. In another tradition, he was presumed to have been one of the early avatars of Laozi. See Penny 2008a.

199. In 332 or 333, he was appointed to a post in Julou (句漏) in what is now Vietnam, but he never reached there, retiring instead to the Luofu Mountains of Guangzhou. See Pregadio 2008b.

200. This was Bao Jing (d. ca. 330) of the Jin, not only Ge Hong’s master but also his father-in-law. See Espesset 2008.

202. After the Shenlong 神龍 reign period (705–707) it became a custom for the advanced scholars who had passed the examination to inscribe their names on the Great Goose Pagoda (大雁塔) in the Monastery of Compassionate Beneficence (慈恩寺) in Chang’an.

203. That is, beyond the highest point of the heavens.

204. A common idiom for passing the advanced scholar examinations, found first in the San Qin ji: “Every year at the end of spring yellow carp from the ocean and all the streams fight their way to a place just below the Dragon’s Gate [located on the Yellow River]. Seventy-two of them ascend the gate every year, and when they first get into the passage, clouds and rain soon follow closely behind them. From behind a heavenly fire sets their tails alight as they transform into dragons.”

206. Ruan Ji 阮籍 (210–263) is one of “the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” (Zhulin Qixian 竹林七賢). He was an eccentric with much pent-up anger who would take his cart out and travel random paths until he came to an end and could go no farther. Thereupon, he would weep copiously and return. See Holzman 1976.

207. Liu Fen 劉蕡 (d. ca. 838) sat for a special examination to select talented men in 828, but he was banished because of his wholesale criticism of the eunuchs who held power at that time. His classmate remarked, “That Liu Fen failed and we have passed is because we are shameless!”

209. Two early zaju dramas are about Lü Dongbin getting drunk three times at the Yueyang Tower, located on the shores of Lake Dongting, and converting two tree spirits—one plum and one willow—and leading them to enlightenment. The first is by the noted playwright Ma Zhiyuan (1254?–1320?), Lü Dongbin Gets Drunk Three Times in Yueyang Tower (Lü Dongbin sanzui Yueyang lou), translated as “The Yüeh-yang Tower” by Richard Yang 1972. The second is Gu Zijing’s 谷子敬 (ca. 1368–1392) Lü Dongbin Thrice Converts the Willow South of the Wall (Lü Dongbin sandu chengnan liu 呂洞賓三度城南柳).

221. The last two characters in the line, zhuyou 珠遊, are drawn directly from a poem by Bao Zhao 鮑照 (ca. 414–468):

The lines, in turn, refer to the story of Jiaofu of Zheng 鄭交甫, who encountered two female spirits of the Han River, “who wore at their belts two pearls as large as chicken eggs.” They presented them to him, but after he took a few steps, both the women and the pearls had disappeared. This story is found in Li Shan’s commentary to the Wenxuan. See Knechtges 1982, 314, 316, n. L.29, whence the preceding text comes. Together, these last few allusions, all about experiences along riverbanks, are a sarcastic reply to Chen’s refusal to say why he wants to go across the river: is he there to commit suicide out of grief (Qu Yuan) or happiness (Li Bai), to look for apparitions (Wen Qiao), is he a spirit returned from the dead (Wu Zixu), or is he lost in memory of other experiences along rivers (the consorts of Shun weeping over his death, or the strange encounter of Jiaofu)? The fisherman knows, of course, why he is there.

222. That is, they left the Yangtze at Nanjing and went south along the Qinhuai River, following one of the feeder canals that goes south toward Hangzhou.

223. The Qiantang River, which separates the ancient states of Wu and Yue.

224. The third watch (11 P.M. to 1 A.M.) is equivalent to saying in English “Why, it’s only midnight!”

226. Figuratively, “I have been remiss in my filial service to you.”

227. A conventional lyric sung to accompany drinking at banquets.

228. Laolaizi is a paragon of filial piety. At age seventy he would dress up in the colored clothes of a child and dance, falling down and crying like a baby to amuse his senile parents.

229. These two lines, which refer to the historical Xiang Yu’s refusal to cross the river to save his life, may be understood as, “If you are so attached to your parents, you’ll miss the boat that will ferry you out of the mortal world of life and death.” On the original episode, see chap. 3, n. 8.

232. This is a pointed comment about the search for fame and wealth still beclouding Chen Jiqing’s heart and mind. The reference is to a story from Yin 1999, 1038:

Some men were traveling together, and each expressed his ambition. One wanted to be the prefect of Yangzhou, one wanted to be wealthy, and one wanted to ascend to the heavens on a crane. One of them said, “With 100,000 strings of cash at my waist I’ll ride a crane to Yangzhou.” He combined the three. 有客相從各言所志,或願為揚州刺史,或願多資財,或願騎鶴上升。其一人曰:”腰纏十萬貫,騎鶴上揚州。”欲兼三者.

234. These lines are spoken directly to Chen Jiqing.

235. The Great One (太乙) was a supreme deity of Daoism and often equated with the Jade Emperor. There was also a Daoist sect, The Teachings of the Great One, that was popular during the Yuan period. See Andersen 2008 and Goossaert 2008b, 959–60. This invocation is, however, of an actual Lingbao deity. See The Golden Text for Rescuing and Salvation of the Lingbao Sect (Lingbao jidu jinshu 靈寶濟度金書), “The Green Mysterious Supreme Emperor of the Eastern Extremity Transformed into the Great One, the Heavenly Worthy Who Rescues Us from Peril” 東極青玄大帝化為太乙救苦天尊.

237. That is, from the height of Qin and Western Han to the end of the Eastern Han.

238. These “Songs of Daoist Sentiments” are not part of the regular suite, but they also are written as a suite to a single rhyme, although that rhyme is different from that used in the suite itself.

239. From the tips of the brow moving up and down when one frowns out of anxiety.

240. Adapted from two lines from Tao Qian’s “Let’s Go Home”:

For a complete translation, see Robert Hightower’s translation, “The Return,” in Hightower 1970, 268–70.

241. Literally, “twisting tree peaches,” from a legend that they grew on a huge tree that spread out in a twisting pattern for three thousand miles. According to the Inner Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han (Han Wudi neizhuan 漢武帝內傳), the Queen Mother of West descended to the emperor on the seventh day of the seventh month and gave him four immortals’ peaches. He ate them and immediately kept the seeds to plant. She told him, “These peaches ripen once every three thousand years, the earth is too thin in the Central Xia, and they will not grow if you plant them” 七月七日西王母降，以仙桃四顆與帝，帝食輒收其核，欲種之，母曰「此桃三千年一生實,中夏地薄,種之不生。」. For a complete translation, see Schipper 1965; Robinet 2008b; and Yoshikawa 2008b.

242. Wang Liu and Sandy Three are typical names for country yokels.

243. The term used here, pudu 普度, more correctly written 普渡, is a Buddhist term that literally means “to ferry everyone across.”

244. The finest hairs for writing brushes, taken from the backs and tails of hares.

245. That is, to become an immortal (chaoyuan zhengke 朝元證課). These practices seem to refer to inner cultivation techniques of “complex practices of visualization and inner concentration leading to transfiguration” that are associated with the Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin schools. The carefully graded path to transfiguration is found in manuals such as The Complete Methods of the Numinous Treasure (Lingbao bifa 靈寶畢法). See Baldrian-Hussein 2008a and the works cited therein, including Baldrian-Hussein’s translation. See also Baldrian-Hussein 2008b.

246. The abode of the immortals; there are eight upper-realm and eight lower-realm grotto precincts.

247. Also known as Rainbow Skirts and Feathered Jackets, a dance of nearly mythic status, introduced into China from either central Asia or India during the Tang. Legend, however, claims that the Xuanzong Emperor of the Tang discovered it when he roamed on a magical trip through the palace of the moon, where the dance was performed by sylphlike immortals. Although Xuanzong tried to memorize the tune, he lost a part of it with each step across the bridge that led back to the mortal world. He immediately ordered his court entertainers to try and approximate the music and choreography.

248. Crimson Tree was a beautiful singer immortalized in a poem by Cao Pi; Green Zither was a beautiful female spirit; these two are commonly used together as a general reference for a beautiful singing girl.

250. Donghua Dijun was the mythical first patriarch of the Quanzhen Daoist sect. See Smith 2008. A thousand years earlier, in Han-dynasty times, he was often paired with the Queen Mother of the West in visual arts.

251. This begins a list that offers one rendition of the so-called Eight Immortals. See Yoshikawa 2008a, 2008c, and West and Idema 2010b, 284.

254. On Lan Caihe, see West and Idema 2010b, 283–313, which includes a translation of Zhongli of the Han Leads Lan Caihe to Enlightenment.

255. Sometimes thought to be Han Xiang, a nephew of Han Yu’s (764–824), the great Tang writer; see Yoshikawa 2008a.

淚竹感湘別	Tears sprinkle bamboo, moved by parting on the Xiang,
弄珠懷漢遊	Playing with pearls, remembering roaming on the Han.

依南窗以寄傲	I lean against the southern wind in order to entrust my proud spirit,
審容膝之易安	Consider how easy to feel secure in “room for just the knees.”