A Month of Delta Summer: The Work of Leisure in The Diary of Li Rihua

Abstract

Leisure is not doing nothing: it involves complex signifying practices that communicate social status and have to be performed to be legible to others. The practice of leisure fills the pages of the eight-year diary of Li Rihua (1565–1635), an artist and art collector of the late Ming who devoted an extended mourning sabbatical to building a major art collection and socializing with like-minded colleagues. For someone outside government service, leisure was an organized project absorbing time and money. Its apparent goal was pleasure, but it was also about accumulating objects and the value and status they conferred. As a man of leisure, Li achieved a prominent place within the regional gentry elite without ever having to return to office, but also without challenging the state's foundation of status.