Communication, Collaboration, and Community: Inn-Wall Writing During the Song (960–1279)

Abstract

Communication, Collaboration, and Community:Inn-Wall Writing During the Song (960–1279) Cong Ellen Zhang Appreciation by James M. Hargett New Appreciation Cong Ellen Zhang, "Communication, Collaboration, and Community: Inn-Wall Writing During the Song," JSYS 35 (2005): 1–27. Professor Cong Ellen Zhang's 張聰 article on inn-wall writing makes notable contributions to the study of Song culture and brings to light career challenges faced by government officials. Most notably, she introduces readers to the ubiquitous and influential role of travel in Song culture.1 The wall inscriptions she has collected served a host of functions. Some were literary; others were social. Still other messages could be critical of local administration or voice opinions on national political matters. Despite this diversity of subject matter, one central theme emerges, and it is here where we find the major contribution of Professor Zhang's essay. To wit, she isolates a tension in these writings in the form of a dilemma faced by all men who served the Song bureaucracy: once they entered officialdom, most faced a life of transience and displacement, shuttling from one office appointment to the next, always in places away from home, usually once every two years or so. Song officials who suffered political exile, as many did, were the most miserable. Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045–1105) once described a government hostel where he was staying as being situated "Outside the Gates of Hell" (Guimen guanwai 鬼門關外). Through this and other examples, the author convincingly demonstrates that displacement, travel, and especially journeys to, and long periods of residence at, exile locations took a heavy toll on government officials. This is important because the almost constant life of displacement faced by Song officials "led to changes in their orientations in political, intellectual, and social and family life" (p. 14). One especially obvious "change" (or "needed adjustment") was the difficulty of observing filial obligations while holding office far away from home. Finally, while it was not Professor Zhang's direct intention to do so, her essay makes yet another important contribution to the study of travel and its role in Song culture: one could easily make the argument, based on the contents of the author's essay, that inn-wall inscriptions are in fact a sub-category [End Page 155] or sub-genre of Song travel writing (to my knowledge, no scholar has ever identified it as such). This identification is significant for a couple of reasons. First, unlike the usual division of Song travel writing into two distinct literary categories--verse and prose, inn-wall writing comprises both genres. Moreover, the subject matter range of inn-wall writing is much more diversified than the content in Song dynasty "on the road" (daozhong 道中) poetry and prose youji 游記. Second, and perhaps most important, the inns and their wall inscriptions effectively functioned as a sort of in situ communication gathering place where guests often molded their identity because of what they read on those walls and how they thought about it. To prove this point, the author cites two striking examples in the form of wall inscriptions written by women who therein lament their wretched lives of suffering. The written sympathetic male responses to these plaints, also cited and discussed, suggest that inn-wall writings could and did affect how people thought about matters that were sometimes quite serious. In the final analysis, then, Cong Ellen Zhang's article provides a representative picture of some of the most mundane and quotidian concerns of Song elite society, and does so in a register of language that is lively, spontaneous, and far-removed from politically-motivated government editors and revisionist historians. james m. hargett the university at albany [End Page 156] Footnotes 1. Six years after the publication of her "Inn-Wall Writing" essay (that is, in 2011) University of Hawai'i Press published Zhang's seminal monograph Transformative Journeys: Travel and Culture in Song China. For personal, scholarly, and career reasons, Chinese literati traveled further and more often during the Song (960–1279) than they had in the past. Inns, including government-supported lodging facilities1 and commercial hostels,2 were an integral part of their journeys. Not only were lodging and [End Page 157...