The Peach-Blossom Fan
(Táohuā Shàn 桃花扇)

It was the year 1643, and the Míng 明 dynasty (period 20) was collapsing. Manchurian forces marching southward were conquering one city after another in the north. In the south people struggled to imagine that somehow the dynasty would survive, and life could go on. But of course it would not, and their dreams were destined to end in suffering and tragedy.

In these troubled times there lived an exceedingly brilliant and handsome (if slightly effete) young scholar and poet named HÓU Fāngyù 侯方域, who loved to pass the time writing poetry with his only slightly less brilliant and handsome young-scholar friends.

By way of amusement, Hóu and some of his dazzling friends went to visit the magnificent city of Nánjīng 南京, which at the time was called Qínhuái 秦淮, after the river flowing through it. In Nánjīng they visited the famous entertainment quarter, as young men tended to do.

In the entertainment quarter the handsome Hóu Fāngyù caught site of a beautiful and renowned courtesan named LǏ Xiāngjūn 李香君, who worked there to support her impoverished foster-mother (jiǎmǔ 假母), LǏ Zhēnlì 李贞丽. (A courtesan [huākuí 花魁] is essentially a prostitute whose clients have a lot of money or are brilliant and handsome young scholars.)

The beautiful courtesan Lǐ Zhēnlì also caught site of the handsome scholar Hóu Fāngyù. And each instantly fell desperately in love with the other, and sought an introduction. One thing led to another — quite rapidly if the truth be known. The symbol of their love, and of their engagement, was a beautiful, pure white fan.

Hóu Fāngyù’s friend YÁNG Wéncōng 杨文骢, also a brilliant and handsome scholar, as well as an accomplished painter, played official matchmaker, somewhat after the fact. When he proposed the marriage to Lǐ Xiāngjūn’s impoverished foster-mother, Lǐ Zhēnlì, he was the model of persuasive eloquence, and she was delighted to agree. So the painter and the foster mother arranged a banquet to celebrate the marriage. It was a beautiful event, one of those lovely occasions when it didn’t seem to matter that the Manchurian army was slightly closer with each passing day.

On their wedding night, Hóu Fāngyù modified the pure white fan by writing an elegant poem on it.

The next day, however, Hóu’s friend Yáng revealed that the wedding costs, as well as the bride’s surprisingly ample dowry, which had mysteriously materialized, had been paid for by a dull but manipulative man named RUǍN Dàchéng 阮大铖, who reasoned that Hóu was likely to become an important person, and who therefore hoped to place Hóu in his debt.

Lǐ Xiāngjūn was shocked, mortified, and, perhaps more importantly, realistically worried. And she was quite unwilling to let this happen, so she refused to accept the dowry and sent it back. Ruǎn was furious both at the insult and at the frustration of his plans, and he became an enemy of the young couple.

As the Manchurian troops moved southward, the Míng emperor (Chóngzhēn 崇祯, reign 20a-17) was forced to commit suicide. The Manchurians declared the establishment of a new dynasty, to be called the Qīng 清 (period 21), while the Prince of Fú (Fú Wáng 福王), fleeing southward, was declared emperor Hóngguāng 弘光 (reign 20a-18) of the “Southern Míng” by a small band of his few remaining followers, including Ruǎn Dàchéng and his friend MǍ Shìyīng 马士英, who had, by devious means, become a high official in the reconstituted imperial court at Nánjīng. The court was full of people accusing each other of being the cause of the government’s collapse. Ruǎn and Mǎ put the blame on General ZUǑ Liángyù 左良玉.

Pursuing his revenge against Hóu and Lǐ, Ruǎn added Hóu to the list of the accused.

Hóu was therefore forced to flee from the court of the Prince of Fú, but, since he remained loyal, he could not flee to the Qīng territory. So he took refuge with an old friend, the aged and loyal General SHǏ Kěfǎ 史可法, whose beard was gray and whose views were glum, but whose wine was very good indeed.

Without Hóu, Lǐ Xiāngjūn was forced to return to her life as a courtesan to support her foster-mother, as before. There she was spotted by a certain TIÁN Yǎng 田仰, a wealthy friend of the formidable Mǎ Shìyīng. Tián Yáng decided he wanted to take Lǐ Xiāngjūn as a concubine. So Mǎ proposed the arrangement to Madame Lǐ, pointing out that it would be a way out of her financial difficulties, and noting that mother and daughter could hardly benefit by continued association with the accused and exiled Hóu. Madame Lǐ was persuaded, so they went to talk with Lǐ Xiāngjūn.

Lǐ Xiāngjūn, the wife of Hóu Fāngyù and still very much in love with him, was horrified. Rejecting Mǎ’s proposal (and slapping him across the face), and aghast at her foster-mother’s involvement in the scheme, she smashed her head on the ground in order to end her life. That is not a particularly effective mode of suicide, and she was readily rescued from her effort.

With Lǐ Xiāngjūn recovering under careful watch from her suicide attempt, her foster-mother agreed to Mǎ’s proposal to make her the concubine of the wealthy Tián Yáng.

In the excitement to stop her suicide, few had noticed that the white fan had fallen from her sleeve and had been stained by her blood. It was afterward retrieved by Hóu Fāngyù’s painter friend Yáng Wéncōng. In a moment of inspiration, Yáng converted the blood stains into peach blossoms, cleverly complementing the poem on the fan. A friend of Yáng’s and Hóu’s, a flautist named SŪ Kūnshēng 苏昆生, took the fan and headed in quest of Hóu Fāngyù in his secret place of exile, so that he could tell Hóu of the sad fate of his beloved wife.

Lǐ Xiāngjūn, now Tián Yáng’s concubine, was invited by Prince Fú to sing at the palace, a sign of special favor for Tián and his powerful friends Mǎ and Ruǎn. Unfortunately she took the occasion to reprimand Ruǎn for his false accusations against her husband Hóu Fāngyù, and was ordered out of the palace in disgrace.

Meanwhile Hóu Fāngyù, desperately unhappy without his wife, returned to Nánjīng in disguise to look for her. There, this being an opera, he immediately encountered Sū Kūnshēng, bearing the fan, and he learned of Lǐ Xiāngjūn’s misfortunes. So together they tried to find her in the chaos of a city about to fall.

The Qīng forces, reaching the Central Plains, posed a clear threat to Nánjīng, and Míng troops were readily surrendering to them. General Zuǒ Liángyù, who had earlier been denounced by Ruǎn and Mǎ, remained among the loyalists, and succeeded in convincing the emperor that Ruǎn and Mǎ were vicious opportunists. (Even as he spoke they were heading north to surrender to the Qīng army, hoping to gain appointment on the winning side.) The emperor was not pleased.

As the Qīng forces swept away the “Southern Ming” dynastic shadow, Hóu Fāngyù’s protector General Shǐ Kěfǎ drowned himself. General Huáng Dégōng 黄得功 slit his own throat. And others too died by their own hand. The end had come.

Hóu and Lǐ did not find each other, and each, in despair, finally took refuge in the same Daoist hermitage (Dàochǎng 道场) at Mount Qīxiá 栖霞山 northeast of the city. There they were initially overjoyed to be reunited, but were soon persuaded by the resident Daoist priest that their world had ended, as all worlds must end and all lives must end, for all is vanity and illusion. It certainly seemed like it.

So they decided to separate from each other forever and become Daoist hermits.

[The version of the story retold here is based on the performance of the Jiangsu Province Kunqu Opera [Jiāngsūshěng Kūnjùyuàn 江苏省昆剧院] performed in Hong Kong in February, 2007.]