Thursday, December 10

Tang Yin -- portrait of a lady

Again, I fail at productivity

Thursday was just a terrible blot, because I was tired and cranky and lazy all morning, and never really approached work seriously. I went out to do an errand for S, scanning this work, and I thought about the nature of debate in the case of climate change, which is a hot topic right now.

When I came home, I was forced to begin cooking to prepare for a dinner party later in the evening. That was a nice time, with good conversation, and far too much drinking. Advice for dinner-party days: do your best, your very best, to get something done in the morning, because nothing focused will happen once you begin the cooking.

One accomplishment of note: I got completely caught up on all my grading of students' response papers. Some included very nice comments, and I thought to paste a few of the better examples into my reading notes so that I can remember next time I teach the material what sort of response I might expect. This is actually a nice demonstration of the power of Google docs for taking and organizing notes: all we need do is paste from the Moodle response into the Google doc. No other apps needed, all work done in a web browser, with a laptop sitting on the radiator in the kitchen, at what I sincerely hope is a safe distance from boiling beans and a searing chicken. My notes on The Red Brush are a great example -- it's basically like having a note card to go with the book that is infinitely large, so I can continue putting all my thoughts I ever have on the book in there. Here's a snippet:

Lady Jin: Braver than her husband. eww, gory. A poem, as well. their heroic spirits. graphic imagery: battlefield. Pverty sucks, and so does Han Yu. Leisure, trip, feelings. Preface to Xuan Huazi's colleciton. talent. Shijing: women authors. many genres. palindromes. quatrans. Concubine Ban.

Studied in class, Fall 2009. One student writes,

Of all the responses to the invading Qing armies Lady Jin's remains the most compelling. In her portrait of Lady Jin and her husband Qinchen, Wang Duanshu writes:

"In the end, Qinchen was condemned to death by slicing, and his wife was to be handed over to the troops as a reward. At this, Lady Jin gave out a scream and said, 'If my husband dies, then how could I even think of remaining alive? I also want to die right away.' The commander said: 'Since you want to die, I will order you to be cut in half at the waist.' But Lady Jin [protested] saying: 'Since my husband had been condemned to slicing, why should I be simply cut in half? I should also be condemned to death by slicing.' So the commander agreed to her request."

Lady Jin's story, in all likelihood, is largely a product of either Wang Duanshu's imagination or folkloric legend. That's not to say she didn't exist or wasn't executed by Qing troops, but the details that make the above passage so compelling were most likely not recorded as they occurred. In addition, it should be remembered that at the end of this portrait Lady Jin returns as a ghost to haunt her executioner.

However, I selected Lady Jin mainly because her persona is so stout and dominant, especially, at least in this prose piece, in contrast to her husband who comes across as weak and submissive. Her tongue-lashings of her husband that occur earlier are even more acerbic than the rebukes aimed at her Qing foes above. This intrepid spirit, in the passage above, transcends into something bordering on masochism. The fantastic aspects of Lady Jin's resistance may not render it more useful or exemplary than other martyrs' methods, but it certainly is more interesting to read about than someone drowning themselves in a river or starving in a Buddhist temple.