Peach Blossom Fan

Author: Kong Shangren
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: Kong Shangren (1648—1718), styled Pinzhi, also styled Jizhong, styled Dongtang, styled An Tang, and self-styled Yunting Shanshen. He was from Qufu, Shandong, the sixty-fourth descendant of Confucius. His life can be roughly divided into three stages.
1. Pre-Official Stage: Before the age of thirty-seven, he lived at home, taking care of his parents and studying. He came into contact with some Ming loyalists who survived the fall of the Southern Ming, learning much about the primary historical materials of the Southern Ming's rise and fall and the anecdotes of Li Xiangjun. He developed a strong interest in writing a historical drama that reflected the rise and fall of the Southern Ming, beginning to outline and draft The Peach Blossom Fan, but "only sketched its outline, without adorning it with colors" (from The Peach Blossom Fan: A Chronicle).
2. Official Stage: In 1684, during the southern inspection of Kangxi, he was specially sent to Qufu to sacrifice to Confucius. At the age of thirty-seven, Kong Shangren lectured before the emperor, who highly praised him and granted him an extraordinary appointment as a professor at the Imperial Academy. He went to the capital to take up his post. At thirty-nine, he was ordered to the Jiangnan region to manage waterworks, which lasted for four years. During this period, his footsteps nearly covered the former lands of the Southern Ming, and he made friends with a large group of Ming loyalists with national integrity, absorbing their patriotic ideas and deepening his understanding of the rise and fall of the Southern Ming. He actively collected materials to enrich the conception of The Peach Blossom Fan. In the twenty-ninth year of Kangxi's reign (1690), he was transferred back to the capital, serving successively as a professor at the Imperial Academy, an assistant in the Ministry of Revenue, and an assistant director in the Guangdong Department. After years of effort and three revisions, at the age of fifty-two, Kong Shangren finally completed The Peach Blossom Fan. It became extremely popular, being frequently performed in Beijing "without a day off," and even spread to remote regions, including Rongmei (now Hefeng County, Hubei), a place "deep in the mountains, cut off from the outside world" (The Peach Blossom Fan: A Chronicle). The following March, Kong Shangren was dismissed from office. "Fate is cruel, enduring literary slander, and the golden mouth is slandered" (A Poem in Response to the Tribute Poem by Tian Shanyuan of Rongmei, Who Praised The Peach Blossom Fan in Verse), from these lines, it seems that his dismissal was likely due to the controversy surrounding The Peach Blossom Fan.
3. Retired Stage: After his dismissal, Kong Shangren remained idle in the capital for over two years before returning to his hometown to live in seclusion. In the fifty-seventh year of Kangxi's reign (1718), this renowned playwright passed away at the age of seventy in his home in Shimen, Qufu. His other works include the collaborative opera The Little Thunderclap with Gu Cai, as well as his collected poems and essays (The Lake and Sea Collection, The An Tang Collection, The Long Stay Collection, etc.), all of which have been passed down.