UBC Press Blog

James A. Flath, 2004,  Chapter 4, p. 92-95.

• Winner, 2005-2006 Raymond Klibansky Prize, Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme (ASPP)

The presence in folk art of theatrical and artistic conventions raises some interesting points about the historical nature of the subject. If the graphic representation of historical narratives was produced as a set of conventional but evolutional motifs, can the historical narrative be understood in those same terms? I have thus far insisted that nianhua cannot be taken as a literal representation of anything that they may represent, and that the most we can take from nianhuais some indication of how subjects were cognitively ordered. So, without claiming that people really believed history to be synonymous with endless variations on the themes of classical romances, nianhua may still provide some insight into how history was understood, not as a grand cycle of rise and decay as Dun Lichen would have it, but as a conventionalized historical landscape.

The theatre was thoroughly historical by nature, and as if to prove the point, one of the few theatrical prints to place the action in the context of an actual theatre includes the following inscription: “We (actors) praise good and punish evil by differentiating what is good and what is not; and the deeds of a thousand years are before your eyes. We’ll tell tales about the world, sing ballads of ruin, and show where happiness is and where it is not. The history of seventeen dynasties lies before your eyes.”

Much as aesthetic and narrative considerations have interceded to provide the “Seventeen Dynasties” (or elsewhere “Twenty-Four Dynasties”) with a nonlinear reconciliation, the influence of more orthodox views of the past continue to be apparent in the world of nianhua print. In one excellent work on Yangliuqing nianhua, Li Zhiqiang and Wang Shucun have carefully organized a broad selection of prints to represent historical tales from each of China’s major dynasties from the reign of the Sage Rings through to the Qing dynasty. Their volume does demonstrate that nianhua printers had a profoundly developed historical consciousness, but the clear progression through the dynasties is very much the work of the editors and does not suggest how or if the original artisans shared that conception of order.

Fortunately, nianhua printers did produce a number of works that combine a selection of historical tales within the same print. Because they are fixed in their relative positions, the arrangement of the components provides a better perspective on how the artist organized the past as relative themes. What is most evident from these examples is that nianhua printers were not bound by linear temporal rules. Two such examples from the Alekseev collection, published by Wang Shucun and Boris Riftin, contain a total of sixteen historical episodes. A fixed order of printing, of course, does not predetermine a fixed order of reading, but assuming that the literate viewer read them in a literary manner - from top to bottom and right to left, then the order proceeds with no regard to chronology. Nor can any but a completely random order of reading produce a chronological sequence. It must, on that evidence, be concluded that the examples were not chosen for their adherence to dynastic succession, but for their moral, didactic, or narrative qualities. A few examples will suffice to give the tone of these narratives:

• Yan Guang (Yan Ziling) of the Eastern Han refuses to take up office when invited by Emperor Guangwu, preferring to spend his days fishing.
• The Han dynasty royal consort Wang Zhaojun is betrothed to a Xiongnu chieftain and goes to live beyond the Great Wall.
• Su Wu (a Han dynasty envoy) is captured by the Xiongnu but refuses to cooperate with them, preferring to herd sheep instead.
• When Zuo Botao dies, his best friend Yang Jiaoai takes the body back to the state of Qi for burial. Zuo Botao appears to Yang in a dream, saying that the spirit of the assassin Jing Re opposed the burial. Yang cuts his own throat so that he can join Zuo in the afterlife, and together they vanquish Jing Ke.
• During the Warring States period, Yu Boya, a Jin envoy, finds an understanding friend while playing the qin (zither) on Ma’an Mountain.
• During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhao Yun and Zhao Fan, governor of Guiyang, become blood brothers until Zhao Fan offers Zhao Yun his widowed sister-in-law as a bride. Zhao Yun angrily refuses out of respect for filial piety and overthrows Zhao Fan.

The historical narratives originate in a variety of historical classics and vernacular novels, such as Jingshi tongyan (Comprehensive Words to Admonish the World, seventeenth century), Shi ji (Historical Records, first century BC), Fengshen yanyi (Enfeoffment of the Gods, sixteenth century), Lienti zhuan (Traditions of Exemplary Women, first century BC), and Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, fourteenth century). In most cases, these narratives were made available to the general public through the medium of theatre and various forms of oral performance. Yet the preceding examples are not represented as theatrical, as none of the characters wear appropriate theatrical costume. What is more surprising about this selection is that there are relatively few references to the sword-fighter tales that one might assume to have commanded the greatest popularity. To the contrary, most deal in some way with the virtues of filial piety and fraternity, chivalry, and withdrawal from official duties. These frequent references to virtue support V.M. Alekseev’s conviction that although not a single example from his collection of 3,000 nianhua depicted Confucius, and in spite of frequently unorthodox interpretations, nianhua prints were nonetheless fundamentally Confucian. While they may have failed to appreciate the logic of Confucianism, nianhua printers nonetheless incorporated the moral aspects of the teaching into their work. Considering much of the material presented in the remainder of this chapter, this appears as a somewhat selective reading of the material, but in reference to the serialized historical narratives, there would seem to be some truth to the statement.

The point of much of the preceding discussion has been to demonstrate that nianhua artists defined their production in deference to the social and cultural themes and standards of their time, including standard histories and historicized Confucian values. This, however, neglects the presence of what might be called “unofficial history nianhua” and glosses over those many narratives that do not adhere to artistic, theatrical, and historical conventions. We may know from the literary histories (official or otherwise) that Shen Wansan, for example, was a wealthy subject of the Ming dynasty, but without the input of nianhua, how could we have known that “unofficially” Shen was given his fortune by the Dragon Ring?

Equally colourful renditions of history and historical figures can be found in many examples from the nianhua genre. One such design from the Yangjiabu Gongyi workshop that is supposed to have originated in the early Oing, but which was reprinted with sufficient frequency to deliver it to the present, portrays the highlights in the early life of the Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang. Historically, Zhu was born a commoner, educated in a monastery, and became a bandit chief before embarking on his meteoric rise to power. The Yangjiabu print edition of the story endeavours to cover the whole string of incidents in a single sheet. Zhu Yuanzhang appears three times in different situations: involved with his various confederates, with the mystical forces that bestow the mandate of heaven, and with a bit of money for good measure. There is little in the arrangement of the print that contemporary viewers could consider temporal or spatial order, and the only means of division is to interrupt upper and lower strata by a convoluted line.

A similar structure exists in the print Bao Gong Takes Office, also of Gongyi workshop and attributed to Yang Fang (i8o6-go). Historically, “Judge” Bao Gong (Bao Cheng, 999-1062) was born in Anhui province as a commoner and rose to fame as chief investigative censor in the Song capital of Raifeng. Bao Gong began his ascent to cult figure status through a series of Yuan and Ming courtroom dramas that portray the Judge as a stern but just official. According to a more unorthodox legend, however, when the imperial court first sent for him to take his position, he refused to leave his unharvested crops. Fortunately the Heavenly Official (Tianguan), seeing that Bao was a worthy man, dispatched a team of immortals to take in the harvest, thus allowing Bao Gong to fill his post without sacrificing his precious grain.

Compared to the sombre and orderly format of the serialized historical tales, these interpretations of the past illustrate that there was still more than one way to tell a tale through the graphic text. The latter examples are unstructured insofar as they do not conform to standard historical accounts, and the graphics do not adhere to the relatively linear representational practices used at some Yangliuqing workshops. The presence of conflicting styles of representation within the same production centre, and even the same workshops, should caution the reader against assuming too much in terms of industry standardization. While the practices and conventions of representation from across the spectrum of Chinese representational and cultural practice had influenced the representational styles of village printers, this effect did not eliminate alternative styles or subjects of representation. The industry was, as I have said, prescriptive, but it was not perfectly prescriptive and so did not narrow the field to a single standard of representation.

About the Author

James A. Flath teaches in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario.