T'an-yang-tzu and Wang Shih-chen: Visionary and Bureaucrat in the Late Ming

Vol. 8, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1987 T'AN-YANG-TZU AND WANG SHIH-CHEN: VISIONARY AND BUREAUCRAT IN THE LATE MING Ann Waltner* Introduction: The Cult The intellectual world of the late Ming literatus was a rich and varied one, and his interests frequently transcended categories bounded by what we have come to think of as Confucian rationalism. Sixteenth-century China seems to have undergone a religious renaissance in many dimensions . Monks like Chu-hung (1535-1615) and Han-shan Te-ch'ing (15661623 ) led a revival of interest in Buddhism. The Chia-ching (r. 1522-1566) emperor's fascination with Taoism fostered considerable attention at court on prayer-writing and other Taoist skills. Lin Chao-en (1517-1598) preached the unity of the three teachings of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism . And Confucian philosphers themselves, especially the followers of Wang Yang-ming, showed a marked interest in mystical experience. Sectarian religions gained new vitality; indeed, the most important deity of sectarian religion, the Wu-sheng Lao-mu, the Venerable Eternal Mother, appears for the first time in the sixteenth century.1 One manifestation of the upsurge in interest in religion in the late Ming is the cult of T'anyang -tzu, a young woman visionary immortalized by Wang Shih-chen (1526-1590), a prominent bureaucrat and man of letters. The relationship between these two, and the brief public upsurge of religious enthusiasm which surrounded her attainment of immortality and his celebration of it, are the subject of this essay. This episode shows men from the pinnacle of the official elite as the disciples of a teenaged girl, not only encouraging "heterodox" doctrines and incurring the risk of imperial censure, but also flouting norms of gender hierarchy, marriage and the family system. Wang Shih-chen has been described as "the" prose writer of his day and the most important man of letters of the sixteenth century. He was The author acknowledges support from a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies , with funds provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. 1 On Chu-hung, see Yii, 1981; on Han-shan, see Hsu, 1979; on Lin Chao-en, see Berling, 1980; on the Venerable Eternal Mother, see Overmyer, 1976. On Ming religion generally, see Liu, 1970 and 1971. On Taoism at the Ming court, see Miyagawa, 1977. 105 106Ann Waltner prolific in both belles-lettres and historical studies: the eighteenth-century compilers of the Imperial Catalog wrote that "since ancient times nobody has surpassed him in abundance of writings." He was a leader of the literati group known as the "Seven Later Masters" who spearheaded a movement to restore to literary styles the clarity of the Ch'in and Han ancients, abolishing the newfangled flourishes of T'ang and Sung prose writers.2 In addition, Wang was an important and influential critic of painting.3 He also served in a number of high official posts, achieving a bureaucratic rank of 2a.4 Wang would seem to have been a model classicist-official, more prolific and successful than most, but still an exemplary orthodox scholar-bureaucrat. He was scarcely the sort of man one would expect to declare himself the disciple of a teenaged girl who claimed to have visited the court of the Queen Mother of the West, one of the oldest and most venerable of Taoist deities. And yet he did. The girl, T'an-yang-tzu, was the daughter of Wang Hsi-chüeh, a friend and fellow townsman (T'ai-ts'ang in Soochow) of Wang Shih-chen. Relations between the two families were close: Wang Shih-chen described his relationship with Hsi-chüeh as "closer than flesh and blood," 5 a similie he also employed to describe his relationship with T'an-yang-tzu.6 Wang Hsi-chüeh's credentials were no less impeccable than were those of Wang Shih-chen. His daughter Wang Tao-chen, the second of four children, was born in 1558, the year he achieved the chin-shih degree. While still a child, she was betrothed to a Hsu Ching-shao, the son of Hsii T'ing-kuan, a fellow-townsman who had received his chin-shih degree in the...