NEWS, HISTORY, AND “FICTION ON CURRENT EVENTS”: NOVELS ON SUPPRESSING THE CHUANG REBELLION

Abstract

In the third month of the lunar year 1644, the Ming Dynasty encountered exactly the same crisis that it once created for its predecessor. Rebel troops led by Li Zicheng 李自成 (1605?– 45), a native of Shaanxi province, captured Beijing, precipitating the suicide of Emperor Chongzhen (r. 1628–44) and the fall of the imperial house. However, the rebellious force did not hold the capital for long. Only six weeks later, the former Ming general Wu Sangui 吳三桂 (1612–78) let Manchu troops enter the Shanhai Pass and Beijing fell to a conquering army for a second time that year. While northern China was experiencing tremendous turbulence, Yao Tinglin 姚廷遴 (b. 1628), a native of Shanghai, entered a line in his diary that piqued interest for later scholars. In his entry for 1644, Yao writes ‘‘less than two months after the capital fell to the rebellious troops, there appeared Jiaochuang xiaoshuo 剿闖小說 [Story on Suppressing the Chuang Rebellion] for sale [my emphasis], recounting the collapse of the capital in great detail.’’ Yao’s observation is worth noting for several reasons. First, in contrast to the tradition of Chinese historical novels, which tended to deal with people or events in the distant past, this novel documents a national event that has just taken place, whose implications for society and history were still unfolding at the timewhen the workwas published. Thus, one unique characteristic of this novel is its contemporaneity, that is, its immediate focus on contemporary rather than historical figures. Second, the novel was written and published less than two months after the uprising, demonstrating how rapidly novelistic writing could react to contemporary socio-political change. Consequently, this type of novel in lateMing served to disseminate public information during a time without mass media. Third, Yao clearly points out that this work was for sale, indicating that there existed a market for consuming this type of work for its unique characteristic, its timely depiction of contemporary major events. The characteristics demonstrated by this particular version of Jiaochuang xiaoshuo evoke a group of works that later came to be collectively known as shishi xiaoshuo 時事小說 (fiction on current events), a unique genre popular in the closing decades of the Ming and early Qing periods that has not yet received the critical scholarly attention it deserves. For example, barely one year after the death of Wei Zhongxian 魏忠賢 (1568–1627), arguably the most powerful eunuch in Chinese history, there appeared three novels focusing on his downfall. Also, after the extremely controversial execution of Mao Wenlong 毛文龍 (1576–1629), the important Ming general whose death allegedly caused the siege of Beijing in 1629 by the Manchus, a number of novels were swiftly published to ‘‘rectify’’ his Ming Studies, 66, 56–75, September 2012