Two Mistaken Letters in Ancient China
Two stories by Feng Menglong
(One of the characters from the Song Dynasty drama A Dream of Splendor)
This story, from Feng Menglong’s first collection is titled The Monk with a Note Cleverly Tricks Huangfu’s Wife. Translated by Yang & Yang and found in their book Stories Old & New (2000).
Introduction
This story is actually two stories, both about letters which are sent. The title Feng Menglong gave to this story is at odds with the actual story, so much so that I’m mystified as to why Feng used this title in the first place.
Literacy became commonplace in the Song Dynasty (970 to 1276). In the Cambridge History of China, it is stated that 90% of China’s male population could read and write as of 1120 CE (Volume 5, Book II, Chapter 5: Song Education). By contrast in Western Europe at the time, the literacy rate was no more than 10%. Only in the early 1800s did the literacy rate in Western Europe catch up to literacy in China. However, as Feng points out in this story, letters can cause problems.
Story 1: The Wrongly Sent Letter
In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, before the An Lushan rebellion (roughly 740 CE), a man named Yuwen Shou was a diligent scholar who lived just 15 miles north of the capital of Chang’an. Although he tried to pass the exam for literate men and join the Tang government, he kept failing year after year.
Comment: Various Tang Huangdi (Emperors) held exams but they were not fair and usually the results of the test were rigged to benefit men from well-connected noble families. Very few of the men who passed the exam in the Tang Dynasty were brilliant scholars from humble families. However, the exam system was radically reformed in the Song Dynasty and during the Song, success in the exam was almost completely based on actual ability, not family background. Consequently, it is not a surprise that Yuwen Shou, a humble man of the Tang Dynasty, kept failing the exam.
One year, when Yuwen returned home after failing the exam for the fifth time, his wife named Wang-shi (meaning: female of the Wang clan) wrote a poem mocking her husband, using clever puns and even including his name, though spelled with different characters. She concluded by writing:
If my husband fails the exam again, he will be too ashamed to face his wife and will have return home at night.
Clearly, Wang-shi was a literate woman and her poem hurt Yuwen’s feelings. He vowed the next time he went to Chang’an to take the exam, he would not return until he passed. The next year, to Yuwen’s great joy, he did pass the exam but his anger with with his wife was not appeased by his success. He stayed in the city, enjoying his new status and spending time with the top courtesans of the realm.
Wang-shi learned her husband had passed the exam and guesses that he didn’t return home because of what she had written the previous year. So she wrote a new poem, apologizing for her having doubted his ability and suggesting his new life with the courtesans of Chang’an was unworthy of him. This new poem was delivered by their servant, who could make the journey in half a day.
Yuwen received his wife’s poem but was not mollified. He wrote poem in which he said, I’m on a ladder which reaches into the clouds. Roads are cleared for my palanquin. I dine with members of the royal family and spend time with the flowers of the city. You, in your lonely tower must be content, knowing of your husband’s success.
However, as he was recopying his rather mean poetic response, he spilled water on the paper and absent-mindedly he folded a blank piece of paper and gave it to the servant as his reply.
That night he dreamed he was back home and although he tried to talk to his wife, she ignored him. Instead, she sat in her room and wrote a poem responding to the blank letter she had received from her husband. She wrote:
I found your blank letter as a reply to me. I know you are coming home soon, because the blank page speaks clearly of your feelings.
Yuwen woke with a start and realized he had sent his wife a blank letter and not the poem he wrote. Around mid-day he received a letter from his wife and it contained the poem he dreamed she wrote. Realizing his feelings for his wife were stronger than he thought, he returned home that day. The end.
Comment: We don’t know how common literacy was among Chinese women. There are a few famous female poets in Chinese history and at the top level of society, noble women and wives of the Huangdi were expected to know how to read and write. In Japan, two of the most famous writers were women: Murasaki Shikibu who wrote the Tale of Genji, and Sei Shonagon, both were women at the apex of Japanese society.
The relationship between Yuwen and his wife depicted in this story suggests that Wang-shi was Yuwen’s poetic equal, if not his superior. Her poems are quite clever, while his - unsent - poem is rather pedestrian.
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Story 2: The Evil Letter
Set in Kaifeng, the capital of the Song Dynasty from 970 to 1126, this story is about a man named Haungfu who works as a guard/aide of the Huangdi. At the age of 26, Huangfu was sent on a three month mission to supervise the delivery of clothing to a garrison on the northern border. His young wife (unnamed, I shall call her Wen) had not yet given birth to a child so she lived with just her maid-servant in their house. As befitting a proper Chinese married woman, Wen did not go out of the house.
The day after Huangfu arrived home, an evil monk (Feng does not give him a name and does not specify if he was Buddhist or Daoist, I shall call him Noname) went to the tea house near Haungfu’s house and stayed for some hours drinking tea. Eventually a local dumpling seller, a young man named Seng, came by with dumplings to sell. Noname asked the dumpling seller about the woman who lived in Haungfu’s house. Seng told him he had seen the woman only rarely.
Noname then gave Seng 60 coins (a trivial amount of money) and a packet containing two rings, two short gold hairpins, and a note. Noname instructed Seng to deliver the packet only to the woman of the house, no one else. Foolishly, Seng agreed.
Huangfu noticed Seng, the dumpling-seller furtively open the door to his house and he grabbed Seng and forced him to reveal the packet he was carrying. Comment: for a dumpling seller, Seng is both stupid and slow afoot.
Huangfu read the note and found it was a love letter to his wife, Wen. The note clearly implied that Wen had been having sex with the writer. Huangfu, a man with little wisdom, beat his wife’s servant even as she loudly protested that her mistress had seen no one for the three months Huangfu had been gone. Then Huangfu took Wen down to the local Yamen and accused her of adultery.
Despite being threatened with torture, Wen insisted that she had always been faithful to her husband and she knew nothing about the letter writer or the gold hairpins. The Magistrate said to Haungfu: To convict a thief, one must find the stolen goods. To convict a woman of adultery, there must be proof. You have nothing. If you want to divorce this woman you can, but there is no evidence she has done anything wrong.
Comment: Divorce was generally frowned upon and illegal under a number of circumstances. However, Haungfu seems to be fairly well connected to the Royal Court so the Magistrate seems overly sympathetic to Huangfu’s desire to be rid of his wife.
Ms. Wen, destitute, is soon thinking of killing herself by jumping off one of the seven famous bridges of Kaifeng. However, she is saved by a older woman who claims to be a distant relative. A few days later, who appears at the old woman’s house but Noname, who loudly accuses the old woman of owing him money. The old woman then tells Ms. Wen that she does owe Noname some money but the debt would be forgiven if Ms. Wen agrees to be Noname’s wife. Ms Wen agrees to this and moves in to Noname’s house.
One year later… Huangfu finds that he misses his wife and he goes to the Great State Monastery, something that he and his wife used to do to during previous new year’s celebrations. Note: The Great State Monastery in Kaifeng is mentioned in an earlier story as a Buddhist monastery, one which the Huangdi visits for special ceremonies. By a chain of inference, it appears that Noname himself was a Buddhist monk, as the story title states. Perhaps Noname was just one of the many men who worked for the monastery and that was why he could marry a woman without any comment?
While at the Great State Monastery, who does Huangfu see? His former wife accompanied by Noname. Huangfu says nothing but he follows the couple and then he notices another monk also following Noname and Ms. Wen.
Huangfu asks the other monk what he knows about Noname and the monk says: That man used to be a monk at Potai Monastery on the east side of Kaifeng. That louse stole valuable items worth 200 taels of silver but I was blamed for the theft. I was beaten and driven out of the monastery. Now I work soliciting alms for the Great State Monastery and today I’m going to get revenge on Nonname!
Huangfu tells the monk to delay his revenge for a bit; together they follow Noname and Ms. Wen back home. At home, Wen and Noname get into an argument. Noname tells her: I went to a lot of effort to get you as my wife and it cost me a good deal of money. Fortunately, your former husband did exactly as I wished and divorced you.
This was a confession and Ms. Wen screams in anger and attacks Noname. He responds by choking her, however, Huangfu and the other monk arrived in time to save her and they overpowered Noname. Noname was brought before the Magistrate and he was convicted of theft from Potai Monastery as well as plotting to ruin the marriage of Ms. Wen and Huangfu. Huangfu took his wife back and Noname was executed. The End.
Final Comments
This second story about the Evil Letter is more interesting for what it doesn’t say.
Feng doesn’t identify Noname as a Buddhist or Daoist monk. Why not?
Feng doesn’t criticize Huangfu, though the man clearly behaved like a prize fool when he divorced his young wife on the thinest of pretexts with no actual evidence.
Feng doesn’t explain why another monk was blamed for Noname’s theft at the Potai monastery. I suppose we must conclude that Monasteries do a terrible job of investigation and they fail to notice that one of their monks is a crook who married another man’s recently divorced wife… behavior which is strictly forbidden to Buddhist monks. This might explain why the Song government forced most Buddhist monasteries out of the cities and into the countryside - a policy which was later adopted by the Joseon Dynasty in Korea.
Perhaps we are supposed to understand that the written word is just as dangerous as the what is spoken, which seems like a curious warning, coming from Feng, a man who wrote so much that his collected writings stood taller than his head (to use the Chinese expression for a man who wrote an enormous amount).