Zhang, Yu. Interfamily Tanci Writing in Nineteenth-Century China: Bonds
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International Comparative Literature
VOL.3 NO.2 (2020): 392–396
DOI: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20203214
Copyright © Shanghai Normal University
Zhang, Yu. Interfamily Tanci Writing in Nineteenth-Century China: Bonds
and Boundaries. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018, xxxvi+232 pp.
张禹： 《中国十九世纪家族内的弹词写作：纽带与界限》，兰纳姆：莱克星
顿书局，2018 年版，xxxvi+232 页。*
R esearch has shown that the cainü 才女 (talented women) or guixiu 闺
秀 (gentry women) tradition in late imperial China boosted a large
amount of female writers and readers in the literary realm, debunking the
previously male-centered belief of a male-only literature in late imperial
China.1 While poetry by cainü gained scholarly attention much earlier
due to its orthodox format, female-authored tanci 弹词 fiction as the
most popular literary genre among women in late imperial China has
also recently started to gain scholarly attention.2 Scholars such as Sheng
Zhimei have all agreed that this is a gendered popular literary genre for
women, but research from the perspective of gender studies has still been
limited. Most scholars strategically choose some tanci fiction to argue for
a female perspective and women’s subjectivity, but there is no apparent
connection between their chosen tanci fiction or their authors. Yu Zhang’s
new book puts these tanci into an interfamilial context, allowing us to
closely examine how these female writers and their works could directly
* Submitted Date: Mar. 21, 2020; Accepted Date: Apr. 10, 2020.
1 For example, see Ellen Widmer, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in
Nineteenth-Century China (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University
Asia Center, 2006); Dorothy Ko, Teachers of Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in
Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Grace S. Fong,
Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 2008); Susan Mann, The Talented Women of the Zhang Family
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California, 2007); etc.
2 For example, see Widmer, The Beauty and the Book; 胡晓真： 《才女彻夜未眠：近代
中国女性叙事文学的兴起》，台北：麦田出版社，2003 年［HU Siao-chen, Cainü cheye
wei mian: Jindai Zhonggong nüxing xushi wenxue de xingqi (Talented Women Burning the
Midnight Oil: The Rise of Female Narrative in Early Modern China), Taipei: Maitian Press,
2003］；鲍震培： 《清代女作家弹词小说论稿》，天津：天津社会科学出版社，2002 年
［Bao Zhenpei, Qingdai nü zuojia tanci xiaoshuo lungao (Research on Tanci Novels Written
by Women Writers in the Qing Dynasty), Tianjin: The Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences
Press, 2002］; Li Guo, Women’s Tanci Fiction in Late Imperial and Early Twentieth-Century
China (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press); etc.书 评 393
Book Reviews
affect each other. In this book, we see not only women’s literary talents and gendered social
criticism, but also a social and literary network between women and their families which formed
these works.
The introduction sets the stage for the whole book, giving detailed background and
introducing the themes in the book. This chapter first illustrates the brief history of tanci as a genre
and scholarship on this genre: tanci as a genre was viewed as a women’s genre before the twentieth
century, but there was also criticism on women reading them at the same time; since the May
Fourth Movement in the early twentieth century, tanci have been reevaluated—from seeing their
potential as women’s educational tools in the early twentieth century to rediscovering women’s
subjectivity in recent years. Zhang also points out the missing pieces in the research: while recent
scholars all celebrate this genre as women’s own voices, they have neglected male-authored tanci
fiction and the connection between tanci fiction as a genre and other popular fiction genres of the
time, such as licentious fiction (xiaxie xiaoshuo) and Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature.
After this overview, Zhang argues that tanci fiction should also be examined in a larger
context of China’s modernization, particularly the modernization of Chinese literature. Zhang
points out that the three selected tanci written in mid-to late nineteenth century has shown
considerably less“narrating self ”than previous works, signifying a transition to modern literature.
Moreover, although the modern concept of subjectivity has yet to form, the modern construction of
time and space—in this case, China in relation to the world—has started to surface. Furthermore,
tanci fiction as a gendered genre invites a thorough research on female subjectivity, especially
when juxtaposing female-authored tanci with male-authored ones like this book does, at the dawn
of Chinese modernity. Therefore, Zhang indicates that her research will concentrate on“two
interrelated concepts: bonds and boundaries.”3 She examines bonds by exploring family networks,
genre connections, and the relationship between China’s tradition and modernity. Meanwhile, she
also studies the constantly changing boundaries which are challenged and transgressed in tanci
fiction.
Chapter 1 provides readers with a generational family network of Zheng 郑-Zhou 周 (Yan 严)-
Ma 马 of the authors of the three tanci: Zheng Zhenhua 郑贞华 of Meng ying yuan 梦影缘 (Dream,
Image, Destiny, 1843, hereafter MYY), Zhou Yingfang 周 颖 芳 of Jing zhong zhuan 精 忠 传
(A Biography of Dedication and Loyalty, 1895, hereafter JZZ) and Judaoren 橘道人 of Yu xuan cao
娱萱草 (A Draft for Entertaining My Mother, 1894, hereafter YXC). Zhang has done extensive
archival research through local gazetteers, family genealogies, poetry collections, and miscellaneous
writings to map out the picture of the interfamilial relationships between the three authors, arguing
that they“were connected not only by kinships, but also by shared knowledge and intertexuatual
dialogues entangled within their readings and writings.”4 According to Zhang’s research, the
three authors’lives were intertwined with the Qing Dynasty’s chaos and decline in the nineteenth
century: Zheng Zhenhua, a typical talented Qing woman, whose father released Hong Xiuquan,
committed suicide when the Taiping Rebels took over Hangzhou; Zhou Yingfang, Zheng’s
daughter, held an opposite opinion to her mother, valuing chaste widowhood over martyrdom after
experiencing her mother’s suicide during the Taiping Rebellion and her husband’s death during
the Miao rebellion; Judaoren, whom Zhang identifies as Ma Ruixi, who was Zhou’s nephew (first
cousin once removed), through archival research, served as a military consultant and then the
Qing counselor in Italy. The archival research not only maps out the familial relationship among
3 Zhang, Interfamily Tanci Writing in Nineteenth-Century China, xxvi.
4 Ibid., 2.
2020, Vol. 3, No. 2394 国际比较文学
INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
the three authors, but reveals their attitudes toward tanci writing: while the two female authors
proudly chose tanci fiction as a female genre, taking leadership among women and identifying
themselves as literati, the male author displayed frustration in writing this gendered genre even
though he claimed his writing was to entertain his mother. After tracing their lives and writings,
Zhang suggests that this familial network indicates that a shared community of womanhood and
jiaxue 家学 (the family tradition of inherited learning) was crucial in women’s education. What
is interesting here is to see how women gained power by maintaining and expanding their social
network based on their family. Zhang then further paints a picture of a women’s social network
through tanci circulation and consumption by reading, writing, and commentating tanci fiction.
Chapters 2 and 3 analyze Zheng Zhenhua’s MYY from a gender studies approach. In Chapter
2, Zhang argues that Zheng replaces male defined qing 情 (passions) with the“sublime qing,”filial
piety.5 Using current research, Zhang first suggests that the cult of qing is a male-centered
narrative, and then demonstrates Zheng’s opinion that“the masculine qing discourse was socially
improper and morally unacceptable in reality”through tragic stories of women who are obsessed
with qing in MYY. In this way, the female author challenges the male-centered ideology and
fantasy of qing. However, Zheng does not discard the notion of qing altogether, but replaces it with
filial piety, which Zhang calls“sublime qing.”Zheng agrees with the cult of qing in terms of the
authenticity and applies it to filial piety, and elevates it to the highest priority. In this way, Zhang
argues that Zheng empowers her female characters, giving them new authority in their marriages,
particularly enhancing women’s subjectivity in marriage and emphasizing their connections
to their birth families. In this sense, this“sublime qing”challenges two of the Five Cardinal
Relationships in Confucian orthodoxy—a woman’s relationship with her parents overpowers her
duties towards her husband’s parents and loyalty towards the emperor. Moreover, Zheng questions
the traditional filial piety which puts men’s filial duties on women’s shoulders and challenges it by
creating asexual marriage which does not produce male heirs for her protagonists. However, Zhang
also points out some vagueness which reduces Zheng’s criticism on the patriarchal system in this
gentry woman’s work.
Chapter 3 looks at other ethical standards in MYY. First, Zhang delves into social bonding
in MYY. She argues that male friendship is treated in a“chastely erotic”tone, fulfilling women’s
fantasies while revealing their lack of knowledge and language about it. What Zhang really focuses
on is female friendship and mentorship. She argues that Zheng uses women’s poetry clubs to foster
women’s friendship and mentorship within and beyond the family, a real reflection of Zheng’s life
and the cultural practice in Jiangnan elite families. These women’s poetry demystifies male fantasy
of women’s poetry clubs as in Honglou meng 红楼梦 (Dream of the Red Chamber), establishing a
real female space in literature and in real life. Since these women value their own friendship which
grants them agency over family life, it can be viewed as a resistance to the Confucian gender
system.
Because Zheng Zhenhua commits suicide in face of a national disaster, Chapter 3 also focuses
5 Analyzing Mudan ting, Honglou meng and Xiaoqing, Judith Zetlin, Li Wai-yee, Maram Epstein and Ellen Widmer
all argue that qing (情，emotions), rather than li (礼，rituals), was appreciated and pursued by literati and there appeared
the cult of qing during the Ming and the Qing. See Li Wai-yee, Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in
Chinese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Maram Epstein, Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy,
Authenticity and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia
Center, 2001); Judith Zeitlin,“Shared Dreams: the Story of the Three Wives Commentary on the Peony Pavilion,”Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 54 (1994): 127—79; Ellen Widmer,“Xiaoqing’s Literary Legacy and the Place of the Woman
Writer in Late Imperial China,”Late Imperial China 13, no. 1 (1992): 111—55.
2020 年第 3 卷第 2 期书 评 395
Book Reviews
on how Zheng views women’s martyrdom in MYY. Strikingly, ten out of twelve female characters
who are flower spirits die by their own choice. These women choose to commit suicide for various
reasons, such as proving their chastity, resisting marriage, declaring innocence, etc. Taking control
of their own bodies, their decision in death should be viewed as the ultimate agency women held
in late imperial China. While Zheng celebrates women’s martyrdom by treating women’s death
as“a promise of intellectual and spiritual fulfillment,”Zheng also realizes that not every man
understands or sympathizes with women’s choices of suicide, depicting a real world of gender
inequality.6
Chapters 4 and 5 turn to Zhou Yingfang, Zheng’s daughter, and her tanci, JZZ. Chapter 4
uses approaches of gender studies to closely read Zhou’s rewriting of the famous Yue Fei story.
Although Yue Fei had already been established in Chinese literature as a masculine hero of
dedication and loyalty before Zhou’s time, Zhang argues, Zhou’s rewriting of the hero provides
a female perspective and creates a female space. In this female-authored tanci, Yue Fei is no
longer a mere military hero, but also a scholarly, sentimental man. More importantly, this hero
not only belongs to the outer sphere, but also has strong bonds with his family. Zhou expands
Yue Fei’s story into the domestic space, creating ideal familial relationships of the military hero,
including with his children, with his wife, and with his mother (filial piety is also emphasized, just
as in Zhou’s mother’s tanci). On the other hand, women in this tanci are not marginalized. Zhou
redefines and promotes her own vision of female virtues, including strength, endurance, beauty,
and management skills. She creates a utopian domestic space for women through important events
in their lives, such as banquets, weddings, pregnancies, and childbirth. These domestic details
build a female space where the female author and readers can share their“feminized knowledge
which［carries］social, personal and emotional significance in women’s lives.”7
Chapter 5 is a study on the reception of Zhou’s JZZ. As Yu Zhang points out, JZZ experienced
various nationalistic interpretations in various historical contexts after its completion in 1895 and
its publication in 1930s. During the anti-Qing revolutions, JZZ was viewed as an anti-Manchu text
and its protagonist, Yue Fei, was elevated to a nationalistic hero since then, but Zhang reminds the
readers that Zhou actually does not show any anti-Manchu sentiment in her work though intending
it to be a political allegory. During the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, JZZ saw its prime in terms
of its popularity. Intellectuals intentionally promoted non-elite cultures to enlighten the people
and to save the nation, and JZZ, a tanci fiction about Yue Fei, fit perfectly in their agenda. Zhang
explores major scholars’ opinions on JZZ during this time, including Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎，
Tan Zhengbi 谭正璧，Zhao Jingshen 赵景深 and Tao Qiuying 陶秋英 . While the male scholars
promoted JZZ for its nationalistic values, the sole female scholar Tao Qiuying did not include
JZZ into her collection of tanci fiction, but instead promote other female-authored tanci for their
literary and moral values.
Chapter 6 focuses on YXC, a tanci by a male author, posing a contrast to the previous two
by female authors. As Zhang argues, YXC displays Judaoren’s anxiety about his masculinity.
Unlike Zheng and Zhou who are proud of the tanci genre, Judaoren is actually frustrated by it.
While Judaoren, like Zheng and Zhou, celebrates filial piety in his tanci, he treats it and family as
a retreat from the dangerous external world, indicating his frustration dealing with his unsuccessful
career and the changing reality. Judaoren creates thriving male characters and submissive female
characters; even though transgender is included in the plot, the transgression is counteracted by
6 Ibid., 80.
7 Ibid., 118
2020, Vol. 3, No. 2396 国际比较文学
INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
a male voyeuristic gaze on the female body and the assertion of the superiority of the male body.
Ultimately, YXC is still a male fantasy in which gender norms and patriarchal orders are (re)-
affirmed.
What is noteworthy in YXC though is the new worldview Judaoren pictures. Although
Judaoren blurs the time and space of the tanci fiction, China is no longer the center of the world in
YXC. Although China and its cultures are still portrayed as superior, it is also open and inclusive,
accepting diverse ethnic groups and new knowledge such as natural sciences. Compared to the
other two tanci which use China’s history as political allegories, this one actually reflects a rapidly
changing world in the late nineteenth century from a male scholar’s perspective, suggesting the
beginning of modernity of China. However, it still takes a nostalgic view of China’s glorious
imperial past.
The epilogue of the book serves as the conclusion to the three tanci. Facing the national
crises in late Qing China, all three authors use their works to imagine the solutions, agreeing“to
reappropriate Confucian disorder, to reshape gender (roles), and to rebuild social order.”8 They
all promote family values, especially filial piety. The three tanci also all include the theme of
immortality, and Zhang believes that religions serve as a means for the gentry class to deal with
the stressful reality. Zhang finishes this book by providing some more information about the
consumption of tanci fiction in early Republican China, including their publication, their major
audience, and their gendered authorship.
Overall, Yu Zhang’s new book opens two new territories of research on tanci fiction: she
puts the genre in an interfamilial context and studies their potential influences on each other; she
also compares female-authored tanci fiction with male-authored tanci fiction. In terms of research
methodologies, she combines archival research, gender studies, reception studies, and studies on
Chinese modernity. In this sense, this monograph can truly be considered thorough and extensive.
The only regret is the missing link of the direct evidence of these authors writing or commenting
on each other’s works and how they were influenced by each other, but it is also limited by
the materials the author, Yu Zhang, can find and access. I truly hope the missing links between
different tanci works and their authors will be filled in future research.
刘雯佳，亨瑞克斯学院
LIU Wenjia Hendrix College
liuw@hendrix.edu
8 Ibid., 185.
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