Mao Biquan and Dong Xiaowan -- Literary Lovers Series

Author: Wang Limin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: A pair of enviable celestial lovers, a reunion that won’t happen again in a thousand years, has sparked countless romantic fantasies and passions in later generations. Especially the mystery of Dong Xiaowan’s life and death remains one of the great "unsolved cases" of the early Qing dynasty. Many believe that Dong Xiaowan’s fate was to be captured and taken into the palace, and the legend of Dong Xiaowan as the Empress Dowager Dongguo of Shunzhi is widely circulated in folk tales. This folklore has even misled some well-read scholars and experts. The story, though three hundred years old, is not distant from me, and the surviving historical records are quite abundant. Let us open the dusty old papers and trace the real life journey of this literary talent and the Qinhuai beauty through the vivid words of Mao Biqiang and his contemporaries, recreating that cultural tragedy. This series of "Literary Lovers" aims to select the emotional interactions between famous writers and women or men during the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties as the main thread, using biographical research and literary creation as the primary material, and writing a moving experience in an accessible way through a biographical style, bringing to life a pair of characters and recreating a social atmosphere. The chosen figures were highly representative of their time. Yuan Zhen’s "Record of the Meeting at the True Hall" (also known as "The Story of Yingying") has a certain real-life prototype and vividly reflects the marital and romantic concepts of Tang Dynasty literati. The story later evolved into the famous "Romance of the West Chamber," vividly showing the evolution of ancient love concepts. Li Qingzhao and Zhao Mingcheng were an exceptionally loving couple in Chinese history. Their love was set against the backdrop of the gradual rise of Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, the sudden change in women’s romantic perspectives, and the great social upheaval between the Northern and Southern Song dynasties. Zhao Mengfu was both a renowned literary figure, calligrapher, and painter, as well as a prince of a fallen dynasty. Under the social context of Mongol rule in the Yuan Dynasty, his marital and romantic concepts underwent certain variations, revealing the process of integration between Central Chinese culture and foreign cultures. Feng Menglong lived in a Ming Dynasty society similar to the modern era, where capitalist factors were beginning to emerge, urban consciousness was awakening, and people sought sensual pleasures. He paid close attention to women’s themes throughout his life, and his works reflect the views of Ming Dynasty women and romantic concepts. After Hou Huiqing married, Feng Menglong not only wrote poems in remembrance of her repeatedly but also never stepped into brothels again. Mao Biqiang and Dong Xiaowan lived during the transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties, and their love was tied to the great changes of the era. Mao Biqiang’s "Recollection Language" poems for Dong Xiaowan, which he, became famous among later generations. However, such pairs of lovers in ancient times, who had experienced romance and love, left behind different kinds of materials. Often, it was due to the extraordinary literary success of one partner that their love story became widely known and spread. The other partner in the relationship then became household names. Specifically, in this series, Yuan Zhen, Li Qingzhao, Zhao Mengfu, Feng Menglong, and Mao Biqiang left behind a wealth of works and personal life materials, while the other half of the pair had relatively scarce information. Therefore, the series inevitably focused more on one person during the writing process. All of these aspects are enough to show the tortuous evolution of marital and romantic concepts in ancient China and their diverse manifestations. The series aims to combine popular accessibility with academic rigor. At the same time, this series is also a new and in-depth understanding of the literary creations of specific writers. The authors of the series hope that readers, while finding it fascinating, will gain aesthetic pleasure and benefit from establishing healthy marital and romantic concepts.