The Art of the Bedchamber and Jin Ping Mei

Abstract

Abstract The ‘art of the bedchamber’ texts occupy a key place in pre-modern Chinese sexual culture, sharing that place with an even larger body of texts of later origin, the sexually explicit novels and stories of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, and Jin Ping Mei (The plum in the golden vase) in particular. The two genres – the texts of the bedchamber arts and Ming and Qing erotic fiction – have key commonalities, especially in the governing theme that not only must a man please a woman in sex, but that she is sexually formidable, and that he must be masterful in order to please her. Both genres center on the man’s relations with multiple women. But they differ because what appears as the art of sex in Ming and Qing fiction drastically reinvents the contents and spirit of the classic art of the bedchamber, which promotes sex as the harmonizing of yin and yang for the sake of nourishing health and longevity. Sex is measured and temperate, neither rushed nor violent. The art of sex in Ming and Qing fiction instead focuses on ways in which characters make themselves sexually powerful, usually by means of drugs and/or the use of special techniques, including those that absorb vital essences from their partners. Besides detailing these points, the article will analyze specific traces of the art of the bedchamber in Jin Ping Mei, such as the practices of kissing and absorbing saliva, the adoption of positions of intercourse, and the use of sexual devices, chemicals, and aphrodisiacs.