Precious Bodies: Money Transformation Stories from Medieval to Late Imperial China

Abstract

This article examines narrative depictions of the bizarre and often confounding transformation of inanimate copper coins, gold pieces, and silver ingots into human form. Stories of money's transformations appear across a range of medieval and late imperial genres, from classical anecdotes and vernacular tales to northern and southern dramatic forms. In each of these traditions, the body of the animate money becomes a site for the articulation of changing understandings of value and meaning. By tracing the embodiment of money from the Six Dynasties to the Qing, this article illuminates the shifting imagination of money from object to subject, in which the increasing identification of self and silver becomes a source not of anxiety but of agency. 摘要：: 本文將研究六朝到清代對銅錢、金幣和銀錠化身人形這一怪異現象的描 寫。從文言和白話小說到北曲南戲，通過金人幻化人形，各種有關價值轉移與生 命意義的論點藉以展開。本文將揭示一種對金錢想像的歷史變化：它們從客體變 主體，從人造物變成了人的創造者。