Brocade of Human Desires The Poetics of Weaving in The Jin Ping Mei and Traditional Commentaries PDF

Brocade of Human Desires: The
Poetics of Weaving in the Jin

Ping Mei and Traditional
Commentaries
MING DONG GU
C AN AN EROTIC NARRATIVE RISE to the stature of first-rate literary art while it is

still regarded as a pornographic work? The answer seems to be negative as a rule.
Look at the vicissitudes of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. When it was
viewed as a pornographic work, it was banned for over thirty years in England and
America and did not come to be regarded as a great literary work until it was
completely exonerated from the infamy of pornography. We can, however, find an
exception in the Chinese tradition. It is the Jin Ping Mei, or The Plum in the Golden
Vase in David Roy’s authoritative translation (1993, 2002). From its first circulation
among Chinese literati in the seventeenth century to the present day, the Jin Ping
Mei has been consistently treated as a pornographic work but at the same time widely
acclaimed as a masterpiece second only to the Hongloumeng (A dream of red mansions),
the greatest novel in the Chinese tradition. Nowadays, although the unexpurgated
edition is still banned in China, the study of the novel has developed into a branch
of learning called “Jinxue” (Jin Ping Mei scholarship). A recent assessment by
Ning Zongyi and Luo Derong, two Jin Ping Mei scholars, reads: “Whether one
examines the novel by placing it on the abscissas of the Chinese novels of manners or
explores it by placing it on the ordinates of novels of similar subject matter in the
worldwide context, it will not lose its status as a brilliant masterpiece” (1992, 1). Its
artistic achievement and its stature in international narratology have also been
recognized. “With the possible exception of the Tale of Genji (1010) and Don Quixote
(1615),” notes David Roy, “there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal
sophistication in world literature” (1986, 287). It has been translated into Japanese,
English, French, German, Russian, and other major world languages.
What has enabled the Jin Ping Mei to transcend the odium of pornography to
maintain its paradoxical status of a pornographic fiction and an internationally
Ming Dong Gu (gu@rhodes.edu) is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at Rhodes

College.
I would like to thank two anonymous external reviewers and one internal reviewer of the
Journal of Asian Studies for their perceptive critiques and insightful suggestions that have
enabled me to revise this article into better shape.
The Journal of Asian Studies 63, no. 2 (May 2004):333–356.
䉷 2004 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
333
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334 MING DONG GU
acclaimed work of art? Readers familiar with Chinese erotic narratives may regard the
novel as the culmination of that tradition, but even a casual comparison with
representative erotic fictional works will reveal their differences. While other erotic
works narrate in a naturalistic manner the erotic adventure of a protagonist, the Jin
Ping Mei engages in an artistic exploration of a broad spectrum of human desires,
ranging from base cravings for sex, wealth, and power to noble longings for sympathy,
respect, and intellectual pleasure. Moreover, it explores these desires with an
innovative artistic vision and carefully crafted techniques. Even in the narration of
erotic themes, it differs from other erotic narratives in situating those themes in the
large context of human desires and in weaving different kinds of desires into a network
of interpretive spaces coordinated by a self-consciously constructed poetics of writing.
Because of narrow and poorly constructed methodologies of reading and outmoded
theories of literature, we have not yet done full justice to this unconventional
masterpiece which came into being ahead of its time. Still less have we acknowledged
its contributions to Chinese poetics of fiction and international narratology. I suggest
that the novel is a piece of ingeniously woven brocade of human desires and that its
principle of composition is a poetics of weaving.1 It is not just a network of characters,
scenes, events, and incidents; in its totality of subject matter and artistic form, it is
a woven fabric of human desires couched in linguistic signifiers, mapped with a self-
adjusting design that intends to make the novel appealing to different tastes and
amenable to different interpretations. In this essay, I am going to examine the novel’s
art of exploring human desires in relation to Zhang Zhupo’s and other traditional
scholars’ commentarial work and to explore in what ways the novel and its commen-
taries have made innovative contributions to Chinese fiction theory and international
narratology.
Zhang Zhupo and the Conception of Weaving
Scholarly consensus holds that the Jin Ping Mei represents a most important
milestone in the transition of Chinese narrative from historicity to fictionality, but
its difference from earlier novels, especially the Water Margin (Shuihu), is one of degree
rather than of kind. While duly recognizing the Jin Ping Mei’s indebtedness to its
predecessors, I venture to argue that the greatness of the novel precisely lies in an all-
out breakaway from the novelistic tradition established by the other great masterpieces
of Ming fiction in areas of subject matter, creative impulse, artistic vision, and
techniques of writing. It was conceived as a new form of novel and pioneered for the
Chinese tradition a conception of fiction which does not rely on artistic extension of
history, legends, or extant story lines. Here, a reader may ask: If one claims that the
Jin Ping Mei does not have much in common with the other novels in subject matter,
then how can one explain the fact that the novel itself is an elaboration of an episode
from the Water Margin? To this question, I may reply: it is true that the Jin Ping Mei
is indebted to the Water Margin, just as the latter is indebted to the previous legends
and stories. I may even go a step further by claiming that, without the Water Margin,
the Jin Ping Mei could not have come into existence. Nevertheless, there is a
fundamental difference. While all the major characters and their actions in the Water
1
In Chinese, the word zhi encompasses both weaving and knitting, but in English, I
cannot find a word that covers both at the same time and therefore must use “weaving” to
refer to both kinds of activities.
BROCADE OF HUMAN DESIRES 335
Margin had already existed in official history (History of the Song [Song shu]), historical
romance (Historical Stories from the Xuanhe Reign of the Great Song [Da Song Xuanhe
yishi]), and Yuan plays (Li and Zhao 2001, 250–51), the Jin Ping Mei merely employs
a few characters and their actions from the Water Margin. Moreover, the novel was
conceived as a new form of fiction with a novelistic conception that conforms to the
modern notion of the novel and even anticipates some postmodern fictional techniques
of fiction writing.
The fundamental difference of the novel lies in a new conception of fiction
executed through innovative techniques of writing. This conception is based on a
poetics of fiction making, not sustained on the time-honored mode of historical
narration but on a mode of fiction making very close to the modern conception of
creative writing as an act of weaving or knitting (Barthes 1977, 159–61). Structurally
the novel is constructed on a principle of fiction making that may be called “spider’s
weaving.” The act of weaving consists of two interrelated aspects: the weaving of raw
materials gleaned from different sources and the weaving of signifiers in the novel’s
language. As early as the late Ming dynasty Chongzhen reign (1628–44), the
anonymous commentator who left notes on the Chongzhen edition of the novel praised
it as a complex network of narration (xu de cuozong bianhua ) with
wonderful needles and threads (hao zhenxian ) (JPMZLHB 1985, 225). But, it
was Zhang Zhupo (1670–98), one of the most brilliant fiction commentators
in traditional China, who, after a systematic study of this novel, first identified its
characteristic features of weaving and adopted a systematic approach to its weav-
ing conception. In no uncertain terms, he declared it to be a piece of intricately
woven fabric: “a volume of a thousand stitches and ten thousand threads” (yi bu
qianzhen wanxian ) (31).
The making of any extended narrative requires these prerequisites: a creative
vision, raw narrative details, and plot arrangement. Scholars of fiction often compare
the writing of a novel to the construction of an architectural edifice: creative vision is
the style for the building that one wants to construct; plot arrangement is the
blueprint for a certain style of building; and narrative details such as characters,
setting, scenes, and episodes are the building materials, bricks, stones, timber, and
mortar.2 The analogy is valid only to a certain point, however, because the architectural
model has a mechanical aspect and cannot fully capture the fluid flow of creative
thought which gives shape to a narrative discourse and the slippery features of
language in the production of meaning. The creative imagination is a stream of
consciousness. It does not obey a rigid preplanned model and often changes course
due to free association. The same is true with acts of reading. The architectural model
of a novel’s construction is very effective in viewing a completed novel but is incapable
of completely explaining the process of a novel’s making. Perhaps for this reason,
Chinese narrative theory has another model which is given a more prominent place:
weaving or knitting. In the case of the Jin Ping Mei, Zhang adopts both models of
analogy for the structure of the novel, but he prefers the model of weaving/knitting
and views the novel as the outcome of an elaborate process of weaving. Even in using
an architectural model, his emphasis is on the seamless interconnections of elements,
as can be seen from this statement: “Therefore, to compose a writing is like building
a house. The writer must join all the tenons and mortises of beams and columns so
2
In traditional Chinese fiction theory, a number of commentators employed the metaphor
of architectural construction as a way to explain the conception of fiction writing and to explore
how to organize narrative elements into a textual edifice. Li Yu (1611–80) is such a proponent.
His “theory of structure” is based on the architectural metaphor (1980, 7).
336 MING DONG GU
closely that not a single seam is visible. In reading a writer’s writings, however, one
must act as though one were dismantling a house, making every single tenon of a
beam or column appear before one’s eyes” (JPMZLHB 1985, 56).
In the preface to the Chinese version of The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel,
Andrew Plaks points out a phenomenon in the studies of Ming-Qing fiction in China:
traditional commentarial work has been primarily used for research into authorship,
editions, and dating of the works concerned. Only in a secondary way has it been put
to use in the critical studies of those works (1993, 1). In his preface to the English
edition, he expresses the opinion that, in spite of their shortcomings, traditional
commentaries can still compare favorably with modern scholars’ studies in critical
achievement (1987, x). His opinion is especially sound for the case of Zhang Zhupo.
Zhang’s commentarial work on the Jin Ping Mei is perhaps the most comprehensive
and systematic study of the novel before modern times. Its degree of systematicity is
rare even among modern commentaries. It has zonglun (general treatises) which
set out its guiding theory, huiping (chapter comments) which are elucidations of
the general theory through detailed analysis, jiapi (interlinear comments), and
meipi (comments in the upper margin). In the exploration of the novel’s artistry,
few studies have surpassed it in insights and attention to the craft of fiction. As far
as narrative theories are concerned, Zhang’s commentary is remarkably modern and
discerning. Compared to the systematic and theoretical rigor of Zhang’s commentary,
modern studies of narrative theories concerning the novel look somewhat pale.
Since David Roy first called our attention to the significance of Zhang’s
commentary for the understanding of the novel and Chinese narrative in the mid-
1970s, a great deal of critical work has been done in relating Zhang’s commentary to
the Jin Ping Mei in particular and to Chinese narrative in general. Not much
conceptual work, however, has been done in relating Zhang’s commentary beyond the
novel itself to the theoretical conception of fiction making and narratology, in spite
of Roy’s discerning suggestion that Zhang’s “How to Read the Jin Ping Mei” is “the
closest thing . . . in the Chinese language to a poetics of the novel” (1977, 122; see
JPMZLHB 1985, 24–46). The theoretical significance of such a poetics is partially
revealed in Ye Lang’s study of Zhang Zhupo’s narrative aesthetics (1982, 154–99).
Ye is indebted to Zhang in many ways, from brilliant critical insights concealed amid
a welter of details to a poetics of the novel, the embryonic form of which has already
taken shape in Zhang’s complete commentarial work. As a quasi poetics, Zhang’s
commentary on the Jin Ping Mei is a gold mine which has not yet been fully exploited,
especially with regard to the theory of novel making. Through a study of Zhang’s
commentarial work in relation to modern narrative theories as well as the details of
the novel, I will attempt to construct a poetics of fiction writing and reading which
may not only shed light on the composition of the Jin Ping Mei but also provide food
for thought for the making of fiction in general.
Creative Impulse and Motivation for

Fiction Making
For an inquiry into the making of any fiction, we cannot ignore the creative
impulse or motivation lying behind that making. From the author’s point of view,
the motivation to write a novel belongs to what is commonly known as authorial
intention. With regard to the Jin Ping Mei, there are a number of supposed authorial
intentions: (1) the writing of the novel was motivated by a desire to wreak vengeance
in a family feud, (2) a scholar who had a lot of time on his hands observed his master’s
decadent life and wrote this novel to express his disapproval, or (3) the novel was
written by someone with the intention to satirize the decadence of the time.3 These
possible motivations all belong to pretextual intentions. They might have been among
the original motives, but modern theories on authorial intention have convincingly
argued that the pretextual intention is unreliable and misleading, hence useless in
helping us come to a better idea of how the novel was made. Although taking note
of the transmitted pretextual intentions is harmless, we must focus on the in-text
intention of the author. By “in-text intention of the author,” I mean a mental complex
that comprises the author’s motivation for writing, the conscious act of shaping the
properties of the text for certain intended purposes, and the unconscious creative
impulses and fantasies buried in the materiality of the text. In other words, I con-
ceive of the “in-text intention” as a creative totality which incorporates what the
author had in mind at the moment of the creative act, embodied in the work,
supported by transmitted pretextual intentions, and verified by textual evidence. In
Xinxinzi’s preface to the novel (“Jin Ping Mei cihua xu”), there is a statement
that looks like one about a pretextual intention but in fact it partially reveals the in-
text intention of the author. In this preface, Xinxinzi claims to be a friend of the
author and to know his intention. He has been both suspected of being the real author
and dismissed as a mouthpiece for the novel’s publisher. Whoever he may have been,
his statement nevertheless throws some light on the in-text intention of the author:
A person has seven dispositions, of which pent-up depression is the most repressive.
People of high intelligence were born with the ability to disperse it in the way fog
is dispersed and ice broken. It is therefore unnecessary to talk about them. People
with less high intelligence also know how to disperse it by themselves through logical
reasoning, thereby becoming unburdened by it. People with low intelligence neither
know how to expel it out of their bosom nor have poetry, books, the Dao, or things
of beauty for diversion. If so, few of them can avoid falling sick because of it. For
this reason, my friend, the Scoffing Scholar, composed this novel with all the
knowledge that he has accumulated in his life. It consists of a hundred chapters. It
was written in fresh and marvelous language and has enjoyed great popularity. . . .
It is hoped that it may enable readers to enjoy a good laugh so as to forget their
worries.
(JPMZLHB 1985, 214)
Xinxinzi may be said to be an understanding friend of the author (although many

scholars have doubts about his true identity), since he seems really to have grasped
the intention of the author, which is the making of fiction to cater to ordinary folk’s
need for entertainment. In his exploration of the relationship between the reading
public and the rise of the English novel, Ian Watt points out: “The novel was widely
regarded as a typical example of the debased kind of writing by which the booksellers
pandered to the reading public” (1960, 54). All fiction serves two basic functions:
didacticism and entertainment. A comparison of the Jin Ping Mei with the other great
Chinese novels shows that there is a shift in emphasis on the two basic functions in
the development of novels through the Ming dynasty. In the other three great novels,
3
My summary of the existent authorial intentions for the novel is based on the Chinese
sources about the rise of the novel. An interested reader may read an English account by André
Lévy (1985).
338 MING DONG GU
Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi), and Journey to the West
(Xiyou ji), didacticism is seldom as explicitly emphasized as it is in the Jin Ping Mei,
but it seeps through the pages. By contrast, although didacticism is constantly harped
on throughout the Jin Ping Mei, it seems to be rendered hollow because of the implicit
motive for entertainment. Indeed, taking the novel as a whole, the reader often has
the impression that the didacticism is nothing but lip service paid by the author to
avoid the odium of promoting moral depravity. The shift in emphasis in the Jin Ping
Mei not only decided the different nature of this novel but also had considerable impact
on the way that it was written.
The shift in emphasis may be said to have been one of the major causes for the
rise of fictionality in the Chinese tradition. For the purpose of entertainment, nothing
excels the discharge of emotional pressures. To provide emotional release through
literature, nothing excels writings that do away with sexual inhibition. To loosen the
grip of moral inhibition, nothing excels a direct confrontation with human sexuality.
Literary theories and practices in China and the West have suggested that in the
confrontation with human sexuality lies the creative impulse for pure fiction. In her
work on the origin of the novel, French scholar Marthe Robert argues that, in order
to trace the origin of fiction, one needs to think about the creative impulse in the
fiction writer. Pressured by the creative urge, the writer must turn to fiction for relief.
Frustrated with the fulfillment of wishes, the writer wants to rebel against reality,
destroy the real world, and re-create another world in accordance with his or her
wishes (1980, 20–35). Her argument fits exactly the creative mentality as described
by Xinxinzi, who claimed to have known intimately the creative impulse of the author
of the Jin Ping Mei.
Robert also suggests that the “family romance” can be regarded as the foun-
tainhead of fictional inspiration, and fiction itself is only the extension of the writer’s
unconscious wishes. Whether it is popular or highbrow, old or new, classical or
modern, fiction comes from the personal folklore which is the set of infantile
complexes and fantasies created by family life, the so-called Family Romance (1980,
21–40). As an archetype for fiction, “the Romance will not reach a more lively stage
until sexuality appears on the scene with notions of otherness” (25). Sexuality plays an
important role not only in creating fiction but also in reading fiction. As the noted
literary theorist Norman Holland points out, the so-called primal-scene fantasies,
which grow out of an intense curiosity about sex and sexuality, are responsible for a
child’s later interest in watching drama and other performances (1968, 45). Harold
Bloom, another renowned theorist, links the primal scene with fantastic fiction.4 On
the basis of these theoretical explorations, I have suggested in another article that
conscious and unconscious curiosity about sex and sexuality underlies not only the de-
sire to read fiction but also the impulse for creating fiction (1997, 457, 465). The
explosive interest in sex and sexuality in seventeenth-century Ming fiction and the ap-
pearance of the Jin Ping Mei seem to support this argument. In a way, earlier erotic
narratives in the Chinese tradition such as You xianku (A visit to the fairies’ cave) and
Ruyijun zhuan (The story of Mr. Delight) may also support the validity of this
suggestion, since they displayed an inchoate shift of Chinese fiction from historicity
to fictionality, from didacticism to entertainment, and from external approach to grave
4
Bloom states: “What make a scene Primal? A scene is a setting as seen by a viewer, a
place where action whether real or fictitious, occurs or is staged. Every Primal Scene is nec-
essarily a stage performance of fantastic fiction” (1975, 47).
matters of social life to internal approach to quotidian issues of family life and personal
desires.
From a more narrowly focused perspective, Tony Tanner, a scholar of fiction,
highlights a commonly observed phenomenon in the Western tradition that the
nineteenth-century European novels canonized as “great” and felt to be profound in
exploring the spirit of their age center on adultery (1979, 11). As far as novelistic
form is concerned, Tanner suggests, “[t]he novel, in its origin, might almost be said
to be a transgressive mode, inasmuch as it seemed to break, or mix, or adulterate the
existing genre-expectations of the time” (3). His observations are quite pertinent to
the Jin Ping Mei. Before the appearance of the Jin Ping Mei, there were quite a few
long narratives, but none of them is as preoccupied with adultery, sexuality, family
life, and diverse literary genres as the Jin Ping Mei. I, therefore, suggest that it is not
by mere accident that the author of the Jin Ping Mei should have chosen from the
Water Margin an episode dealing with family life and adultery as the basis for the plot
development and full representation of a long novel.
In terms of the rise of extended fiction, the author of the Jin Ping Mei was equipped
with the right prerequisites and was poised at the right time to embark on the route
to a new form of novel making that completely turns its back on history. He had the
creative impulse for entertainment, was free from psychological inhibition, and was
aware of the limitless formal capacity of the novel. In comparison to his predecessors,
although he was free in many ways, he was also at a disadvantage in the actual making
of the novel. For his predecessors who wrote historical novels, almost everything was
ready at hand: subject matter, plot, characters, and even structuring principles. The
author of the Jin Ping Mei, however, had to find everything himself. What was ready
at his service was only his creative impulse for writing something both didactic and
entertaining, plus his knowledge of some existent fictional writings. All he could do
was follow his creative impulse, and the outcome was the emergence of a novel of
total fictionality. With regard to the theme of the novel, scholars have still not come
to an agreed opinion. I here suggest that each of the views does capture a facet or
facets of the novel, but none of them is capable of capturing the totality of the novel.
This is because the author was engaged in writing a fiction with multiple themes.
Because of the nature of its making, the novel is beyond a totalizing theme.
In his characterization of Freud’s theory of dream formation, Terry Eagleton
employs an interesting analogy: “[T]he unconscious has the admirable resourcefulness
of a lazy, ill-supplied chef, who slings together the most diverse ingredients into a
cobbled-together stew, substituting one spice for another which he is out of, making
do with whatever has arrived in the market that morning as a dream will draw
opportunistically on the ‘day’s residues,’ mixing in events which took place during
the day or sensations felt during sleep with images drawn deep from our childhood”
(1983, 158). The author of the Jin Ping Mei may give the reader the impression of
such a chef: scholars have shown that the novel incorporates a diverse variety of source
materials gleaned from widely different historical periods, literary genres, and written
records (Zhang 1984; Hanan 1963). Whoever the author may have been, he was by
no means lazy, nor was he engaged in an unconscious making of fiction in the way
that the unconscious works in the creation of dreams. Unlike the unconscious in
dreamwork, the author consciously made use of free association, which is the basic
mode of creation in the formation of dream contents, to weave materials gleaned from
different sources into a dazzling embroidery of words.
In the art of embroidering, there is a Chinese saying: “One cannot make a piece
of embroidery out of gunnysack.” Just as an embroiderer needs a piece of quality cloth
340 MING DONG GU
to serve as the basis for a piece of embroidery, the author of the Jin Ping Mei was in
need of a subject matter for his verbal embroidery. He found in the Water Margin the
primary source to serve as the basis for his verbal brocade. In choosing a long episode
from an existent novel as the basis for his own fiction making, the author of the Jin
Ping Mei departed radically from the previous mode of novel writing and created a
new model of writing which I call the “weaving of signifiers into extended narrative
discourse.” The weaving of signifiers may be a most appropriate model for the
composition of the Jin Ping Mei. It is capable of explaining the rationale of the novel’s
constructing principle.
To probe the poetics of weaving, I wish, first of all, to deal with the source
materials that went into the making of the novel. Like a master rug weaver, the author
borrowed ready-made materials from previous writing on a massive scale. As he wove
along, he invented his own yarn. By weaving the ready-made fibers and his own yarn
into desired patterns, he succeeded in creating a superb tapestry with many
interlocking figures and patterns. Some scholars have viewed the author’s borrowing
in quite a negative light and criticized the incorporation of songs, lyrics, quotations
from existent poetry, drama, and fiction as signs of the author’s inability to maintain
a consistent tone (Hsia 1968, 178). In their most positive opinions, these scholars
maintain that the author had turned what is trash into a work of miraculous art. To
them, the borrowing was done as a random act to make up for the lack of ideas and
materials (see, for example, Hsia 1968, 169–70). Nothing could be further from the
actual process of creation. The borrowing was done deliberately to serve the purpose
of weaving a verbal fabric. If the borrowed material did not suit the purpose well,
then the author would make alterations to fit the borrowed materials into place. The
borrowed episode from the Water Margin was tailored in this manner. A collation
with the original material in the previous novel reveals that the reworked material in
the Jin Ping Mei is not only much longer but also much more complicated in details.
The alterations of and additions to the old materials were made to suit the authorial
purpose of making a verbal fabric.
The author’s use of the episode from the Water Margin is an astute choice, since
it is packed with the ingredients of family romance and human sexuality. A brief
survey of the other three great novels tells us that no other episodes in the previous
novels could match the chosen episodes in vivid description of familial conflicts, man-
woman relationships, seduction, and adultery. By intuition and calculated observation,
the author of the Jin Ping Mei sensed in the borrowed material the potential for
developing an enthralling narrative plot. We know that the borrowed episode largely
centers on a story of seduction. In the story, Old Woman Wang plays a significant
role. In fact, she could be compared to the director of a drama, having drawn up a
detailed script of how the seduction is to be conducted. Everything in the real
seduction scene goes ahead as smoothly as she has plotted. If Old Woman Wang’s
plotting of the seduction is a story leading to another story, then the author of the
Jin Ping Mei adds another episode of seduction to increase the dose of family romance
and sexuality. Zhang Dahu, the wealthy old man who attempted to seduce Jinlian, is
only a pale figure briefly mentioned in the Water Margin. In the Jin Ping Mei, however,
he becomes a fully portrayed character. He seduces Jinlian, angers his wife, marries
Jinlian off to Wu Da, and continues to have illicit relations with her. Finally, he dies
of sexual indulgence. His story may be said to anticipate the seduction of Jinlian by
Ximen Qing and the latter’s eventual demise at her hand. For the same purpose, the
author makes some changes to the character of Wu Da. He is portrayed in the Jin
Ping Mei with more negative features: shorter in stature, uglier in appearance, and
more hapless in life. The more negative portrayal contrasts with the beauty and
accomplishment of Jinlian, thus enhancing their incompatibility and paving the way
for her attempted seduction of Wu Song and her own seduction by Ximen.
The rewriting of the seduction episode from the Water Margin provides the author
with a good start for the making of pure fiction, but on this start alone, one could
not weave a novel of one hundred chapters. The author must bring his own invention
into the weaving of the narrative discourse. In the course of weaving, he has two major
kinds of raw materials for his narrative threads: sex and wealth, the root causes of
human desire. Zhang Zhupo makes this apt comment: “The reader should pay
attention to where the author displays superb writing skills and where he makes
methodical arrangements. Where are these places? Look at how he develops a great
topic with two persons. One of them wants to sell sex; the other wants to steal wealth.
This is where methodical arrangements are made and where the author’s writing brush
is as big as a beam” (JPMZLHB 1985, 170). Sex and wealth are the two dominant
elements in the novel. They form the two pivotal points upon which the major
characters evolve. Indeed, an overview of the novel tells us that each of the characters
lives by and dies by one or the other of the two elements. For subject matter, the two
elements serve as the material for the warp and woof in the author’s weaving efforts.
The interaction and interlocking of the warp and woof on the basis of the Water
Margin episode gave substance to the result of weaving and formed the canvas of the
verbal embroidery.
The Invention of Characters and Plot
In order for the brocade to tell an enthralling story, it must be populated by

characters. In previous novels, the characters were provided by official history, personal
biographies, anecdotes, legends, and so on. The author of the Jin Ping Mei does not
have these readily available resources, so he must invent his own cast of characters.
His principle of invention is a self-generating one based on free association and
conscious selection in terms of naming. In the borrowed episode, some major
characters are already provided: Ximen Qing, Pan Jinlian, Wu Da, Wu Song, Old
Woman Wang, and others. From these existent characters, the author conjures up a
whole cast for his extended narrative.
Zhang Zhupo wrote an interesting discourse, “Jin Ping Mei yuyi shuo” (Allegorical
meanings of the Jin Ping Mei) (JPMZLHB 1985, 13–17). It is an important
commentary. It is in fact the guiding theory for his miscellaneous commentaries, but
so far scholars have not taken it seriously. Although some scholars have acknowledged
a minor relevance of this allegorical theory to the novel, the general opinion either
deems it “a low form of art” (Xu 1988, 47–48) or dismisses it as an absurd way of
interpretation that reads too much into the novel (Wang 1984, 321). No one seems
to have realized that Zhang’s discourse at least touches upon the writing principles
underlying the novel and has the potential to be developed into a method of
interpretation, or a theory of reading. This theory of reading may be called “parono-
mastic reading,” a term that I will explain as my analysis proceeds. As I understand
it, Zhang himself does not recognize it as a way of reading. On the contrary, he
considers it a way of novel writing, a theory of composition that underlies the making
of the novel. As a theory of writing, it may not always fit the Jin Ping Mei. From the
writer’s point of view, however, Zhang’s “allegorical theory” constitutes a mode of
342 MING DONG GU
writing that I may term “intertextual dissemination,” a notion that conceives of

reading as a process of unlimited semiosis, and of the text as tissue—“hyphology,” or
a spider’s weaving (Barthes 1975, 64). Intertextual dissemination is also a notion of
the necessary intertexuality of all discourse because each text is an interweaving or a
“textile of signifiers” whose signifieds are by definition intertextually determined by
other discourses (Derrida 1981). To help illuminate the relation of intertextual
dissemination to Zhang’s theory, I wish to point out that Zhang’s advocated mode of
writing also conceives of a text as tissue, or a spider’s weaving, builds on the
materiality of discourse (its sound, shape, sense, and constituent principles), and
induces a form of reading that is an interweaving or “textile of signifiers” whose
signifieds are intertextually determined by other signifiers. Zhang’s discourse opens
with these lines:
Fiction is allegory. It invents a character and makes up an event. Although what it
narrates is an account of wind and shadows, it must conjure up rocks as though they
were lying on a mountain and stir up waves as though they were borrowed from the
sea. The Jin Ping Mei is a novel with no fewer than a hundred named characters. If
one wishes to explore their origins and implications, over half of them belong to
allegory. The author derived many of them from objects and entrusted them with
representing situations so that he was able to compose this novel of a hundred chapters
full of twists and turns.
(JPMZLHB 1985, 13)
By emphasizing that events and characters are linguistically generated, Zhang is

not simply reiterating a traditional Chinese writing principle of “creating events out
of writing” (yin wen sheng shi ); he has also located a variant principle of
“creating events out of names” (yin ming sheng shi ). What he has discovered
is a modern principle of fiction writing which unequivocally stresses the fictionality
of xiaoshuo (fiction) and the causality of fictionality. He views the Jin Ping Mei
as an allegory that evolves out of the interconnection between the naming of characters
and the development of plot. Then, he continues to give a full account of how the
naming of characters is related to the making of the novel.
Zhang’s theory of allegorical naming is in fact a continuation and extension on a
massive scale of the accepted view with regard to the naming of the novel. At the
time that the manuscript of the novel started to circulate, scholars agreed that the
novel was so entitled because Jin Ping Mei is a composite title consisting of three
Chinese characters from each of the three major female protagonists. Yuan Zhongdao
(1570–1624) wrote in 1614: “The so-called jin [gold] refers to Jinlian ; ping
[vase] refers to Li Ping’er ; mei [plum] refers to the maid Chunmei
” (JPMZLHB 1985, 220). What is innovative in Zhang’s theory is that he views
the major plot of the whole novel as growing out of an intricate network of names.
In his opinion, all the characters were derived from the already available characters in
the borrowed Water Margin episode. Li Ping’er comes into being as a result of Ximen
Qing’s name: “Li Ping’er’s name means that Ximen Qing , because of his
indulgence in gratifying his carnal desires and doing evil deeds, has withered his body
and exhausted his lifeblood in as complete a way as a vase is emptied of its content.
For this special meaning, Li Ping’er was so named” (13). A vase is for storing flowers,
so Li Ping’er’s husband receives his surname Hua . Since he is a character invented
to keep the narrative going, he has the name Zixu (fictitiousness). Ping’er’s wet
nurse, Ruyi , who becomes her surrogate, comes into the plot and receives her
name because of the same rationale: “Ruyi is the surrogate Ping’er after the latter’s
death. Her maiden name is Xiong (bear) and she has the married surname Zhang.
What is valuable in a bear is its gallbladder. This Ruyi is meant to be a bladderlike
inner container of a vase” (13). Chunmei (spring plum), the other female protagonist,
also comes into the plot because of Ping’er: “With a plum flower in a vase, the spring
scene is nearly over. While the emptying of the vase content symbolizes an invisible
withering of [Ximen’s] bone marrow, the plum flower in the vase suggests another
not-too-distant decaying and decline” (14). If the name of Ximen Qing gives rise to
a series of characters, Pan Jinlian’s name also has its fair share of generative function.
Chen Jingji , the other male protagonist who is essentially Ximen Qing’s
reincarnation, comes out of Jinlian’s name: “Lian (lotus) and ji (water chestnut)
belong to the same category. Chen means ‘old’ and decaying. Jing is a homophone for
the stem of a plant. That both the lotus and water chestnut have decaying stems is
suggestive of a bad end for Jinlian. Therefore, [in the novel] Jinlian is ruined by
Jingji” (14). Some other characters enter the plot as a result of the associations with
Jinlian’s name. The lotus grows in a pond, its flower above water and its root buried
in mud. This image gives rise to a series of characters. For example, Chen Jingji’s
father, Chen Hong (puns with , or “displaying the red”), and Xia
Longxi (dragon stream in the summer) both hint at Jinlian’s situation at her
best time. A few other characters are related to Jinlian but hint at her decline: Shui
(water) Xiucai , Wen (warm) Xiucai , Ni (mud) Xiucai , and
Wang Chao’er (lost to the tide) ( ) . Still more characters are associated
with Jinlian: Song Huilian , Wang Liu’er , and Wang Jing .
These characters bear the homophones of the names of water plants, and they were
created because of their association with the lotus. Song Huilian is a rival to Jinlian,
since they are two kinds of lotus. Wang Liu’er puns with Huang Lu’er (yellow
reed). Wang Jing puns with Huang Lujing (yellow reed stem). “Both lu reed
and di reed serve as a foil to the lotus. For this reason, it may be said that these two
characters were created to complement Jinlian” (15).
In his commentary, Zhang Zhupo elaborates on the naming of practically all the
major characters who play a role in the development of the novel. An exhaustive
account of his elaborate scheme is unnecessary. What needs some further elaboration
is that, in Zhang’s opinion, the naming association not only supplies new characters
for the plot development but also provides inspiration for details of the plot. For
example, Ximen’s proper wife is called Yueniang (moon lady) as she was born
on the midautumn festival. She is the head of the house who presides over all the
other ladies because the moon shines on all the flowers. The gui (sweet osmanthus)
flower is in full bloom in midautumn, so Moon Lady has an adopted daughter
called Gui’er . The moon follows a cycle of waxing and waning, so Moon Lady
has times of happiness and times of sorrow. Since Moon Lady was born in midautumn,
she has a maid-servant called Zhongqiu (midautumn). She has another maid
called Xiaoyu (little jade). “Xiaoyu is the legendary rabbit in the moon. Both
she and Zhongqiu are at Yueniang’s service” (JPMZLHB 1985, 188). According to
legend, when the moon is full, the rabbit in the moon has fully grown; a corresponding
event is that Xiaoyu the maid-servant gets married. Her marriage is a forced one
because she is seduced by Ximen’s male servant Dai’an . The seduction is an act
of qieyu (stealing jade). Moon Lady is forced to arrange the marriage at her own
expense and pay for it both literally and figuratively. All this follows the rationale
that, after the moon waxes to its full, it starts to wane.
Another male servant, Ping’an , bearing a grudge against Moon Lady for not
giving him the same favor, steals some jewelry from the Ximen family’s pawnshop.
344 MING DONG GU
Among the stolen goods is a gilded crescent. Ping’an goes to hide himself at a place
called Nanwazi (Southern tile). Zhang believes that this incident is an imaginative
reenactment of the waning of the moon: “No sooner had Xiaoyu gotten married at
the time of the full moon at midautumn than Ping’an stole a golden crescent. Scarcely
had he hidden at the Southern Tile for a whole night when the moon, like a golden
crescent, shone upon the Southern Tile” (JPMZLHB 1985, 188). Ping’an’s crime is
judged by the newly promoted patrol inspector, Wu Dian’en , who used to be
Ximen’s employee and came to obtain an official appointment through his connection
with Ximen. The patrol inspector’s name is a pun for a sentence: “This person does
not repay a single jot for the favor that he has received” (wu dian’en ) (17). The
implication of his name leads to a chain of plot development. He forces Ping’an to
testify falsely that Moon Lady arranged for Dai’an to marry Xiaoyu because she herself
has had an illicit affair with the male servant. But for Chunmei’s intervention, Moon
Lady would have met with serious trouble. “An inquiry into whether the moon has
waxed or waned should be directed to the plum. Therefore, no sooner had the Moon
Lady asked Chunmei for help than Wu Dian’en became humiliated” (188). Why
would Chunmei be willing to intercede for Moon Lady, who did not treat her favorably
when she was still a maid in the Ximen household? “The moon is the master of plum
flowers. So, Moon Lady maintains a relationship with Chunmei” (188).
Toward the end of the novel, Moon Lady has a dream in which she and her
entourage, including Xiaoyu, are all killed by Ximen’s erstwhile friend, Yun Lishou
. Zhang believes that this dream is a representation of the idea that the moon
is shrouded by clouds, and the moon rabbit disappears altogether. “The moon must
be hidden by clouds. Therefore, the dream of Yun Lishou is invented” (JPMZLHB
1985, 188). Zhang’s scheme is so elaborate that he even takes the trouble to link the
qualities associated with a character’s name with his or her personality, behavior, and
outcome in the novel. For example, he goes so far as to relate the sexual habits of
Ping’er and Ruyi to the characteristic features of the vase and inner container: “Li
Ping’er loves having sex from behind; Ruyi prefers to suck Ximen’s male organ—
their sexual preferences are associated with the characteristic features of a vase and its
inner container” (14).
Zhang is so dedicated to his idea of how the novel was consciously made that his
entire commentary on the Jin Ping Mei is guided by this theory. We as readers, of
course, cannot buy his scheme lock, stock, and barrel. But one may ask: To what
extent does Zhang’s scheme of naming conform to the actual situation in the novel?
And more important, how does his scheme help us better understand the novel? And,
what benefit can we reap from Zhang’s scheme in our attempt to construct a poetics
of making or reading? These are the issues that I will explore in the remaining space
of this article.
First of all, Zhang’s scheme certainly captures a significant aspect of the novel’s
poetics of making. A careful reader of the novel would not dispute the following
quotation from Zhang’s discourse:
There are even cases in which a single event gives rise to a number of characters. In
this sort of situation, several named characters share a similar allegorical meaning.
For instance, Che Dan ( ) [talking nonsense], Guan Shikuan ( )
[meddling in others’ business], You Shou ( ) [idling about], Hao Xian
( ) ( ) [loafing around]—these four characters share one allegorical meaning.
For another example, Li Zhi ( ) [plum stem] and Huang Si [yellow the
fourth] refer to the withering yellowness of the plum flower and plum fruit, which
hints at a late-spring scene. These two characters share one allegorical meaning. For
still another example, before the episode in which Ximen had a sexual battle in the
bathtub, three characters were mentioned: Nie Lianghu ( ) [holding
between the fingers two lakes], Shang Xiaotang ( ) [going into the tiny
pond], Wang Beiyan ( ) [going to the northern bank]—the three characters
share one allegorical meaning. For one more example, An Zhen ( ) [indulging
in pillow comfort] and Song Qiaonian ( ) [ruining one’s old age] allude to
the damage done to the body by indulgence in sex. The two characters’ names share
one allegorical meaning. There are also situations in which a character begets a series
of characters’ names: Ying Bojue ( ) ( ) [inveterate sponger], style name
Guanghou ( ) [empty throat]; Xie Xida [Xidai] ( ) ( ) [thanks
for giving me favors], style name Zichun ( ) [paying lip service]; Zhu
Shinian ( ) ( ) [taking abode for ten years]; Sun Tianhua ( )
[heavenly talk], style name Boxiu ( ) ( ) [feeling no embarrassment]; Chang
Shijie ( ) ( ) [habitual borrower]; Bu Zhidao ( ) ( ) [know-
nothing]; Wu Dian’en ( ) [utterly devoid of gratitude]; Yun
Lishou ( ) [a hand inside clouds], style name Feiqu ( ) [fly away];
Bai Laiguang [merely come to scrounge], style name Guangdang
[loiterer]; Ben Dichuan ( ) ( ) [gossip monger]; Fu Zixin ( )
( ) [betraying one’s own heart]; Gan Chushen ( ) [not related by blood];
and Han Daoguo ( ) ( ) [doing mischief]. All these characters get their
names because of Ximen’s improper behavior.
(JPMZLHB 1985, 17)
Some scholars may say that this use of allegorical names is only a word game and
may be considered at most a low form of artistry. I venture to argue that wordplay
on names is used on such a massive scale that it constitutes a creative principle for
pure fiction making. In chapter 30, wordplay on a name permits us to have a glimpse
of how this principle works. Ximen sends his servants with lavish birthday gifts to
see the corrupt prime minister, Cai Jing (1046–1126), in the capital. Because
of the lavish birthday gifts, Cai Jing wants to give Ximen something in return. He
asks whether Ximen has any official appointment. When he receives a negative reply,
he decides to give Ximen a government appointment. According to the narrative,
Ximen is to fill an official position vacated by an official called He Jin (JPMCH
1980, 1:445). The name of this official is made up of two characters which mean
“congratulatory money.” A reader does not need much pondering to see the connection
between the official’s name and the bribes submitted by Ximen. In sending the prime
minister lavish birthday gifts, Ximen has spent a good deal of money. There is a big
hole in his amassed wealth, which must be filled by the government appointment
that is to earn for Ximen wealth several times the birthday gifts. Of course, the naming
of the character can be viewed inversely. The plotline of this episode might have been
conceived first, and the author then named the character as an implied critical
comment. Whichever is the case, this episode paves the way for the narrative account
of Ximen’s corrupt career as an official.
In his study of the novel, Andrew Plaks follows one of Zhang Zhupo’s ideas and
gives a detailed analysis of how the name of Pan Jinlian gives rise to Song Huilian
(who used to have the same given name, Jinlian), how the same name determines
their rivalry, how the name of Jinlian (golden lotus) relates to bound feet and women’s
shoes, and how a series of episodes center on the loss and recovery of Pan Jinlian’s
shoes (1987, 101–3). Plaks’s critical analysis confirms the correctness of Zhang’s
insight: several characters, incidents, and episodes appear in the novel because of the
author’s imaginative use of the word jinlian (JPMZLHB 1985, 103). Moreover, it
demonstrates beyond doubt that the creative use of naming is not just a word game;
it is also a significant creative principle for pure fiction making.
346 MING DONG GU
As I have tried to demonstrate, the way of naming certainly has a structuring and
generative function in the making of the novel. It functions in two directions. In one
direction, the author may have an idea in mind and may want to incorporate the idea
into the text proper. He might search for a proper name or coin a name which bears
relation to the idea in sound, shape, or sense. Ying Bojue, Che Dan, Guan Shikuan,
You Shou, Hao Xian, and Li Waichuan (who will appear later) are created by this
method. In the other direction, the author might make use of already available names;
allow them to beget new names related to the old names through sound, shape, or
sense; and develop narrative details in accordance with the associations that these new
names may evoke through their sound, shape, and sense. Yueniang, Song Huilian,
Wang Liu’er, Li Guijie, Yun Lishou, Wu Dian’en, and others are created by this
method. While the first kind of naming supplies new characters to populate the
landscape of the narrative and hints at allegorical messages, the second kind provides
the narrative impetus and details to keep the story going.
A Disseminative Paradigm of Reading

and Writing
The creation of narrative details and their interconnections through the impetus
of association shares some affinity with the ways that Marcel Proust (1954) conceived
of his masterpiece, A la Recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of things past). In this
work, the narrative impetus is free association, which gives rise to involuntary memory
in the mind of the narrator. According to the author’s introduction, the genesis of
this novel was a series of trivial incidents that happened to the narrator: his stumbling
over an uneven cobblestone, hearing the clink of a spoon against a cup, wiping his
mouth with a napkin, and so on. These chance incidents trigger his involuntary
memories of a past which lay hidden from consciousness. They not only provide source
materials for a work of art but also help him discover the latent pattern in his life,
which gives structure and form to the artistic efforts of rendering that experience in
fiction. Of course, the associational narrative impetus in the Jin Ping Mei as described
by Zhang Zhupo is considerably different from that of Proust’s novel. One difference
is that, while Proust’s novel employs association through events, the Jin Ping Mei
makes use of association through characters’ names as well as events. In other words,
the Chinese fiction writer was following the principle of creating events out of wen
(words) and ming (names).
Zhang Zhupo’s allegorical reading evidently grasps a key to the narrative impulse
of the Jin Ping Mei, which is the conscious use of free association in the making of
fiction. As a method of reading, his theory is perfectly tenable. As an insight into the
novel’s making, however, it may evince some problems. In many cases, he has stretched
his allegorical theory too far, thereby producing some unconvincing explanations. For
example, his idea of how Li Ping’er’s name evolves out of Ximen Qing’s name is rather
far fetched. His claim that “not a single name in this novel does not carry a profound
intention” (JPMZLHB 1985, 171) may be an overstatement. One simply cannot
decide in some cases whether an explanation of a certain name is the implication
intended by the author or an implication conjured up by the reader. In many cases,
there may be several explanations for the same name or event. For example, Zhang’s
rationale about the naming of Chen Jingji and his role in the plot development is
impossible to verify. I admit that Zhang’s explanation is an interesting one, but readers
could come up with other explanations. I may argue that chen may be a near
homophone for cheng . Jingji in the Cihua edition is written as ; it is a
homophone of (managing, manager). According to some scholars, Chen Jingji
in the latter part of the novel is really a reincarnated Ximen. Wen Long (fl.
1870–86), who wrote an extended commentary on the novel, regarded Chen Jingji
as “truly Ximen Qing Jr.”—“Ximen Qing’s split self” (WLPPJPM 1986, 274). This
is a very sound view, since Chen Jingji is not only as wicked, licentious, and immoral
as Ximen, but he also literally carries on Ximen’s immoral life, engaging in illicit
affairs with Pan Jinlian, Chunmei, and other female characters. Moreover, he is
Ximen’s son-in-law. On one occasion in the novel, Ximen proclaims that, since he
has no son, he regards Jingji as his own or at least a “half son.” In light of these
narrative details, it is not far fetched to say that Chen Jingji’s surname means cheng
(continue or inherit). He inherits Ximen’s robe and bowl and carries on his immoral
life. The name Jingji or reinforces this implication. Ximen is a
businessman who manages a large family business. Before his death, Chen Jingji is
practically his general manager. In comparison with my view, Zhang’s explanation of
chen as “wornout” and jing as “stem” seems quite unnatural.
Although we can never be certain that Zhang’s theory of allegory always fits the
author’s conception and making of the novel, one thing that we can be quite sure of
is that his ideas may be viewed as constituting a theory of pluralistic reading. This is
where I can link Zhang’s theory of reading with a method of writing that Jacques
Derrida (1981) calls “dissemination” in his book with the same title. The essence of
this kind of reading is the attention paid to the indeterminacy warranted by the
materiality of the sign, its sound, shape, and sense. It does not simply emphasize the
representational quality of the sign, but it also pays close attention to the sign itself
and views its materiality as carrying other than surface implications. This theory of
reading is predicated on the fluid signifying process in the context of the text. In
attempting to grasp the implications of a key word or name, one first ponders its
sound, shape, and sense, as well as all the possible associations that the materiality of
the word or name may evoke; then situates the possible associations within the context
of the text; and finally selects a strand of implications that fits most properly into the
context. The implications thus produced are very different from the surface meanings
or the meanings represented by the word or name alone.
Since the context of the text is not monolithic but consists of numerous details,
scenes, and episodes, it is multifaceted. Each facet of the context would put the
associations of a word or name in a new situation, thereby making possible a yield of
fresh and different interpretations. In this connection, this theory of reading is capable
of opening up the text to different readings. By opening up the text, it endows the
text with an open hermeneutic space which may or may not have been there at the
time of making the text.
I will give a few illustrating examples to show how this theory of reading opens
up intended and unintended hermeneutic space. In chapter 9, Wu Song accidentally
beats to death a yamen runner who leaks information to Ximen Qing. The runner’s
name is Li Waichuan . The implication of the runner’s name is deliberately
intended by the author, which can be seen from the fact that he makes special mention
of the detail in the novel: this character has a nickname, Li Waichuan (passes
information in and out) (JPMCH 1980, 1:154). Since the Chinese character can
be pronounced as chuan (pass, transmit) or zhuan (biography, story) with two different
meanings, we can employ the paronomastic (or punning) reading method and come
up with some new implications. Wen Long expressed a different but more intriguing
348 MING DONG GU
idea in his comment on chapter 9: “This chapter breaks away from the Water Margin
and leads into the Jin Ping Mei proper. The character chuan should be read in its
falling tone.5 This reading truly fits the proper theme of the novel. Therefore, this
character is used to let Ximen go free. The Water Margin is an inner story; this novel
is an outer story” (WLPPJPM 1986, 191). In other words, the character Li Waichuan
serves as an indication of the author’s intention to leave behind the source text and
to embark on a literary creation of his own making.
By employing the paronomastic method, I can situate the character in a different
light and read the character’s name as indicating some other implications. Basically,
I have two ideas. First, I may read the name as punning on li wai zhuan ,
qingli zhi wai zhi zhuan , meaning that the episode centering on Wu
Song is a story that goes against the normal order of things that a reader familiar with
the Water Margin might expect. Unlike the Wu Song in the sourcebook, this Wu
Song fails to kill Ximen and ends up exiled. Second, I may read the name as punning
on li wai zhuan , buzheng zhi li zhi zhuan , meaning that this
episode warns the reader that, by allowing Ximen to survive Wu Song’s revenge, the
author was going to write a novel which is a story of the improper order of human
affairs. It is not about heroes who fight or die for justice and propriety, but about
antiheroes whose immoral life makes a mockery of tianli , or “heavenly principle.”
The combination of the two ideas may serve as a caution to the reader: one should
not read the Jin Ping Mei in the same way that one reads the Water Margin, or one
may simply miss the messages of the whole novel. Considering that the author
continues to draw source materials from the Water Margin, I have good reason to
believe that this implication might well be a possible cue to the reader. After all,
since the novel came into the world, readers have continued to compare the borrowed
episodes with the sourcebook, and many of them claim that the rewritten episodes
are inferior. Obviously, they have completely missed the point that the author hoped
to put across. In his comment on the role of the character Yun Lishou in chapter 100,
Zhang Zhupo offers a similar warning: “A hundred foreign pearls are woven into the
dreams of Commander Yun. This shows the author in the clouds hinting at the
implications of the dream for the hundred-chapter novel. Readers of this hundred-
chapter novel may still be in the clouds and in a dream, however, and may not
necessarily be able to understand the author’s painstaking efforts” (JPMZLHB 1985,
193).
What is it that the author took pains to labor at? A possible answer may be that
he was engaged in writing a new novel. There are many signs indicating this intention.
I have mentioned that scholars have ferreted out quite a few discrepancies in the novel
which form a glaring contrast with the painstaking care that characterizes most of
the novel. I suggest that some discrepancies may have been slips of the pen when the
novel was circulating in its manuscript form. I would reiterate my argument, however,
that some discrepancies may have resulted from the authorial attempt at making
fiction and should therefore be examined from the perspective of fiction making. In
the making of the novel, the author incorporated many historical personages into the
text. A close examination of these historical persons reveals that details concerning
these persons are more often than not discrepant with historical facts. I can cite
numerous examples from the text, but here I will cite only a few examples which
5
Chinese is a tonal language. There are two ways to pronounce the Chinese character.
When read with a second tone, it is pronounced as chuan, which is a verb meaning “to pass,
to transmit, or to spread”; when read with a fourth tone, it is pronounced as zhuan, which is
a noun meaning “story, biography, or commentary.”
cannot be explained away by carelessness. The ending of the novel states that, after
the cataclysm of war and destruction, the Song dynasty was divided into two with
two emperors: the Jin state established the puppet emperor Zhang Bangchang
(1081–1127) in the north, and the Song loyalists proclaimed Prince Kang as the new
emperor Gaozong (r. 1127–62) in the south (JPMCH 1980, 3:509). When we
have a look at the history of the Song dynasty, the ending statement obviously deviates
drastically from real history. Zhang Bangchang was the puppet emperor for only
approximately thirty days. Shortly afterward, he pleaded with Gaozong and asked for
the bestowal of death. A few months later, for another crime, the emperor did order
Zhang Bangchang to commit suicide (Lu and Ma 1991, 438–39, 521–22). A revi-
sionist use of historical details is a common occurrence in novels before the Jin Ping
Mei because of a given author’s dissatisfaction with historical facts. In the Jin
Ping Mei, however, the author’s artistic manipulation seems to have gone beyond the
purpose of revising history. Some textual evidence suggests that the author might
have intended his revision to hint that he was writing fiction, not an artistic version
of history. To be more exact, he inherited the revisionist use of history from earlier
writers of historical romances but gave it a new twist and brought it to a new level.
A revealing detail is found in chapter 17. Yuwen Xuzhong (1079–
1146), a minister of the Song court, writes a memorial to the emperor calling for the
indictment of venal officials who engaged in corruption and appeasement. Yuwen is
positively portrayed as an upright minister with high moral standards who would not
be afraid to risk his life in order to fight against corruption and appeasement (JPMCH
1980, 1:258–59). In real history, however, Yuwen Xuzhong was almost the opposite
of the positive portrayal. Instead of calling for resistance to aggression, he several
times went to the enemy camp as a negotiator. On his last negotiating mission, he
was detained by the Jin state and surrendered afterward. He participated in the Jin
state’s strategic planning to invade the southern part of China. For some time, he was
respected by the Jin people as the guoshi (state teacher). Although he was
eventually executed by the rulers of the Jin for treason, he was by no means a loyal
minister of the Song (Lu and Ma 1991, 199–200). The reason for the positive
characterization may have to be sought from the making of the novel. Yuwen
Xuzhong’s name puns with , which may be rendered as “my text is fictitious
inside.” Thus, he might have been a character to hint at the author’s intention to
create fiction. His action in the novel is fictitious and so is the implication of his
name. Perhaps largely for this reason, Zhang Zhupo makes this remark: “If one reads
the Jin Ping Mei as an account of facts, he will be deceived by it. One must read it as
a literary work so as not to be deceived by it” (JPMZLHB 1985, 35).
A Woven Fabric of Signifiers

In discussing the making of pure fiction, I have dealt with two aspects: the
characters who populate the narrative landscape and the narrative details that keep
the story going. What remains to be dealt with is the constructive principle which
is often compared to the blueprint of a building. I have argued against using the
architectural analogy to describe the construction of a text. Instead, I have opted for
a model of weaving. It is a fitting and proper model because a text, by its etymological
definition, is a kind of braided entity, a tissue, a woven fabric. This is precisely what
Zhang Zhupo understands the Jin Ping Mei to be. In his complete commentarial works,
he again and again talks about the weaving of the novel. Here are just a few examples.
350 MING DONG GU
In “How to Read the Jin Ping Mei,” he refers to the novel as “a volume of a thousand
stitches and ten thousand threads” (JPMZLHB 1985, 31). In “Zhupo’s Random
Remarks” (JPMZLHB 1985, 9–12) he tells us that the intricately woven texture of
the novel is what had attracted him: “I love the novel because, although it consists
of a voluminous total of one hundred chapters, its thousand stitches and ten thousand
threads emanate from a single source, and despite the thousand twists and ten
thousand turns, not a single thread is exposed to the eye. . . . If I do not reveal the
golden needle of such a wonderful text, wouldn’t people be likely to overlook the
author’s painstaking efforts over a long time?” (11). In the same discourse, he points
out the nature of the novel as a woven fabric: “The details of this novel are as fine as
the hairs of an ox, which are numbered by the thousands and tens of thousands, yet
all belong to a single body and are sustained by the same circulatory system. Although
the needlework is concealed, even widely separated elements are interconnected” (11).
In his comment on chapter 1, he compares the conceptual structure to a braided
pigtail: “A book with one hundred chapters ties its thousands of threads into a whole
in the first chapter in the same way that one ties the hairs on one’s head into a braid
with a single string” (48). In his comment on chapter 32, he refers to the totality of
the novel as a result of sewing: “I therefore know that only by taking the one hundred
chapters as completely conceptualized at one time can one realize that the novel was
sewn into a seamless whole by stitches and threads” (107). In another short discourse,
“Leng re jin zhen” (The cold and hot golden needles) (JPMZLHB 1985, 12), he views
the novel as a fabric knit with two golden needles pulling the two threads of “cold”
and “heat.”
If we compare Zhang’s metaphor for the novel as a woven texture with a concept
of the text in contemporary French literary theory, we will be surprised at its
modernity. In contemporary literary theory, some theorists no longer view a piece of
literature as a wrought work, but regard it as a woven text. In their theorizing on the
nature of the text, they use the act of weaving as a favorite analogy. Barthes, for one,
employs a lace-making model:
The text, while it is being produced, is like a piece of Valenciennes lace created before
us under the lacemaker’s fingers: each sequence undertaken hangs like the temporarily
inactive bobbin waiting while its neighbor works; then, when its turn comes, the
hand takes up the thread again, brings it back to the frame; and as the pattern is
filled out, the progress of each thread is marked with a pin which holds it and is
gradually moved backward: thus the terms of the sequence: they are positions held
and then left behind in the course of a gradual invasion of meaning. This process is
valid for the entire text. The grouping of codes, as they enter into the work, into the
movement of the reading, constitute a braid (text, fabric, braid: the same thing); each
thread, each code, is a voice; these braided—or braiding—voices form the writing:
when it is alone, the voice does not labor, transforms nothing; it expresses; but as
soon as the hand intervenes to gather and intertwine the inert threads, there is labor,
there is transformation.
(1974, 160)
We may compare Barthes’s analogy with Zhang’s miscellaneous remarks on

weaving and especially with another extended statement: “These hundred chapters
were not written in a day, but they were conceived on particular days at particular
times. If you try to imagine how the author conceived of this wealth of individually
structured episodes you will come to realize how much planning, interweaving (ch’uan-
ch’a ), and tailoring (ts’ai-chien ) was required” (Roy 1990, 224). The
comparison cannot but compel us to marvel at the closeness of Zhang’s idea of the
novel to Barthes’s conception of a text. Although Zhang does not talk about his idea
of the novel from the perspective of highly abstract theories, his commentarial work
touches most of the important aspects of a text. Of course, Zhang could not have had
access to modern literary theories; his ideas grew out of his sensitive understanding
of the Jin Ping Mei and his own creative conception of how fiction should be made.
Before writing comprehensive commentaries on the novel, he even attempted to
rewrite the novel so as to demonstrate his idea of novel making:
More recently, oppressed by poverty and grief, and goaded by “heat and cold,” when
time weighed heavily on my hands, I came to regret that I had not myself composed
a book about the way of the world in order to relieve my depression. Several times I
was on the point of setting pen to paper but was deterred by the amount of planning
which the over-all structure required. And so I laid aside my pen and said to myself,
“Why don’t I carefully work out the means by which this predecessor of mine
constructed his book on ‘heat and cold’?” In the first place, my elucidation of the
work of my predecessor can count as an equivalent for my own planning of a book
in the present.
(Roy 1977, 119)
In his conception of the novel’s making as a weaving of myriad threads, Zhang
picks out two major threads as the warp and woof for the whole woven fabric. They
are the ideas of “cold” and “heat,” which he considers to be the key to an adequate
understanding of the novel’s theme and structure:
The Jin Ping Mei opens its discourse with two words, “cold” and “heat.” Who does
not know that they constitute a golden key to the whole novel? Nevertheless, where
is the pivot that clinches the point? I say: it lies in the naming of two characters,
Wen Xiucai and Han Huoji . Why do I say so? Han puns with “cold”
( ), another epithet for “chilly”; wen puns with “warmth” ( ) residual quality of
“heat.” Han Huoji appears after Ximen receives his official appointment, symbolizing
the cold message amid heat (prosperity), whereas Wen Xiucai does not enter until
after the episode of polishing the mirror, being a herald of “cold.” This arrangement
implies that fortune and misfortune are immanent in each other and may transform
into their opposites; it is the way of Heaven that winter and summer steal each other’s
essence.
(JPMZLHB 1985, 12)
In spite of the fact that Zhang Zhupo’s reading was based on the Chongzhen
version, which differs significantly from the Cihua version,6 especially in
chapter 1, his view of the whole novel as being constructed on the binary opposition
of cold and heat and their explicit and implicit implications is pertinent to all versions.
In his understanding, “cold” and “heat” are endowed with literal and symbolic
meanings. Literally they represent changes in temperature, weather, and the four
seasons. Symbolically they represent changes in the major protagonist’s swings in
mood, vicissitudes of fortune, highs and lows of sexual desire, and so on. Basing
himself on Zhang’s insight, Andrew Plaks has conducted a fascinating study of the
6
There are quite a number of extant texts of the novel which group around two versions,
the Cihua edition and the Chongzhen edition. I have used the Cihua edition. While the former
keeps intact the original conditions of the novel, the latter is a version that underwent con-
siderable expurgation, alteration, and additions. In spite of the changes, the Chongzhen edition
keeps the basic structure, plot, and characterization of the Cihua edition.
352 MING DONG GU
correlation of heat and cold with the development of the novel’s plot and the
vicissitudes of the characters (1987, 81–85). Plaks’s study emphasizes the impact of
certain aspects of traditional Chinese philosophy on the aesthetic features of the novel’s
construction. Here, I want to emphasize the linguistic, conceptual, and artistic
implications of Zhang’s understanding. The wordplay on han and wen not only
generates new characters for the plot but also supplies details for the ongoing plot.
In this sense, the binary opposition of cold and heat is a complementary principle to
that of free association, which I have discussed as the narrative impulse.
I have mentioned above that the Jin Ping Mei differs significantly from Marcel
Proust’s novel. For Proust, since his novel is autobiographical in nature, he could draw
source materials from his life experience. But for the author of the Jin Ping Mei,
although he could draw upon his own experience of life, the disparate nature of his
other source materials would compel him to find a constructing principle other than
the autobiographical. Since he was engaged in writing fiction, he also had to invent
his materials as he wrote along. In order to coordinate materials drawn from
observations and materials invented out of thin air, the author was in need of a writing
principle that takes care of the vertical and syntagmatic progression of the narrative
thrust. The binary opposition between heat and cold and their interpenetration may
be viewed as another structuring principle.
On the basis of Zhang Zhupo’s idea of cold and heat, I suggest that we could
abstract another principle of the novel’s making. Because of his own predilection,
Zhang devotes a lot of space to the discussion of cold and heat and their significance
for the whole novel. As he puts it, the whole novel is a “book on heat and cold” (yibu
yanliang shu ) (JPMZLHB 1985, 47). In fact, if we read the novel closely,
the binary opposition does not limit itself to cold and heat. It extends to a series of
oppositions: real/false, fortune/misfortune, death/birth, leisure/occupied, happy/sad,
positive/negative, superior/inferior, master/servant, mistress/maid, and so on. Binary
opposition also figures prominently in the wording of chapter captions, the
arrangement of chapter structure, and the whole novel’s structure. Plaks has paid
much attention to the antithetical structure of the novel’s formal arrangement. He
also rightly relates it to the ancient-style essay and critical theories concerning poetry
and essay writing. From a conceptual point of view on the structure of the novel, I
wish to suggest that, in the creation of fiction, the writer may use binary opposition
and antitheses as a way to give form and structure to the disparate elements of the
narrative. I also want to argue that the source of inspiration might not have been
solely reaped from theories of ancient-style essays; it may have also been a conscious
or unconscious use of the author’s education in poetry writing. A scholar who has
been trained in writing old-style poetry will frequently relapse into writing poems in
ancient style even though he consciously renounces the ancient style in favor of
modern-style poetry. Witness the cases of Lu Xun (1881–1936), Hu Shi
(1891–1962), Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), and even Mao Zedong
(1893–1976). In the case of the Jin Ping Mei, the author consciously or unconsciously
organized his materials in accordance with the poetic writing techniques of antithesis,
parallelism, and alternation between opposite and complementary images, colors,
sensations, qualities, characters, situations, and so on.
Just as free association through the shape, sound, and sense of words, names, and
places constitutes a writing principle for synchronic and linear plot development,
binary antithesis serves as another complementary principle for diachronic and vertical
extension of plot details. The two principles of free association and binary antithesis
are, in my opinion, the two golden shuttles that pull the warp and woof of the creative
impulse into a woven fabric of signifiers. These two principles or golden needles endow
the text with an open hermeneutic space. They provide the logic that organizes
disparate materials into unity in a way as described by Barthes: “The logic regulating
the Text is not comprehensive . . . but metonymic; the activity of associations,
contiguities, carryings-over coincides with a liberation of symbolic energy” (1977,
158). They are also that which enables the reader to approach a writing as a text with
multiple meanings, as a signifying process of dissemination, described by Barthes:
The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that
it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and not merely an
acceptable) plural. The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an
overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an
explosion, a dissemination. The plural of the Text depends, that is, not on the
ambiguity of its contents but on what might be called the stereographic plurality of its
weave of signifiers.
(158)
The plurality of the novel does not merely come from the author’s deliberate
making; it often emanates from a cooperative reading which employs the signifying
principles that I have discussed above. Take the principle of binary opposition for
example—premodern scholars had used it without proclaiming it. We know that the
Jin Ping Mei has been regarded by some as a hidden attack on Yan Song (1481–
1568) and Yan Shifan (1513–65), the wicked father and son who dominated
Ming court politics for a period. According to this view, Yan Shifan had a childhood
name, Qing’er , and style name, Donglou (eastern tower). By opposite
association, Donglou gave rise to Ximen (western gate). Together with Qing’er, the
antihero of the novel, Ximen Qing, was meant to represent the target of the hidden
attack. In the novel, there is a similar detail. Ximen’s servant Laibao goes to the
capital to deliver the birthday gifts. When he announces his master’s name, the
gatekeeper reprimands him: “How dare you announce your Dongmen master and
Ximen master here!” (JPMCH 1980, 1:443). Zhang Zhupo dismisses such attempts
to read the Jin Ping Mei as a roman à clef (JPMZLHB 1985, 34), but he attaches a
special value to the associations of names to the possible meanings lying beyond the
page. For example, he argues that the narrative detail of Chunmei’s being married to
Zhou Xiu and dying of sexual indulgence with Zhou Yi has a hidden message to
impart. In his opinion: “Zhou means ‘boat .’ Zhou Xiu means ‘smell in the
boat .’ He leaves a stink behind because of Chunmei. Zhou Ren means
‘people in the boat .’ Zhou Zhong means ‘being in the boat .’ Only
Zhou Yi stands for a ‘free ferry’ onto which everybody can get and which can
stay wherever it may be. His name alludes to Chunmei’s outrageous promiscuity which
leads to her demise” (193).
Zhang certainly offers an interesting reading, but it is obviously his own
idiosyncratic interpretation. I cannot understand how the allegorical meaning of a free
ferryboat ride relates to Chunmei’s sexual licentiousness and her demise: Chunmei,
not Zhou Yi, is licentious in sexual behavior. Here, I wish to offer a different reading.
Zhou puns with zhou , which means “to fabricate.” In the larger context of the
author’s creative intention, it may impart the fictitious nature of the novel. In light
of each character with the surname Zhou, it may mean “false” or “fictitious.” Zhou
Xiu’s heroic deeds and eventual death for the country is a made-up story of heroism
and loyalty. Similarly, Zhou Ren puns with “false benevolence” ( ), Zhou Zhong
354 MING DONG GU
with “false loyalty” ( ), and Zhou Yi with “false righteousness” ( ). Zhou Yi

is indeed a person of false righteousness, since it is most improper for him to engage
in an illicit affair with his master’s wife.
Conclusion
The Jin Ping Mei is not only fiction but also an open novel. Its openness comes
from two different categories of making. One category is the conscious weaving of
different strands of meanings into a convergent point of ambiguity; the other is the
conscious use of language in the nomenclature of characters, places, objects, and
situations. Ximen’s first son, Guange , belongs to the first category. The author
makes deliberate moves to make him related to a number of characters. One virtually
cannot tell who is his natural father: Ximen Qing, Hua Zixu , Jiang Zhushan
, or, as Zhang Zhupo claims, a ghost? The root cause for the novel’s multi-
facetedness, however, lies with the second category. As a text, it is quite like language,
structured but off centered and without closure. If I continue to use the analogy of
verbal weaving, then I may say that it is comparable to a carpet woven with different-
colored threads and different-shaped patterns. A viewer may follow one or more
threads and find one or more patterns. The patterns could be a square, circle, triangle,
trapezoid, quadrangle, and so on. So long as one has the patience to search, he or she
will find new patterns. Of course, I am employing the weaving metaphor to advance
a view about the novel’s ways of creation. In terms of verbal art, the novel is a weaving
of signifiers orchestrated into a multidimensional discourse by the two interrelated
weaving principles of association and selection.
This new conception and new way of fiction making have endowed the Jin Ping
Mei with a marvelously self-adjusting quality. If one wants to regard it as having a
Confucian vision, it will display a Confucian vision; if one wants to view it as a
Buddhist didactic book, it will assume a Buddhist worldview; if one wants to read it
as a Daoist book, it will radiate Daoist ideas. If one wants to call it an obscene book,
it will reveal obscenities; if one wishes to call it a highly moral book, it will serve as
a book to stop licentiousness. Wen Long makes an apt summary of this open condition:
“It is all right to call it a book of obscenity; it is also all right to call it a book of
moral goodness; it poses no problem if one calls it a book of wonder” (WLPPJPM
1986, 275). Artistically, if one wants to regard it as a great work, it will provide
plenty of evidence to support the argument. If one wants to deem it an inferior work,
then it will also supply ammunition to its detractors. All in all, the novel is so
constructed that one can interpret it in a multitude of ways. As a pioneering effort at
conscious pure fiction making, the Jin Ping Mei made an innovative contribution to
the Chinese theory of the novel, without which later writers of fiction would have
groped in the dark.
List of References
Abbreviated Titles
JPMCH Jin Ping Mei cihua (Cihua edition of the Plum in the
golden vase). By Xiaoxiaosheng . 1980. Vols. 1 and 3. Taipei:
Zengnizhi wenhua shiye youxian gongsi.
JPMZLHB Jin Ping Mei ziliao huibian (Collected mater-
ials for the study of the Plum in the golden vase). 1985. Comp. Hou
Zhongyi and Wang Rumei . Beijing: Beijing Daxue
chubanshe.
WLPPJPM Wen Long piping Jin Ping Mei (Wen Long’s com-
mentary on the Plum in the golden vase). 1986. In Jin Ping Mei chengshu
yu banben yanjiu (A study of Plum in the
golden vase’s composition and editions), ed. Liu Hui . Shenyang:
Liaoning renmin chubanshe.
Other Titles
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and Wang.
———. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and
Wang.
———. 1977. “From Work to Text.” In Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath.
New York: Hill and Wang.
B LOOM , H AROLD . 1975. A Map of Misreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
D ERRIDA , J ACQUES . 1981. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
E AGLETON , T ERRY . 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil and
Blackwell.
G U , M ILTON M. [M ING D ONG ]. 1997. “The Genesis and Evolution of Literary
Forms: An Inquiry Across Cultural Boundaries.” Tamkang Review 17(4):443–76.
H ANAN , P ATRICK . 1963. “Sources of the Chin P’ing Mei.” Asia Major 10(1):23–67.
H OLLAND , N ORMAN . 1968. The Dynamics of Literary Response. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
H SIA , C. T. 1968. The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction. New York:
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L ÉVY , A NDRÉ . 1985. “Introduction to the French Translation of Jin Ping Mei cihua.”
Trans. Marc Martinez. Renditions, no. 24:109–29.
L I X IUSHENG and Z HAO Y ISHAN , eds. 2001. Zhongguo fenti wenxue
shi: Xiaoshuo juan : (History of Chinese literature by
genres: Fiction volume). Shanghai: Guji chubanshe.
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Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe.
LU GE and M A Z HENG . 1991. Jin Ping Mei renwu daquan
(A dictionary of characters in the Plum in the golden vase).
Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe.
N ING Z ONGYI and L UO D ERONG . 1992. Jin Ping Mei dui xiaoshuo
meixue de gongxian (The Plum in the golden vase’s
contributions to the aesthetics of fiction). Tianjin: Tianjin Shenhui Kexueyuan
chubanshe.
P LAKS , A NDREW . 1987. The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
———. 1993. Mingdai xiaoshuo sida qishu (The four
masterworks of the Ming novel). Beijing: Heping chubanshe.
P ROUST , M ARCEL . 1954. A la Recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of things past).
3 vols. Paris: Gallimard.
R OBERT , M ARTHE . 1980. The Origin of the Novel. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
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Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. Andrew Plaks. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
356 MING DONG GU
———. 1986. “Chin P’ing Mei.” In The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese
Literature, ed. William Nienhauser. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 1990. “How to Read The Plum in the Golden Vase.” In How to Read the Chinese
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University Press.
———, trans. 2002. The Plum in the Golden Vase. Vol. 2. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press.
T ANNER , T ONY . 1979. Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
W ANG R UMEI . 1984. “Ping Zhang Zhupo de Jin Ping Mei pinglun”
(On Zhang Zhupo’s commentaries on the Plum in the
golden vase). In Lun Jin Ping Mei (On the Plum in the golden vase).
Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe.
W ATT , I AN . 1960. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
X U S HUOFANG . 1988. Lun Jin Ping Mei de chengshu ji qita
(On the composition of the Plum in the golden vase and
other matters). Jinan: Qilu shushe.
Y E L ANG . 1982. Zhongguo xiaoshuo meixue (The aesthetics of
Chinese fiction). Beijing: Beijing Daxue chubanshe.
Z HANG H ONGXUN . 1984. “Shi tan Jin Ping Mei de zuozhe, shidai, qucai”
, , (Tentative remarks on the Plum in the golden
vase’s author, time, and sources). In Lun Jin Ping Mei (On The plum in
the golden vase), comp. Hu Wenbin and Zhang Qingshan . Beijing:
Wenhua yishu chubanshe.

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Brocade of Human Desires: The

Poetics of Weaving in the Jin

C AN AN EROTIC NARRATIVE RISE to the stature of first-rate literary art while it is

Ming Dong Gu (gu@rhodes.edu) is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at Rhodes

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writing that I may term “intertextual dissemination,” a notion that conceives of

By emphasizing that events and characters are linguistically generated, Zhang is

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We may compare Barthes’s analogy with Zhang’s miscellaneous remarks on

with “false loyalty” ( ), and Zhou Yi with “false righteousness” ( ). Zhou Yi

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