This portrayal of the sick Emperor Hsienfeng of the Ching Dynasty is a prelude to another of Kao Yang's long and popular historical novels, Tzu Hsi Chuan Chuan (Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi), a story in six parts, namely: Tzu Hsi in the Early Stage, Jade Throne and Beaded Screen, The Ching Court, Empress Mother and Emperor Son, The Romance of Emperor Kuanghsu and Concubine Chen, and A Setting Sun Lingers Over Yingtai.
Through Kao's vivid style and rich imagination, in five million words, the book takes us through the turns and twists of Ching Court life, especially focusing on Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, the people around her, and important events of the time.
In many writings exploring late Ching history, Tzu Hsi always emerges in rampant defiance of authority, indeed, tougher than the men around her. However, under Kao's pen, the Empress Dowager sometimes "carelessly" shows the color of more ordinary females: a human being, she also has a tender side.
A passage in Tzu Hsi in the Early Stage depicts the scene (from Kao's imagination of course) in which Emperor Hsienfeng, on his deathbed, transfers part of his powers to Empress Tzu An and part to Concubine Yi (Lan-erh), who will later become Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi:
Slowly, as the Emperor turned his face, she came within his glance; then he moved his line of vision away. Suddenly, awkward and complicated expression lines appeared about his inattentive eyes. Was he reminiscing now of happier, bygone days while, at the same time, reacting deeply within to the implications of the scene before him? Was he unable, actually, to distinguish whether the radiation among them was conceived of hatred or love, born of grace or resentment?
"So," the Emperor's voice was low and hoarse, "what should I say to you now?"
Hearing him speak, Concubine Yi crumpled into unrestrained weeping. Her cries, reeking with her sense of being wronged, seemed to convey that even now, the Emperor was still prejudiced against her. And that there was not much time left for her to defend herself.
At this moment, the Emperor reached out with a weak, shaking hand to feel about for something under his pillow. But in vain. The Empress now stood up, lowering her head, and asked, "What are you trying to find?"
"The jade seal, imprinted 'Tung Tao Tang.'"
The Empress located the seal and handed it to the Emperor. Holding it firmly, he put it back into her hand.
"Give it to Lan-erh!" the Emperor ordered.
Now, the low sobbing sound suddenly swelled. The weeping woman carried on now as if she were some long disfavored concubine banished for years to the 'cold palace,' then told this day that she was now to regain the Emperor's favor.
And actually, sadness, joyfulness, excitement...all sorts of errant feelings welled up in her mind where, mixing together chaotically, they were transformed into warm tears. Her moment had finally came...the Emperor clearly understood that he had wronged her over the years. But, these were now his last moments. He would soon leave this world. Only in the next life would she relive the happy days with him. As her train of thought traveled to this point, she was truly overcome with grief, and her flowing tears cascaded, dampening a corner of the Emperor's pillow....
His readers savor the intensity of Kao's graphic pen, which portrays emotions, human affairs, and errant ways of the world in vivid precision.
Every human being, Kao explains, is called mankind because he is endowed with characteristics we identify as human nature. And historical figures, like ordinary people, also share in the "seven human emotions" and "six desires" of Chinese tradition. While collecting source materials for a new novel, a historical novelist who observes his characters-to-be from the standpoint of normal human feelings, he maintains, will, when he writes of them, naturally make them of bones and flesh.
If a historical fiction quotes too many facts, dryness and tastelessness are hard to avoid. Writers disdaining interesting descriptions and meaningful, thought-provoking dialogue may defeat a novel's purpose, obliterating its basic goal, the popular propagation of history. Kao Yang asserts the individuality of each historic figure, assuring that his players are properly manifested in the guises he has chosen.
Of the novel's six sections, Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi and Jade Throne and Beaded Screen have had the most public impact, indeed, once created a furor and have resulted in a lasting triumph for the writer.
Kao's scene begins with a fleet messenger breaking the silence of an early summer's night. It is the third reigning year of Ching Emperor Tungchih, and to report a victory, the messenger "opens the curtain of the Jade Throne." In the chapter headings—Chin Cheng (A Young King Takes Over the Reigns of A Kingdom), Li Hou (Choosing an Empress), and Chia Peng (The Death of an Emperor)—we easily identify the highlights of the first volume.
In these passages, Kao Yang focuses on Tzu Hsi's plotting to seize power...to be in power. Then, in the undercurrents surrounding the choosing of an empress for Emperor Tungchih, Tzu Hsi's jealousy and hatred for Empress Dowager Tzu An flame when the Emperor, Tzu Hsi's own son, develops a closer relationship to her rival. Tzu Hsi vents this anger indirectly—on the newly selected empress—setting the stage for one of the many tragedies that afflicted the Ching empire.
The turns and twists of an active plot continue in the second volume: Ting Pao-Chen, governor of Shangtung Province, finally executes the eunuch An Te-hai, who has been responsible for a reign of evil. And the Ching Court, itself, begins to suffer from the increasing forays of an array of foreign powers. Tseng Kuo-fan, governor-general of Kiangsu and Chekiang Provinces, an important senior general, dies, and in the court, great personnel changes take place.
The costly reconstruction of Yuanmingyuan (the Summer Palace) satisfies Tzu Hsi's luxurious tastes. Then, the chaos rising in the great empire increases in pace as Emperor Tungchih dies of his illness and the Empress Chiashun commits suicide. The Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi now seizes all power and arranges for Tsai Tien (Emperor Kuanghsu) to be ordained emperor. Thus begins the famous interlude known in Chinese history as chui lien ting cheng (administering state affairs behind a bamboo screen).
His first historical novel was Li Wa, the story of Li Wa, a famous courtesan of the Tang Dynasty, published in 1966. Since, Kao has produced more than 70 additional novels, the majority historical fiction. All were initially serialized in local newspapers, especially the United Daily and China Daily. Kao Yang, among the most prolific of Taiwan writers, has thus received wide public recognition.
It is said that a few years ago when Pacific Rim trade began to boom, Hu Hsueh-yen (a Kao novel in three volumes centering on the Ching Dynasty merchant, Hu Hsueh-yen) and Hung Ting Shang Jen (another Kao novel about the same historical figure) became magic how-to books in the Far East, especially for businessmen in Hongkong.
"To my surprise, my novels became textbooks for international trade! This is more unimaginable than an Association of Manchus invitation to me to lecture on their eight banner system," Kao comments.
In the palace hall of historical fiction, Kao Yang is clearly a representative figure. Combining fiction and Chinese historical research, he has created uniquely authentic worlds for his works; there is no conflict in the reality and fantasy he projects, or in the prudence and indulgence which pervade the times and players in his stories.
"Truth," Kao said "is obviously one of the single most important requirements for a writer on pure history. However, a historical novelist, while striving for truth, must also seek to enrich his work with extended content and beauty." That is to say that within the limits of historical truth, a historical novelist must portray, artfully, what might have happened amid the details of the past.
Kao was once told that, in history, everything is unreal except the names of people and places; but in a novel, he says, everything is real except names of people and places: "Thus revealed is the essential distinction between history and fiction."
A novel reflects, among others, its writer's skills in working out a plot. Kao holds that whether a developing story might actually have occurred in objective reality is unimportant. What is important, is whether a writer is able to make his readers believe that it happened in the historical past.
Before Li Wa, his first successful historical novel, Kao experienced failure in works involving pure historical research—because he could not give up, even in the beginning, the tendency to fictionalize.
But historical figures continued to flash across his mind, in spite of his failures as a straight historian. He was obsessed with writing about them, and he went on to try several different themes and approaches, but to no avail. It was still the same problem: He could not abide the essential distinction between history and the novel, and he was not then able to find a satisfying technique for combining the historical and fictional.
Earlier (than 1964), Dr. Li Tung-fan, a famous Chinese historian, had encouraged Kao to write a novel, inserting useful, fabricated characters into real history.
"At the time, this was a trendy writing technique in Europe," said Kao. "But, fabricating believable 'historical' characters is not as easy as it may sound, since a historical novel must tally with multiple requirements of both fiction and non-fiction.
"Characters in a novel must be vivid, and unique; those in a historical novel must also reflect the distinguishing aspects of their times. Think about it, Empress Wu (625-705) was Empress Wu. Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi was Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi. The differences between them lay not only in the ways their gowns were fashioned, but also in their outlooks on life—their casts of mind."
Finally, with the encouragement of the editor of the literary supplement to the United Daily News, Kao made up his mind to focus on limited but revealing historical episodes from the Tang and Sung Dynasties and to flesh these out into a long historical novel. His first attempt was Li Wa.
Kao Yang, now in his 60s, was born Hsu Yen-pien in Hangchow, Chekiang Province. And his interest in history and period fiction can be traced back to his childhood years....
For generations, the Hsu's had been a wealthy and influential family. During the final years of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), a group of Kao's ancestors moved to Hangchow from southern Anhwei Province, and their posterity settled there for almost three hundred years.
During the reign of Ching Dynasty Emperor Kaotzung, one of Kao's ancestors, Hsu Hsiao-fan, became a chu jen (a successful candidate in the provincial-level imperial examinations). And then, seven of his eight sons overtook him, obtaining honors higher than chu jen. Kao ruminated, "There was a horizontal board bestowed by the Emperor hung right above our middle gate, on it the words, Chi Tzu Teng Ko (Seven Sons Passing the Imperial Examinations)." He recalls numerous such horizontal and vertical boards announcing scholarly honors or bestowals of official ranks—a unique historical feature of his old home on the mainland.
Since many of his ancestors entered government by way of a path of scholarly achievement blazed in the days of Emperor Kaotzung, Kao became thoroughly imbued with history via tales from their life stories, which also concerned many other Ching Dynasty figures. Incidents from the past were frequent topics of conversation among his literary family members.
His great-great-grandfather on his mother's side, Hsu Nai-chao, was once governor of Kiangsu Province. Hsu and Ho Kuei-ching, governor-general of Kiangsu and Chekiang Provinces, passed the same examination in the 15th reigning year (1835) of Emperor Taokuang.
Hu Hsueh-yen, (a work in three volumes about the merchant of the same name, who was popular in both official and business circles of the Ching Dynasty), tells of Hu's efforts to ship food to famine-stricken Hangchow, which was suffering from the effects of the Taiping rebellion in the mid-19th Century. Ho Kuei-ching was then governor-general of Chekiang Province; Kao's accounts of his doing are not from historical records, but from conversations overheard in childhood.
On the mainland, Kao lived among a large family, including four brothers and three sisters. At the time, his mother, a heavy reader of both contemporary writings and Chinese classics, was considered a quite enlightened woman in Hangchow society. Whenever she related historical anecdotes, he felt as if she were displaying family treasures. Naturally, Kao Yang became an avid audience.
In 1949, Kao came to Taiwan with the Air Force Academy. His first service here was as secretary to Chief of the General Staff Wang Shu-ming. Then in 1966, when Wang was transferred to another post, Kao left military service. From that time, he has been an editorial writer for the China Daily News.
A prolific writer, Kao is simultaneously publishing three historical serial novels in three local newspapers—A Biography of Weng Tung-ho in the Ta Hua Evening News, Lampads and Storied Pavilions in the Economic Daily News, and The Wise and the Unwise in the Wilderness in the United Daily News.
"I never use an outline," he told us, lighting a cigarette. "However, each time before I start a story, I have these questions in mind:
- "Which parts must be emphasized?
- "How should I portray the personalities of the historical figures?
"When I come to some consensus in response to these questions, I begin to put my pen to paper."
An overall understanding of Chinese history is an obvious prerequisite for writing historical fiction. Kao focuses especially on the political, economic, and cultural aspects of the various dynasties. For instance, looking into the final years of the Ming Dynasty, the areas to the south of the Yangtze River, Kao determined, were like to heaven and the inferno.
History provides ample evidence that, at the time, Nanking was the Chinese imperial center of tourism, fashion, and wealth. The regions to the north of the Yangtze River were suffering the ravages of wandering bandits. "If a writer lacks intimate knowledge of this area and time, his work will not reflect the contradictions and conflicts of his historical background," Kao said.
The collection and employment of extant materials are important aspects of Kao's process in developing historical novels. In the original Tang Dynasty treatise on Li Wa by Pai Hsing-chien (Kao's Li Wa was inspired by it), the author describes a vast scene involving an extravagant funeral in which the whole town has turned out to watch the funeral procession. In order to assure the reliability of his own delineation, Kao read many relevant Tang sketches. He determined that in the heyday of the Middle Tang Dynasty, the people were open-minded and optimistic amid a peaceful and prosperous society. Consequently, funeral rites in the Tang were also a kind of community "entertainment," one of the Tang cultural characteristics.
Lighting another cigarette, Kao mused, "Strictly speaking, these problems belong to the category of historiographic textual research. I cannot wantonly put my pen to paper, especially when I write about real historical figures."
Four general types of historical figures constantly appear in Kao's novels. He is particularly interested in those who once influenced Chinese history greatly, yet have never received due attention. Kao always has an urge to praise such people. He never spares the ink in portraying the development of historical figures whose lives still have educational significance in this modern era. He delights in defending misunderstood or neglected historical personages. The final category of the personages involves all those who meet his particular requirements for making the novel more interesting and readable.
Among his published works, Kao feels particularly satisfied with Ching Ko, a novel about, a brave man of the State of Wei during the Period of the Warring States. Ching Ko was asked by a prince of Yen to assassinate the king of Chin, and failed.
Shao Nien Yu, another Kao favorite, tells the pathetic story of the romance between Sung poet Chou Pang-yen and a famous courtesan, Li Shih-shih.
"I feel these two novels—their creativity, composition, depictions of emotions, and writing style tendencies—reach a certain literary level," Kao said.
Ching Ko, a novel of more than forty thousand words, was carried daily in the United Daily News beginning in 1966. "Although the historical Ching Ko does appear in Tzu Ko Lieh Chuan (Collected Biographies of Assassins, in the Historical Records of Ssu Ma-chien of the Han Dynasty), actually, he was not suitable to be an assassin. Long before he set out to kill the sovereign of Chin, an omen foretelling his failure had already been revealed. However, Prince Tan of Yen pressured him in various ways, and Ching Ko could not help himself. He risked all and, in the end, sacrificed himself."
Kao has great sympathy for this title character. When he wrote the novel, he also had much sympathy for Prince Tan. Too much, he now says, because intellectually, he criticizes him. "Because, at the time, Prince Tan was actually head of state. He should have united all of the smaller states to fight against powerful Chin, rather than seeking only the Chin King's destruction."
Hung Lou Meng Tuan (A Broken Dream of the Red Chamber) is a long and entertaining novel much favored by Kao's readers. In early 1977, before Kao set pen to this novel, he had several discussions with Chao Kang, an authority on the great Ching Dynasty Chinese classic Hung Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber). Their shared views on this immortal literary work inspired Hung Lou Meng Tuan.
Kao refutes a popular view that Dream of the Red Chamber is, in essence, author Tsao Hsueh-chin's autobiography. "Only under specific conditions can a competent novel be composed. Dream of the Red Chamber can not be an exception. It may include some actual persons and events connected to the Tsao family. However, a greater part of this classic results from the author's absorption of relevant source material, and then his reorganization of this information."
Hung Lou Meng Tuan, a very long historical/fictitious creation by Kao Yang, based on his own textual research into Dream of the Red Chamber, is accomplished in four parts. In the first part, Mo Ling Chun, so much space is devoted to leading lady Hsiu Chun, one gains the initial impression that the volume is essentially irrelevant to the central theme.
"My view, though, is this: There must be a clear course, a fundamental reason for the emergence, ripening, and withering of a major family.
"In ancient China, every aristocrat attached great importance to fedual ethics. When this order of ethics collapsed, the essential order within a large family could not be maintained. Lasciviousness and transgression were usually the underlying themes in the ruin of ethical systems. Under my pen, leading lady Hsiu Chun reflects the overall views and behavior of the members of a major family; these are essential background to the clan's inevitable tragedy."
Kao emphasizes that the core of the failure of the major family lies in shifts in the relations between men and women. This basic nucleus erupts into upheavals in the relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, wives and husbands, and parents and children. On the surface, the family is still in a harmonious condition. Actually, an undercurrent is gradually reshaping it....
RECENTLY, Kao Yang Expounds on Ancient Chinese Poetry, a collection of eleven papers, earned him a 1984 Chungshan Literature and Art Award. His analysis of traditional Chinese poetry looks into its employment of allusions (especially concerning historical events) intended to protect the poet by cloaking comment relevant to truths about people or events of his times or the poet's own strong views. This characteristic of Chinese poetry has expanded the connotation and function of the entire literary form.
"There are difficulties with research in this area. However, it satisfies my curiosity and interest to explore the boundless realm of Chinese history," Kao smiled, as if to himself. "Usually, history is recorded under three kinds of pens: a pen that writes the facts bluntly, a pen that writes truth indirectly, and the pen that writes invisibly."
Tu Fu (712-770), of the Tang Dynasty, who has been called "a poet among poets," wrote most of his poems on history with a blunt pen. Once in a while, he also wrote via detours. In comparison, although metaphors or symbols also appear in poems of other countries, they, at most, unfold a poet's personality and his mood. The foreign poet's times, etc. are not secretively concealed in the allusions in his poems.
Wu Mei-tsun (1609-1671) is a representative Chinese poet who hid truth in his poems.
The poet's expressed feelings and secrets can be considered a part of history; in this connection, the poems of Li Shang-yin (813-858, of the Tang Dynasty) should probably be more greatly valued. His sedulous efforts to disguise his statements of truth add a recondite, mysterious, and graceful, and perhaps somnolent beauty to his work. By consigning his major judgments to his poetic writings, he manifests a stirring creativity in the art of poetry.
Why did the ancient Chinese poet disguise the truth, facts, their own true feelings, or their deepest secrets as allusions in their works? For fear of inviting personal disaster or harming another person. Wu Mei-tsun's Chi Hsi Kan Shih (Recalling "A Battle on the Yangtze River" With Emotion on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon) is an appropriate expression of the former impulse, and Li Shang-yin's Wu Ti (Without Title), of the latter.
Chi Hsi Kan Shih, a poem of eight lines, each containing five characters, tells the story of Koxinga (1624-1662), a leader of the residual resistance to the Manchus after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and of Chang Huang-yen, who led an army along the Yangtze River in 1659 to attack Nanking. Here was the last chance for the Ming Dynasty to regain empire. And here, the loyal adherents of the Ming suffered defeat. With victory within their grasp, they employed the wrong strategy. Literary sketches among triumphant Ching Dynasty writers referred to the event as "A Battle on the Yangtze River."
Since the failure before Nanking was a matter of overwhelming regret for the surviving Ming loyalists, many were impelled to write of their emotions and the events themselves. But straightforward presentations would assure an immediate and probably fatal official reaction. Thereby, Wu Mei-tsun conveyed his feelings through the device of a cover story involving the famous battle fought at Chihpi during the Age of the Three Kingdoms (220-265).
In his first line, by using the allusion of the Chihpi Battle, Wu compares Koxinga to Tsao Tsao (155-220, ruler of the Kingdom of Wei during the Age of the Three Kingdoms), in this way deriding Koxinga's arrogance. In the last two lines, Wu, through references to Sun Chuan (ruler of Wu, one of the Three Kingdoms) and Tsao Tsao, states but shields the truth of Koxinga's serious defeat (described in the middle four lines) and also screens his own great sadness. The poem, in only 40 words, reveals a magnificent moment of cascading emotions in Wu Mei-tsun's mind.
According to Kao Yang, ancient Chinese poetic forms, especially the chi yen lu shih (a poem of eight lines, each containing seven characters, with a strict tonal pattern and rhyme scheme), must follow the strict rule of dui chang (verbal parallelism). And in order to employ dui chang, a poet is forced to use allusions. Thereby, poets of ancient times found themselves able to state in disguised form their true feelings about an event or a person, shielding them from contemporary readers, temporarily—that is, sometimes the truth was quickly deciphered, or after the studies of later generations, the truth has emerged.
ALTHOUGH he constantly buries himself in old books and historical documents, Kao consistently turns his discovered treasures into entertaining and informative works which not only satisfy his active interest in textual research, but his creative imagination, in the process bringing pleasure to a multitude of readers.