Art in Daily Life: Knowledge and Practice in Late-Ming Riyong Leishu

Art in Daily Life: Knowledge and Practice in Late-Ming Riyong Leishu

Cheng-hua Wang

Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica

1. Introduction

There emerged a great quantity of riyong leishu (日用類書encyclopedias fordaily use) in late-Ming China, a social and cultural phenomenon which, since the 1950s, has attracted the attention of scholars in the fields of Chinese literature, medical, and socio-economic history. Since the extant thirty-five editions of late-Ming riyong leishu are mostly in the collections of libraries in Japan,[1] Japanese socio-economic historians such as Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫were among the first to discover the historical value of these late-Ming encyclopedias and used them to discuss issues ranging from popular education, to trade routes, and commercial practice.[2] Actually, the classification of riyong leishu as a category of historical documents, and the recognition these documents have received, owe much to the achievement of these Japanese scholars.[3] In recent years, scholars in fields other than socio-economic history have also turned their attention to what can be found within the late-Ming riyong leishu, especially those in the study of seventeenth-century vernacular literature. Ogawa Yoichi小川陽一is such an example in that he has attempted to investigate the commonality between late-Ming fictions and riyong leishu in the descriptions of drinking games and fortune-telling.[4] Of the related research, the most inspiring one, a 1999 article by Shang Wei, demonstrates a rich and sophisticated intertextuality in the writings of Jin ping mei cihua金瓶梅詞話and household encyclopedias, both of which are believed to construct and disseminate late-Ming discourse on daily life.[5]

For Japanese scholars, as well as scholars from China and Taiwan who have followed their Japanese colleagues to use late-Ming riyong leishu in their research of late-Ming society, the encyclopedias, as a category of books, provide them with historical materials of unique value-- only through which we are able to conjure up a general picture of late-Ming daily praxis.[6] In other words, these encyclopedias are believed to disclose the detail of everyday life in its entirety, something that is often neglected and marginalized in traditional Chinese historiography. Equally prevalent to the issue of daily life pertains to the audience and social meaning of these encyclopedias, including questions such as who the consumers and publishers were, why riyong leishu were so popular, and which knowledge contained within them reflects or represents late-Ming society and culture.

The assumption that holds riyong leishu are both a faithful and comprehensive records of daily life is sometimes misleading because “daily life” is not a given, nor every entry in these encyclopedias a mirror of late-Ming daily activity. As Shang Wei points out, these encyclopedias were actually an agent in the formation of discourse on daily life, and thus helped define what daily life was with their dissemination in late-Ming social space which was in turn shaped by the encyclopedias. Moreover, Shang Wei also notes that late-Ming riyong leishu embodied a new cultural trend in which “daily life” became a legitimate category of knowledge or even the core of the knowledge system. Sakai Tadao attributed this trend to the influence of the School of Wang Yangming 王陽明which placed day-to-day life experiences above abstruse philosophical reflections.[7]

The primacy of daily life in late-Ming discourse partly explains the emergence of a huge number of texts on how to live one’s life and what to do with objects needed in daily life in late-Ming China. The seminal study of Craig Clunas on such late-Ming books as Zhangwuzhi長物志investigates the discourse of everyday things and life, and portrays the anxiety of a member of literati class to distinguish himself from the nouveau riche who benefited from the late-Ming economic boom.[8] The daily-use encyclopedias form an altogether different collection of writings on everyday life during this period and appear to be more comprehensive and detailed than Zhangwuzhi. This category of books first made their appearance at the end of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), and the inceptive Shilin guangji事林廣記continued to be re-edited and re-printed in later dynasties.[9] Completed in the early Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), Jujia biyong shilei chuangji居家必用事類全集is the first which assumes a title referring to daily life.[10] Through a comparison between these two precedents and late-Ming riyong leishu, it is evident that the definition and structure of daily life were not constant from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. Or, the cultural horizons of Zhangwuzhi were very different from those of the daily-use encyclopedias, at least in terms of social class and epistemology of social life. As such, it inquires a re-examination of the content and knowledge of late-Ming riyong leishu to see what “daily life” meant for those who had access to the encyclopedias.

Regarding the issues of audience and social meaning, Sakai Tadao conceives of late-Ming riyong leishu as instructions on social life edited and published by lower-ranking scholar-gentry to cater to the need of practical knowledge by all classes, that is, simin (four folks 四民), including scholar-gentry, peasants, artisans, and merchants. However, he also employs the term shomin (commoners庶民) to indicate the aspect of popular education in the workings of riyong leishu because they conveyed to common people popularized ethical and moral teachings dripping down from the orthodox Confucian writings.[11] Following Dorothy Ko, Shang Wei argues that the daily-use encyclopedias were targeted at a reading public which crossed the boundary of class and region as part of late-Ming prosperous commercial publishing which produced a great number of manuals, primers, and vernacular novels as well. In her study of seventeenth-century women, Dorothy Ko also persuasively maintains that, even though this reading public never exceeded 10 percent of the entire population, it triggered a drastic and profound change in late-Ming culture and society which should not be underestimated.[12]

Most of the scholars, when discussing the issue of audience of late-Ming riyong leishu, refer to the prefaces of these encyclopedias, which emphasize, much like modern-day advertisements, how the publishers endeavor to incorporate as much knowledge as possible to meet the need of the four classes, or both scholar-officials and commoners (shimin 士民). Some details in these encyclopedias also corroborate the point that they address to a reading public irrespective of class and region, or even gender and age. For instance, a traveling merchant could utilize one sample letter in the Chapter of Wenhan (Epistolary文翰) to send a message back home, as could a wife to her faraway husband.[13] Of course, a specialist in letter-writing might first learn how to draft a letter for those who came to his service through the examples provided by the household encyclopedias.[14] Some chapters in the encyclopedias function as primers for playing chess or identifying seal script while others teach the “proper” way to treat courtesans or to play drinking games in the floating world of late-Ming city life.

The other common way to gauge the formation of the reading public for late-Ming riyong leishu depends on the price list of these editions and their monetary value in the late-Ming economy. According to the prices indicated in some editions of these encyclopedias, their costs ranged from one ounce of silver to one-tenth of this value, comparatively inexpensive in the late-Ming book market.[15] Even though lower-class families had neither the purchasing power, nor the ability to comprehend any kind of written materials, a family of some means should have had disposable income, and books of practical knowledge may well have been one of their choices.[16] Furthermore, an episode in the early-Qing novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan醒世姻緣傳gives us a glimpse of the potential owner and use of the household encyclopedias. The story has it that a dissipated teenager son of a low-ranking scholar-gentry family from Wucheng武城, Shandong 山東, possesses a small library containing a set of the household encyclopedias, erotic woodblock prints, and vernacular novels of love affairs. Once when the son’s beloved concubine suddenly has a terrible headache, he consults the chapter of charm and incantation in the encyclopedia to ward off the evil spirit which is believed to be the cause of such an attack.[17]

The above story of the debauched son who did not spend his time on texts for civil-examinations, to a certain extent, suggests that there was a reading public for vernacular novels and household encyclopedias even in a provincial town; however, it also implies that a serious and aspiring scholar-official candidate would not include the lightweight books such as novels and encyclopedias in his reading list. This brings us to consider the social differentiation in late-Ming culture of reading and the competition of marketable knowledge in late-Ming social space.

When we attempt to match the practical knowledge in the household encyclopedias with those in vernacular novels, we tend to discern the cultural denominators in late-Ming society, which is beyond class differentiation and regional variation. On the other hand, if we instead shift our attention to the kinds of knowledge in the daily-use encyclopedias which were traditionally privileged by the upper class, a very different picture emerges. For example, the knowledge of art, such as how to get access to artworks, how to handle them as objects, and how to appreciate the aesthetic quality in them, should have been exclusive to the privileged class which gained the knowledge primarily through family connections or literati circles. In most societies, art is the best token of social distinction, even in a modern democratic one. Thus, since a majority of late-Ming popular encyclopedias consist of chapters on art, especially calligraphy and painting, we can use them to discuss the social differentiation in the knowledge of art between the encyclopedias and the other kinds of writings on art.

The knowledge of art in late-Ming riyong leishu not only sheds light on the issues of social differentiation and the competition of marketable knowledge, but also relates to the first issue regarding the construction of daily life in late-Ming encyclopedias for daily use. It is through the changes in the details of content, such as the knowledge of art, when compared to the other writings on similar subjects, that we are able to approach the distinctive characteristics of “daily life” in late-Ming riyong leishu. Accordingly, before going into a detailed discussion of the chapters on art in late-Ming riyong leishu, it is necessary to explore the meaning of “daily life” in various texts on daily life.

2. What Is “Daily Life” in Late-Ming Riyong Leishu?

A large portion of the 35 editions of late-Ming riyong leishu should have come from the Jianyang county (Jianyang xian建陽縣) in Fujian福建, one of the late-Ming print centers whose history in printing can be traced back to the Southern Song dynasty. By the time of late sixteenth century, Jianyang had long been known for its production of books in enormous quantity cum low quality, a poor reputation to which some shoddy editions of late-Ming household encyclopedias confirm.[18] Even so, many of the printing houses and their owners still claimed their productions of these cheap editions of encyclopedias with their names inscribed in the beginning of the first chapters of their own editions. In these cases, we find that the famous lineages of book-printing families in Jianyang, with the surnames such as Yu余, Xiong熊, Zhan詹, and Xiao蕭, all contributed to the publications of late-Ming encyclopedias for daily use.[19]

Moreover, the essential elements in the format and style of late-Ming riyong leishu, including two registers in page layout and a considerable amount of graphics, bear the marks of the Jianyang imprints. The two-register format, while seldom seen in high-quality books, first appeared in the illustrated and thus popularized versions of Yuan dramas, a specialty of the Jianyang publications in the Yuan dynasty.[20] In detail, each register again breaks into several compartments to subsume related knowledge under one heading (fig. 1). The fact that graphics, such as maps, diagrams, and illustrations, were commonplace in late-Ming riyongleishu attests to the contemporary predilection for visual representation and pleasure (fig. 2).[21] In order to sell, even the editions of poor quality showed illustrations of human faces, landscapes, and plants; in some cases, red-color pigment was applied to the originally black-and-white pictures to enrich the visual effect, a measure which should have swelled the budget even though it was not unusual for late-Ming woodblock prints.[22]

Also for commercial reasons, as mentioned above, many publishers emphasize that their editions have drawn so many genres of knowledge from a sea of books that the reader does not need to get hold of other editions, or even the originals. These kinds of all-inclusiveness statements allow us insight into the formation of these popular encyclopedias, which select or abbreviate passages from various texts to cover late-Ming existing genres of knowledge. These various texts include not only printed materials prior to the late-Ming period but the popular encyclopedias published by the other publishing houses around the same time. In modern concept of copyright, the act of plagiarism characterizes the late-Ming encyclopedias for daily use; similarly, in terms of intellectual history, the repetitive and disruptive passages are likely worthless in the discussion of late-Ming epistemology. However, far from a conglomeration of mismatched materials, the encyclopedias actually reshape the texts they copy, and reorganize them to form categories of knowledge with a new order and meaning. It means that the late-Ming household encyclopedias did undergo a process of editing and were transformed into a genre of books with distinctive characteristics. As one of the characteristics, the repetitive and disruptive passages, rather than pale versions of “true” knowledge, assume significant roles in the dissemination of knowledge. For example, many of the editions of late-Ming riyong leishu consist of an illustrated section of foreign lands, either real or mythical, in which the Country of Gaoli (Gaoliguo高麗國) receives the highest evaluation as the most sinicized and thus cultivated one. Its illustration shows a male figure fully clad in Chinese-style robe and holding a folding fan in his hand, in a vivid contrast to the half-naked, bare-footed and sword-carrying barbarian representing a Japanese whose act of piracy is stressed in the caption (figs. 3 and 4).[23] These captions and illustrations conveyed to the reader a clear message about these two countries close to China, constructing part of the knowledge of alien lands in late-Ming society, no matter whether they were copies or not.[24]

The inclusion of a chapter on foreign lands and products in most late-Ming riyong leishu reveals to us that there was an interest in “the others” in contemporary society, and, meanwhile, leads us to wonder how this kind of knowledge were incorporated into daily life. The Yuan version of Shilin guangji also contains a section on foreign countries, but few of which overlap with those of the late-Ming encyclopedias, nor with the inventory of local products and the illustrations of native people.[25] The early Yuan household encyclopedia, Jujia biyong shilei chuanji, does not offer information on foreign soils, let alone a description or illustration of their people and goods.

Nowadays, the category of “daily life” reminds us of our subsistence need, such as food and clothing, working hours, and all kinds of entertainments that give us pleasure. In comparison, what is special about Shilin guangji lies in the words of advice to the civil service, and the knowledge in regard to Neo-Confucianism and the etiquette and paraphernalia of a scholar-official.[26] Even the section on agriculture and sericulture is very likely to have equipped the class of scholar-gentry with the practical knowledge of how to manage their property since the next sections prescribe proper ways to be the head of a land-holding household.[27] Although Shilin guangji also gives prescriptions and recipes in such detail that we can still put them into practice much like those found in today’s newspapers, its potential readership likely leaned toward the scholar-gentry class.[28]

In his 1560 preface to the Yuan edition of Jujia biyong shilei chuanji, the famous writer, Tian Rucheng田汝成, resorts to the orthodox Confucian teachings of qijia (齊家to manage one’s household) and zhiguo (治國to administer state affairs) to promote the reprinted version of the book, whose rhetoric is very different from that of late-Ming riyong leishu which were simply commercial.[29] Indeed, this set of encyclopedia of the Yuan dynasty contains a self-designated section for civil service, and a large segment on Confucian moral teachings and family rituals. Moreover, that the sections functioned as introductions to Confucian learning should have been for the use of teachers and parents, rather than primers for children themselves.[30] As with its Southern Song precedent, Jujia biyong shilei chuanji, especially its descriptions of husbandry and cooking, provides the class of scholar-gentry with a comprehensive knowledge system for household management.