What Yuan Mei Spoke of

Abstract

Underlying many of the stories of Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-1798) in his Zi bu yu 子不語 (What the Master Would Not Speak of) is an “occult cosmology,” where the usually invisible yin realm occasionally produces visible outcomes. The title of Yuan’s book refers to a canonical characterization of Confucius: “The Master would not speak of anomalies, feats of strength, disorder, or gods,” and in fact, a number of the stories concern gods (shen 神), in which Yuan Mei had an ambivalent faith. On the whole, the stories are representative of eighteenth century elite anecdote culture, but Yuan Mei emphasizes the limits to the imperial government’s control over local conditions. The stories discuss the behavior of many gods, some that are famous members of the Chinese pantheon, but others that are more obscure. In many cases, we see how the yin bureaucracy recruits from among those living in the yang realm. Finally, many stories demonstrate how the gods of the yin realm rule over humans in the yang world. What is typically understood as religion in English involves ritual devotion to a god in accord with divine commands as promulgated by authoritative sacred texts or teachers, and is typically exclusive. Accordingly, Western readers may be inclined to dismiss the content of these classical xiaoshuo as mere superstition. The behavior in many stories seems to have little reference to any authority or ritual, and a few spirits in the Chinese pantheon may be referred to either as ghosts (gui 鬼) or as gods (shen), and indeed, some ghosts become gods. On the one hand, one could label the religious element in these stories as “popular religion,” which includes common rituals such as the offering of sacrifices, practices such as divination, and interactions with spirits via spirit mediums or other means, including dreams. On the other hand, Paul R. Katz has argued that elements involving the yin world that such stories portray, including conceiving of the yin world as a prison, and procedures such as accusations, investigations, and interrogations, are Taoist influences. In either case, these popular or Taoist