A couple of years ago I published an article in The Journal of the American Oriental Society on what I believed to be the dominant Han-era reading of "Guanju," the first, and thus most important, song in Shi jing or The Book of Songs. This commentary has been linked to the so-called Lu School of Han Shi jing hermeneutics. (1) About the time my article appeared, Jeffrey Riegel of the University of California at Berkeley published, in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, his analysis of a newly discovered commentary to "Guanju." (2) Found in 1974 among the archaeological treasures of a Western Han tomb at Mawangdui in Changsha, imbedded in a manuscript dubbed Wuxing pian by scholars, the commentary stands as the earliest extant to songs from Shi jing. Its exegesis of "Guanju" or "The Calling Ospreys" is strikingly different from the rest of the Han commentary tradition in that it speaks frankly of its erotic content. Though our articles had already gone to press when we discovered that we were both working on projects relating to "Guan ju," we've since talked about some of the parallels in the Han literary tradition to ideas found in the Han commentaries to Shi jing. What I would like to do today is to review a cycle of works from the fu tradition to put the attitudes towards sex in the Han approaches to "Guanju" in some perspective. What this will do is to demonstrate that, pace Riegel, the Han commentaries have a fairly consistent view towards sex, and one that is parallel to that found in the fu tradition contemporary or nearly contemporary to them.

Let me first talk a little more about Shi jing, "Guanju" in particular, and the commentaries on "Guanju." Shi jing, the earliest anthology of poems from China, is a seminal work of the Chinese classical canon, and was among the five earliest recognized Confucian classics. Its influence stretched across the spectrum of premodern Chinese civilization from philosophy to literature to governance. We know very little about the actual circumstances of Shi jing's compilation, but according to the tradition preserved in the Western Han Shi ji or Records of the Historiographer, it was Confucius who had pared down a collection of some three thousand pieces and "selected what could further ritual and propriety." (3) The resulting collection of 305 songs, dating from the eleventh century BCE to the sixth century BCE, includes banquet, sacrificial and ritual songs, prayers, poems of political protest, epic poems about early mytho-historical figures, hymns, and, most of all, folk songs or folk song-like pieces. A number of the folk songs contain erotic themes, presenting an intellectual challenge for Confucian scholars down through the centuries.

"Guanju" is the lead poem of the Guo feng or Airs of the States, the first of four parts of Shi jing. The Airs of the States is comprised primarily of poems with readily apparent folk-song-like characteristics. It is generally accepted that these were, for the most part, folk songs, or somewhat literary reworkings of folk songs. (4) "Guanju" is a good representative of the type of songs found in this section. I read it now in my translation:

Guan-guan calls the osprey

Abiding on the River's islet.

Coy and comely the good maiden,

A gentleman's fine mate.

Long and short the duckweed,

To left and right he seeks it.

Coy and comely the good maiden,

Awake and asleep he looks for her.

He seeks her, but doesn't get her,

Awake and asleep thinking, yearning,

Longing, oh, oh how he longs,

Tossing turning side to side.

Long and short the duckweed,

To left and right he picks it.

Coy and comely the good maiden,

With lute and zither he befriends her.

Long and short the duckweed,

To left and right he plucks it.

Coy and comely the good maiden,

With bell and drum he delights her.

The narrative of this song is fairly easy to trace, although the opening couplet with its scene from nature has been much debated. There are a number of songs that begin with a similar allusive couplet, and of these some have the opening pair of sound words. Naturally, commentators attempt to link these couplets to the theme of the rest of the poem. The theme of "Guanju" is the pursuit of an appropriate mate by a man of high social station. The proper young lady is described as yaotiao, which might refer to her being reserved and shy, or that she's physically attractive, or both. Obviously, this could be a loaded term, and its reading colors one's interpretation of the piece. There is no indication as to whether this should be read as a first-person or a third-person narrative; there are no first-person pronouns as in some other Shi jing songs, and a large number of songs can't but be read as third-person narratives; nonetheless a first-person reading isn't out of the question. However that may be, the man in the poem is obsessed with obtaining a certain young woman, and his tossing and turning in bed can be read as lust or infatuation. In the end, he controls his passion and woos her, or has her serenaded, with ritually appropriate music.

The history of interpretation of this poem suggests that the placement of "Guanju" as the first song of Airs of the States and, more important, Shi jing, was deliberate. A late second-century CE fu, Zhang Chao's "Qiao 'Qingyi fu'," or "Reproaching the 'Fu on the Grisette," which we'll return to later, states that "Master Kong thought it the best, / Arranging it to cap the head of the Book." This reflects the tradition found in the Records of the Historiographer that Confucius had edited and compiled Shi jing. The esteem that Confucius is said to have had for "Guanju" and the connection made between the worth of this song and its appointed place in Shi jing, is discussed at length in Han Shi wai zhuan, which states:

"Guan ju" is "the foundation of heaven and earth" because it celebrates the proper relationship between husband and wife, one of the five right relationships in Confucianism that are seen as bringing order to society. Suggesting that the male and female figures of "Guanju" represent the king and queen of the people, the Western Han official Kuang Heng states in a memorial, "Confucius, in setting the order of the Songs made 'Guanju' its beginning. He says the [king and queen] are the parents of the people. If the conduct of the queen is not equal to Heaven and Earth, then she lacks the basis to make offerings to the divine spirits, and the appropriateness for setting in order the myriad things." (6) In this passage, Kuang Heng suggests that "Guanju" celebrates more than the right relationship of husband and wife, but also the top-down effecting of the ordering of the world by the first couple of the realm, specifically, by the proper comportment of the queen.

The upright conduct of the woman in the song is the focus for most of the Han commentaries. The best known of these commentaries is that of the Mao School, which in the Han dynasty eventually came to dominate Shi jing hermeneutics such that the co-existing schools quickly faded away to near obscurity after the fall of the dynasty. The Commentary on Mao's Songs (Mao shi zhuan), which probably dates to the middle of the second century BCE, regards the "coy and comely" young woman as a modest, retiring consort who, respecting her lord, maintains a chaste distance from him. The ospreys serve as an emblem of her behavior, for they, according to the Mao Commentary, maintain a separation between the sexes. Much later in this tradition, the consort is identified with Taisi, queen of the great King Wen, the illustrious progenitor of the Zhou dynasty.

As I demonstrate in my article, the dominant reading of the Han dynasty was that of the Lu School. The Lu School maintained that "Guanju" was a song of protest against the behavior of King Kang of Zhou (ob. 978 BCE) and, especially, that of his consort. (7) According to this reading, King Kang, only the third king of Zhou in succession after the posthumously recognized King Wen, had been guilty of arising late and missing his morning levee. The blame for this transgression against his kingly duties was placed squarely on his consort who, according to proper etiquette, should have left his chambers at dawn. This etiquette is detailed in a parallel story found in Liu Xiang's (ca. 79-ca. 6 BCE) Lienü zhuan, Traditions of Various Women:

The proper deportment of the king's consort is also described in another song from the Shi jing, "Ji ming" or "The Cock Crows." (9) The main voice is that of the king's consort, with the king protesting in the second couplets of the first two stanzas:

According to the Lu School tradition, Kang's consort is charged with not having fulfilled her duties according to ritual prescriptions. By remaining in the king's chambers too long, she encouraged his sexual concupiscence and the resulting dereliction of his duties. Fearing that this behavior might lead to a greater tragedy, i.e., dynastic decline, the court, the Lu School maintains, called upon its laureate to write a piece that would serve as a warning to the King. The song that results, in my opinion, describes the ideal relationship between a good consort and her lord. It is, essentially, in agreement with the Mao School reading, but with the intent to serve as indirect criticism, much the way the Han fu was often written as suasion for the emperor.

Another way to look at the Lu School reading is presented by Professor Riegel: He suggests that the Lu School's "Guanju" is to be understood as "a satire in which the [male] persona's expression of desire is meant as an ironic self-portrait of a man dominated by lust." (11) In other words, "Guanju" is a straightforward poem of criticism, using ridicule to criticize the king. I think this is unlikely since such a frank and humiliating form of criticism would have left the court poet vulnerable to the charge of lese majesty. Referring to a presentation recorded in the Han shu or History of the Former Han, Riegel also suggests that the Lu School reading was essentially anti-sex. The presentation reads, "Following the traces of the final generations of the Three Dynasties . . . was it ever the case that misfortune and calamity did not derive from female character? Hence, as to jade girdle pendants chiming late: ‘Guanju’ sighs over it, aware of the danger to one’s nature and shortening of years occasioned by fondness for sex. . . ." (12) Our understanding today of the Lu School is built on a number of tiny fragments from various sources, and this is the only one that I am aware of that makes this claim about the dangers of sexual activity. Moreover, the passage doesn't claim that sexual activity is bad in itself, but that "fondness for sex," i.e., overindulgence in sexual activity, is bad. The passage is unambiguously misogynistic; hence, the view of the Lu School may be said to be misogynistic, but it does not go so far as to advocate chastity because of the dangers women supposedly posed.

The Lu School is often grouped with two other lost schools of Shi jing, the Qi School and the Han School. The Three Schools, as they are known, seem to have had distinct ways of looking at Shi jing, but in the case of "Guanju," their readings may have been identical or almost so. A mid-Han development in the Mao School reading of Shi jing (13), a view later elaborated upon by the greatest Han scholiast Zheng Xuan (127-200), (14) presents a major shift in persona. This reading suggests that the persona of the poem is the Queen Consort, not the lord or king, and that she is seeking other suitable women for her lord's harem. This radical view eliminates the male voice entirely and expunges all but one reference to the lord. Since this reading departs from the others in positing the Queen Consort as the song's voice, there is with it no longer any reference to sexual behavior, aside from the oblique reference to the harem.

Professor Riegel, in his explanation of the newly discovered Wuxing pian reading of "Guanju" claims that it is distinct from the Han schools in the frankness with which it discusses the sexual content of the song. He states that its real importance, though, is that it "is the earliest interpretation of the song that provides a formal exegesis of its language and imagery." (15) The Wuxing pian Commentary to "Guanju" is rather brief and so I quote it in full in Riegel's translation:

Riegel explains that in this reading, sex is not something to be shunned, but that it is a xiaohao or "minor desire" when compared to a dahao or "major desire" such as carrying out li, "ritual." The male persona in this song realizes that it is more important to exercise ritual than give free reign to his lust. Thus the man exercises self-restraint and avoids excess.

Professor Riegel demonstrates through citations that the reading of the Wuxing pian is in accord with early Ruist thought. He cites, for example, this passage from Mengzi (6B.1): "Suppose you would get a wife by climbing over your neighbor's wall and dragging away his virgin daughter, but would not if you did not. Would you go and drag her away?" (17) Mencius is saying, essentially, that the ends do not justify the means: one must remain faithful to the prescriptions of ritual even if something desirable was obtained by abrogating them. One must engage self-restraint and refrain from shameful conduct. Riegel concludes that "all the Ru School sources agree that, once someone recognizes the conflict between fulfilling sexual desires and maintaining ritual decorum, his desire for order will overwhelm mere sexual longings." (18) He adds that the notion of sexual restraint evokes early Daoist techniques to preserve one's vital essence. These might involve lying on one's back and using "psycho-physical methods" to cause "the return of spermatic essence." Yet, though the male in "Guanju" is also found in a supine position, he is not depicted as serving to bolster his longevity through sexual restraint, but as serving to protect his reputation, demonstrate his regard for ritual, and further social harmony. Riegel points out, though, that "physical and moral cultivation were closely related endeavors." (19)

All of these Han readings of "Guanju" are, at least on one level, about sex. The Mao School reads it as being about maintaining a chaste distance between the consort and her lord. The Three Schools, led by Lu, regard the song as a warning to the king against overindulgence in sex. The recently discovered Wuxing pian reading understands the poem to be a forthright illustration of sexual restraint by an anonymous man. None of them, Riegel's argument notwithstanding, are really against sex, but emphasize that there ought to be limits imposed on sexual activity. If there were one among these readings that I would regard as anti-sex, it would be Wuxing pian, in that it illustrates the absurdity of sexual behavior by asking rhetorically if one would venture to copulate in front of others.

We can see the idea of sexual restraint, or lack of it, as a theme in a series of Han fu. The fu was the dominant literary genre of the Han dynasty. Commonly rendered in English as "rhyme prose" or "rhapsody," among other translations, it defies simple description. The most famous type of fu from the Han is the gu fu, or "ancient-style fu" that, as David Knechtges explains, is characterized by "an ornate style, lines of unequal length, mixture of rhymed or unrhymed passages, parallelism and antithesis, elaborate description, hyperbole, pleonasm, extensive cataloguing, difficult language, a tendency towards a complete portrayal of a subject, and often a moral conclusion." (20) Display was an important quality identified with the gu fu, and so the long "ancient-style fu" is also referred to in English as the "epideictic fu." Another form, the "short lyrical fu," is so unlike the long, epideictic fu that it is difficult to regard them as belonging to the same genre. Some of the fu that exhibit the theme of sexual restraint are of the long, epideictic form, but most are of the short, lyrical type. Many of the fu in the series I'm about to talk about are also discussed, from a different perspective, in the first chapter of Professor Li's book, Enchantment and Disenchantment. (21)

Sexual restraint, or lack thereof, is the theme of a series of fu: Song Yu's (fl. 298-263 BCE) "Fu on the Gaotang Shrine," "Fu on the Goddess," and "Fu on the Lechery of Master Dengtu," Sima Xiangru's (179-117 B.C.E.) "Fu on the Beautiful One," Cai Yong's (132/3-192 CE) "Fu on the Grisette," and Zhang Chao's (late 2^nd c. CE) "Reproaching the 'Fu on the Grisette.'" (22) This series finds its initial inspiration from Chu ci or Songs of Chu, another early collection of songs from China, this one from or concerning the area of Chu. Chu, the largest state in the Warring States period, was located in the South, and was culturally distinct from that of the Zhou-defined North. The Han fu in general finds much thematic and stylistic inspiration in the varied works of this collection. The songs of Chu ci, for instance, can also be said to be epideictic. The narrative structure as well as theme of the sexual restraint fu take their inspiration from that of some of the songs of the Jiu ge or Nine Songs section of Chu ci. If the Han commentator on Chu ci, Wang Yi (fl. 114-120 CE), may be believed, the Jiu ge are literary reworkings of Chu religious liturgies. (23) The purported author is Qu Yuan (ca. 340-278 BCE), to whom about half of Chu ci is attributed. One of the Jiu ge, "Xiang jun" or "Goddess of the Xiang," serves as a particularly good pattern for what follows in the Han series.

The "Goddess of the Xiang" is a poem of some thirty-eight lines that, to borrow David Hawkes's phrase, describes "the quest of the goddess": the attempt of a wu or Chu shaman-type figure to meet with a goddess on an island in the river Xiang. The goddess, who is remarked to be a beauty, coyly waits for the shaman, and yet seems occupied with some unidentified figure on the island. The shaman, meanwhile, sets forth from shore on a flower-bedecked boat, or, alternately, on a dragon steed, which could be a reference to a boat decorated with a dragon design. The shaman cannot see the goddess, but he hears her playing reed-pipes and wonders for whom she is playing. He begins to weep, not finding her and yet longing to be with her. He laments, "The pain is more lasting if loving is faithless: / She broke her tryst; she told me she had not time." (24) Picking some flowers for his beloved, he takes note of the birds roosting in the roof of the hall there, and the water lapping up against the hall, and leaves her precious gifts of a ring and gemstone. He concludes, "Time once gone cannot be recovered: / I wish I could play here a little longer." (25) This song shares several images with "Guanju": the river, the islet, the birds on the islet, music, and the separation of the male and female personas. Significantly, "The Goddess of the Xiang" describes a male persona's ultimately futile search for his beloved, a beautiful woman described as a goddess. This, too, is evocative of the "Guanju" theme and has particular significance with respect to the fu tradition.

Song Yu is said to have been a disciple of Qu Yuan. There is little more to the tradition than that; without any reliable information about him we might well conclude that he is a fictional personage. Two parts of Chu ci are attributed to him, the Jiu bian or Nine Changes (or Arguments), and "Zhao hun" or "Summoning the Soul"; these we may consider pre-Han works. There are also a dozen or so fu attributed to Song Yu, and yet the attribution is problematic. They are probably works from the early Han. The "Fu on the Gaotang Shrine" contains two parts: the first is a dialogue between King Xiang of Chu and Song Yu in which Song Yu describes for the king the beautiful goddess of Shaman Mount and the tryst this goddess once had with a former king, followed by a request by the king to rhapsodize on Shaman Mount; the second is a description of Shaman Mount in the epideictic style. It ends with Song Yu's suggestion that if the king wishes to visit Shaman Mount, then he ought to prepare for his tryst by fasting and purifying himself. Then, "Having thus dispelled your ignorance, / You may then go to your tryst. / With your thoughts on the myriad regions, / And anxious about harm to the state, / You become receptive to worthies and sages, / And they will assist you wherever you are deficient. / Your nine apertures will be unclogged, and your vital spirit will be unblocked. / You shall extend your years, increase your fated span / By a thousand, even ten thousand years!" (26) Though by no means unambiguous, this conclusion implies that a sexual tryst will not in fact result, but rather, having prepared himself, the king will make concern for his state paramount, a concern that can be undone by undue attention to beautiful women. His sexual restraint will result in increased longevity. If this reading is correct, then here we have an example of the sort of complementarity of physical and moral cultivation that Professor Riegel suggests.

Reference to the narrative of "Fu on the Gaotang Shrine" is made at the beginning of "Fu on the Goddess." The structure is similar to the Gaotang Shrine piece, in that it, also, is of two parts. In the first part, Song Yu, after having told the king about the goddess of the Shaman Mount, dreams of having an encounter with a beautiful goddess. The next day he tells the king, who asks him to rhapsodize on the subject of her beauty. In the second part, Song Yu catalogues the goddess's gifts, and then describes their encounter. Song Yu describes her as having contradictory impulses: on the one hand, she is "calm and composed," and "maintains a lovely reserve in quiet seclusion," and on the other, she looks toward Song Yu "with beckoning gaze" and "her manner seemed intimate." Song Yu raises his bed curtains and invites her in, but she, maintaining her chastity, refuses. They linger together for a moment "in spiritual congress," and then, ringing the simurgh bells, as if jade girdle pendants, she prepares to leave. The piece ends with Song Yu crying that his "bowels were wrenched, and my spirit wounded," and finally, "Sad and sorrowful, with tears falling down my face, / I sought her till the light of dawn." (27) Thus the fu ends with a tryst that is only "spiritual" in nature, and abandoned by the goddess, the poet, like the shaman in "Goddess of the Xiang," reveals his feelings of deep sorrow over his loss.

The "Fu on the Lechery of Master Dengtu" might well be seen as a companion piece to the other two just described, even though the overall tenor of this fu is different: it combines humor with erotic content. "The Lechery of Master Dengtu" is also in two parts, and the sections are clumsily connected. The first episode is Song Yu's defense before the king of Chu against the charge, leveled by a certain Master Dengtu, that he is a lecher. Song Yu, acknowledging that he is exceedingly handsome and clever in speech, rejects the charge. In his defense, he recounts how he has been able to fend off for three years the advances of an eastern neighbor’s daughter, a girl of utterly perfect beauty; never once, Song Yu brags, did he give in to her charms. He points out that Master Dengtu has had five children by his wife, a woman of singular homeliness. Song Yu asks the king who the real lecher is. In the second episode, an envoy tells the same king about coming across a group of girls picking mulberry leaves. Among these girls was one of particular comeliness. The envoy offers her a flower and flirts with her, but the girl proclaims her willingness to die rather than accept such advances. The envoy honors her dedication to chastity. Their spirits meet briefly, like those of Song Yu and the goddess in "Fu on the Goddess." The girl then takes her leave. The second half of this piece, then, draws on both "Goddess of the Xiang" and "Fu on the Goddess," except that now the chaste goddess has been transformed into a humble human girl. Like the goddesses in the earlier narratives, she signals her interest in the male persona, by "rolling eyes casting furtive glances at" the envoy; it is also communicated emblematically: mulberry picking is an erotic figure in traditional as well as modern Chinese literature. (28) The tryst is not physically consummated; the envoy proudly announces to the king that "in declaiming poems and upholding the rites, we never transgressed the bounds of propriety." (29) The conclusion, then, is that the couple adopted sexual restraint because ritual was recognized to be more important. They maintained their virtue and chastity and communed only spiritually. It bears noting, though, that up to this point in this series of fu, the female persona has been the controlling factor; if it had been up to the male personas, there would have been a physical consummation in each instance.

Given the similarities in structure between "Fu on the Lechery of Master Dengtu" and Sima Xiangru's "Fu on the Beautiful One," it is pretty apparent that one influenced the other. Given the narrative consistency of the second half of the "Lechery" piece with the "Goddess of the Xiang," "Fu on the Gaotang Shrine" and "Fu on the Goddess," we must conclude that "Fu on the Lechery of Master Dengtu" is the model on which Sima Xiangru's "Fu on the Beautiful One" is based. (30)

As in "The Lechery of Master Dengtu," Sima Xiangru appears as a character in his own fu, and describes himself as handsome and refined. And as in the former piece, Sima Xiangru is accused of being a potential predator on the king’s harem. The king, this time the king of Liang, asks Sima Xiangru if he is a lustful person. Sima Xiangru denies being lustful, and goes so far as to suggest that his sexual restraint exceeds that of Confucius and Mozi, models of sexual restraint in the past. The reason for this, he says, is that Confucius and Mozi avoided putting themselves in situations where their self-control would be tested. The poet then relates a story almost identical to that told by Song Yu, of resisting for three years the advances of the beautiful and coquettish daughter of his eastern neighbor. In the second half of this fu, Sima Xiangru relates a story that illustrates the herculean efforts he has expended in sexual restraint. He tells of a trip he made through Zheng and Wei, which is a reference to the two sections of the Shi jing's Airs of the States most known for their erotic songs, through the areas of the rivers Zhen and Wei, referring to a particular song among the Airs of Zheng that has to do riverside assignations, and finally through Mulberry Grove, which is both another reference to a poem in Shi jing that tells of a man's appointments with three women, and a erotic emblem on its own, (31) before arriving at a lodge called the "Upper Palace," which is connected with Mulberry Grove in the Shi jing song just mentioned. There he was met by "an unusual beauty of unsurpassed pulchritude." She had those conflicting aspects to her personality that were described of the mulberry-picking girl in "The Lechery of Master Dengtu": she was of "chaste character" and yet of "voluptuous allure." She asks him something like, "Hi sailor, where 're you from?" She plays a couple of seductive zither tunes, and then, with the wind blustering and the snow swirling outside, she tries to seduce him. The fu concludes:

Sima Xiangru thus boasts that he was able to lie down next to an unclothed beauty who had given herself up to him, but control his passions, and walk away from the situation. (33) How much stronger was Sima Xiangru in his sexual restraint than Confucius, who had fled at the first sight of the dancing girls of Qi! This narrative is one more step in the process that Liu Xie (ca. 465- ca. 520 CE), in his fifth-century work of Chinese literary criticism, the Wenxin diaolong or Embellishments on the Heart of Literature, calls tongbian, or "inheriting and innovating." This is a process that emphasizes the centrality of imitation in the creative process, but an imitation along the lines of the imitatio of the European Renaissance, the tweaking of the old patterns and language to create something new. Sima Xiangru pays homage to the narrative structure of "Goddess of the Xiang" and of the sexual restraint fu attributed to Song Yu, converts the goddess into human form as in "The Lechery of Master Dengtu," and adds several references to erotic content in Shi jing. Then he tweaks the ending to make the narrative his own: it is the male persona, that is to say the poet, who wrests control of the situation from what hitherto had been the power of the female persona. It is the poet, and not the beauty, who decides that they will not have sex.

Cai Yong's "Fu on the Grisette," though departing considerably from this narrative stream, takes its cue nonetheless from the fu on sexual restraint. "Fu on the Grisette" is a short, lyrical fu that, unlike the other fu we've just discussed, has even, tetrasyllabic lines as in the dominant prosody of Shi jing. The topic is a maidservant, identified by the metonym qingyi or "black smock." The expression qingyi is later associated with the female side in sexual congress. Like the fu we have just discussed, the "Fu on the Grisette" may be neatly divided into two halves. The first half is descriptive of the maidservant’s social background, physical beauty, talents, and moral qualities. It begins:

The first part of this passage is highly derivative of Shi jing, taking its imagery primarily from the song "Shi ren" (Mao shi 57) or "The Stately Woman," which describes the beauty of the wife of Duke Zhuang of Wei (r 757-735 BCE). In the third line, Cai Yong makes reference to the "coy and comely" lady of "Guanju." This brief reference is picked up again:

Thus Cai Yong boldly compares this lowly maidservant to the good and fair, and socially superior woman of "Guanju."

The second half of "Fu on the Grisette" is partly narrative and partly descriptive of the emotions of the maidservant and the male voice. Cai Yong states that the reason he is writing is to express his emotions: "Even if I experience pleasure and bliss, / I express, vent my feelings." The plain, almost austere, language of the first half gives way to highly lyrical descriptions that evoke "Fu on the Beautiful One":

This half’s debt to "Fu on the Beautiful One" is evident here, especially in reference to the blustery winter scene. The similarities between the two relevant sections serve to heighten the effect of their most significant difference in content: In Cai Yong's piece, it is strongly suggested that the lovers have physically consummated their love. There is no elevation of sexual restraint as a virtue, even in the fatuous manner of "Fu on the Beautiful One." The audacity of the affair is softened by the elliptical reference to the night the lovers spend together, and yet one cannot escape the conclusion that this piece departs from its models in what must have been considered by many of Cai Yong’s contemporaries a scandalous turn. (34) The fu ultimately returns to the theme of the earlier poems: The pain caused by the separation of the lovers. The need for the breakup differs from the fu’s antecedents: Instead of the rejection by a divinity of a mortal in "Fu on the Goddess," or the rejection by a chaste man of a seductive girl in "Fu on the Beautiful One," here the lovers must part because of their incompatible social statuses: she, the maidservant, and he, the upper-class gentleman. The poet grieves that the two are "not like Oxherd and Weaving Maid," who, according to the famous myth, were allowed to meet once a year on a bridge of magpies. The two earthbound lovers of Cai Yong's fu cannot ever meet again. Yet this is the essentially the same conclusion of all the earlier pieces, including "Guanju": the ultimately chaste separation of mates.

The final fu that we will consider is not part of the cycle we've been discussing except by association. Very little is known about the late Han dynasty official Zhang Chao, but there is preserved a fu that he wrote in response to "Fu on the Grisette." Apart from the interest this fu engenders based on its content, we also have in it testimony to the circulation of literary works in the late second century. Zhang Chao's response piece, "Reproaching the 'Fu on the Grisette,'" is, save for a single two-syllable line, tetrasyllabic, like "Fu on the Grisette" and "Guanju." It, too, has profound associations with "Guanju."

Zhang Chao wastes no time in launching his philippic against Cai Yong's fu:

Zhang Chao is convinced of Cai Yong's fall. Yet the overall emphasis of Zhang Chao’s opprobrium is not on Cai Yong’s character, but on his writing. The sense is that Cai Yong has expended precious writing on salacity. Since later in the fu Zhang Chao explicates the "Guanju" song, I suspect that his own literary criticism is rooted in the passage from Analects 4/20, "The Master said, ‘As for "Guanju," it is joyful yet not wanton, sorrowful yet does not cause harm.’" This passage, which emanates from the heart of the Confucian tradition, relates an ideal-become-dictum about the proper restraints to be observed in literature. Cai Yong's piece, in Zhang Chao's view, violates this dictum.

Much of Zhang Chao’s piece is concerned not with language or literature per se, but with his perception that the court was plagued by women meddling in its affairs. The rise of women and eunuchs in court politics, and their prominence in the affairs of the empire, had led members of the scholar-official class to believe that the dynasty was in decline. Around 120, the high official Yang Zhen (ob. 124) sent up a memorial asserting that if women were allowed to take part in the affairs of the court, then "they will bring disturbance and chaos to the realm." He adds, "The Book of Documents warns against hens cocking and crowing; the Book of Songs reproaches shrewd wives destroying the state." (35) In keeping with this tradition, Zhang Chao writes:

The section that follows this one is, in my opinion, the crux of the entire piece. It is a brief exegesis of "Guanju" from the Lu School perspective; indeed it is one of the more extensive passages to explain the Lu School reading of "Guanju":

What does this passage tell us about Zhang Chao's criticism of "Fu on a Grisette"? First, it indicates, from Zhang Chao's perspective, Cai Yong's egregious error in comparing his lowly maidservant with the upper class, refined consort of "Guanju." Second, it strongly suggests that the "Fu on the Grisette" is indicative of a dynasty in decline. Perhaps Zhang Chao thought that if such an esteemed scholar of the Confucian classics, who was so concerned with preserving and promoting the correct texts of the classics, and who was so dedicated to study of ritual--if such a man as this could write a decadent work, then what chance did the court have to overcome the plagues that afflicted it? Third, Zhang Chao insinuates that by taking up "Guanju" as a model for literature, one may regard "Fu on a Grisette" as obscene and base.

The last section of "Reproaching the 'Fu on the Grisette'" is designed to exploit presumed inconsistencies between Cai Yong's scholarly interest in ritual and his apparent disregard of it in "Fu on the Grisette." Zhang Chao here relates the improper path to betrothal: "The marriage lacks a go-between, / The ancestral temple is without a host. / The family is not called by name, / Relying on the place where they dwell." These steps violate the precepts given in the ritual classics that mandate the assistance of a go-between, the reception of the groom’s party by the bride’s parents at the latter’s ancestral temple, and the formal inquiry as to the bride’s clan name. Zhang Chao concludes his polemic with the sort of ad-hominem attack that he began with: "How is it that one so bright and wise, / Desires to become the father of a servant? / Striving to be a gentleman of integrity, / Does not correspond to self-gratification." Zhang Chao calls Cai Yong to task for disregarding ritual precepts in order to exercise his lecherous feelings towards a lowly maidservant. A union between Cai Yong and this humble maid may result in children who can hold no proper place in the family, and who can only become servants. Sons from such a union could not fulfill their most important life functions: to bring glory and immortality to the father by carrying on his name, by honoring his achievements, and most importantly, by providing him offerings in the family temple.

The fu series that I have just discussed begins with a literary reworking of a bit of religious drama in which a wu shaman's quest for a goddess residing on a river's islet is described in terms befitting the first poem of Shi jing, "Guanju": the pursuit by a man for an ideal mate, that is to say, one both lovely and demure. The motif of this quest is picked up in a series of fu in which sexual restraint is exercised first by the female persona, who transforms from goddess to a human woman of lowly status, and then by the male persona, before it is finally abandoned all together. There are a couple of main reasons given for the exhibit of sexual restraint in these fu. One is related to the idea of ding qing or "stabilizing the passions." A note written by Liu Xin (ob. 23) appended to the section on sexual treatises in the Bibliographical Treatise of the History of the Former Han, states that "if one regulates his sexual pleasure he will feel at peace and attain a high age. If, on the other hand, one abandons himself to its pleasure disregarding the rules set forth in the abovementioned treatises one will fall ill and harm one’s very life." (36) The other is concerned with upholding ritual, especially in relations between men and women. This is underscored when Cai Yong seems to abandon the restrictions on proper behavior, despite his renown as a scholar of ritual, and is chastised for it by Zhang Chao. For apart from Zhang Chao's misogynistic views on the supposed role of the femme fatale in dynastic decline, his main point is that by abandoning sexual restraint in his fu, Cai Yong abrogates ritual, by which the world is ordered.

The consistency in viewpoint in most of these fu--that sexual restraint allows room for the proper exercise of ritual--is the main point of all of the Han commentary traditions attached to "Guanju," save for, perhaps, that of Zheng Xuan and his conceit of the consort's search for suitable harem women. Clearly, as Jeffrey Riegel argues, the Wuxing pian's understanding of the point of "Guanju" is to indicate the primacy of ritual over sexual behavior. "To use sex to illustrate ritual, is but to advance," the Wuxing pian commentary concludes. The main idea behind the other Han commentary traditions is, likewise, to elevate ritual, whether it is simply to indicate maintaining a chaste separation, as in the Mao School reading, or to criticize the abrogation of ritual in the comportment of Kang's consort, as in the Lu and Three School's reading. In all of these readings, "Guanju" ends with a display of ritual: the refined use of music to please the female persona; it does not end with the consummation of the sexual act. In other words, ritual emerges as the proper antidote to the male persona's tossing and turning in bed. The theme of sexual restraint in the Han fu tradition confirms that sex is not really the issue at all, but the celebration or defense of ritual. If it were a campaign directed by James Carville, the message would have been simply communicated, "It's the ritual, stupid."