Motivation and meaning of a "hodge-podge": Duan Chengshi's Youyang zazu.

• Author: Reed, Carrie E.

INTRODUCTION

With the compilation of the work that he named Youyang zazu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang), the erudite scholar, traveler, and chronicler Duan Chengshi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 800-863) made a most delightful contribution to the world of Chinese informal narrative. (1) The unusually varied content of the over thirteen hundred entries included in this work describes the world that Duan heard about, read of, or personally observed. The structure and organization of the collection reinforces this miscellaneous subject matter; together, these elements produce a collection that seems familiar and yet is somehow perplexing. The collection has been largely ignored, particularly as a literary text, in both Western and Chinese Sinology. One reason for this is that in large part scholars have treated the collection as a repository of information useful to the social scientist or historian, (2) and another is that critics have attempted to come to an unambiguous understanding of it by relegating it to one or another literary category. In order to study or categorize the work, critics have found it necessary to focus on parts, rather than the whole, and to determine which parts are most representative of the work. (3) This is analogous to analyzing a sumptuous stew by attempting to taste the carrots, onions, and morsels of meat separately, while ignoring the flavor of the stew as a combination of all of the ingredients. (4) It is my hope that keys to appreciating the collection as a literary work in its own right may come not only by disassembling, naming, and studying the pieces, but also by savoring some of the richness and complexity of these "tidbits" as they sit together.

Readers throughout the ages have commented on the "anomalousness" (yi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) or "strangeness" (qi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of the Youyang zazu, and in their remarks we see how its strangeness is often mentioned in the same breath as its richness, or variety. Deng Fu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Southern Song), in the preface to his 1223 woodblock edition, comments, "Historians acclaim [Duan's] erudition and incredible memory, and also the large number of strange accounts and abstruse writings. Now studying his writings, (I think that) it is probable that there are scholars who could not compare to him even if they studied for their whole lives. Truly, his knowledge was this extensive." (5) The anonymous editor and publisher of the 1250 "Ying Song" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] edition of the Youyang zazu writes in his preface: "... But still I would have done anything for a glimpse of the Youyang zazu. In the summer of the jiyou year ... I finally had an opportunity to read it. My goodness! How strange and multifarious its records are!" (6) And the 1608 preface to the edition prepared by Li Yun'gu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (fl. 1608), court censor of Sichuan, says, "There is nothing that it does not have, and there is nothing that is not anomalous. Suddenly, all unawares, its readers break out in happy laughter, suddenly, all unawares, their hair stands on end, suddenly, all unawares, they become dizzy, or scared out of their wits." (7)

In his brief authorial preface, Duan Chengshi called Youyang zazu a zhiguai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (anomaly account), but it is clear that he does not mean what later scholars (e.g., Hu Yinglin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] meant by it. The work does include stories of monsters, the underworld, and so on, but it is not these that make the collection a zhiguai; they comprise a minority of the pieces, in fact. The theory to be explored in the current study is that by the term zhiguai, Duan not only referred to the contents of individual works but also to the eclectic, heterogeneous nature of the collection itself. Individual pieces appear yi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or guai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] due to their juxtaposition with other literary types in such a way that, whereas each type is familiar, the context is not familiar or predictable in any way.

In the pages below, after a brief look at attempts to classify the Youyang zazu, I will discuss several kinds of za [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "variety," to be found in the Youyang zazu. I will consider Duan's variety of subject matter, as well as his mixing of styles typical of pre-Tang xiaoshuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (informal narratives) works with new ingredients that were more representative of the Tang. Specifically, I look at how he utilizes narrative forms that looked comfortably familiar to contemporary readers--types that could readily be recognized as descended from or in the style of particular earlier works. Duan creates internal coherence with elements of theme and style; these elements combine with the familiar formal types to give his work textual and generic comprehensibility, offering the reader clear signals about how to read it. Duan's inclusion of literary forms that looked out of place or unfamiliar to contemporary readers expecting affiliation with other genres, along with regular breaches in thematic and stylistic coherence, sometimes obfuscates the signals sent by "familiar" elements. In addition, Duan's own outspoken authorial voice plays an important role in ensuring that this is his personal (and thus necessarily "unfamiliar" to others) statement about the world that he observed throughout his life. My aim is to show that it is these kinds of variety, along with a general interest in the unfamiliar, that combine to create the impression that the Youyang zazu is a strange book on strange topics. It assumes familiarity with the long zhiguai tradition that preceded it, creates expectations that it is "of a kind" with that same literature, (8) and then, because of its variety, thwarts those expectations. It thus becomes impossible to categorize, acknowledges no immediate kin, and in the process becomes seen as strange itself.

CLASSIFICATION

Premodern China, like many other traditional cultures, was inclined toward ordering and arranging, and believed in the attainment of understanding and a certain comfortable perspective through the process of naming things as belonging to categories. In this kind of culture, the broad-ranging works of the xiaoshuo genre, and particularly hodge-podges like the Youyang zazu, surely constituted a bibliographical challenge, and a kind of discomfort. (9) If a thing or event cannot be named as similar to, or "of the same kind as" other things or events, it is, by definition, anomalous. (10) And anomalous the Youyang zazu was, even within the fuzzy boundaries of the vast xiaoshuo genre.

Youyang zazu has been variously identified in Chinese as xiaoshuo, zhiguai, zazu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (miscellany), ziza [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ([records of] miscellaneous thinkers), suoyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (accounts of trivia), suoji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (records of trivia), zalu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (miscellaneous records), biji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (noteform literature), chuanqi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (transmitted wonders), and leishu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (commonplace book or encyclopedia), and in English, among other terms, as "fiction" and "collection of strange accounts." (11)

Although Duan Chengshi himself identified the collection as a zhiguai work, the earliest bibliographies, and some later ones, list Youyang zazu in the undivided, nebulous xiaoshuo category, and, in fact, it fits rather well in that extraordinarily varied environment. (12) The Youyang zazu starts to seem overly limited by too narrow a categorization when Hu Yinglin, uncomfortable with the amorphous nature of the xiaoshuo class, provides a sexpartite scheme for the xiaoshuo category. He places Youyang zazu in a subcategory that he called zhiguai, the very term used by Duan, but clearly with a far narrower sense than that meant by Duan. For example, Hu says that while the category of zhiguai can include chuanqi, it does not mix with elements of other "types," such as zalu, of which the Shishuo xinyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (A New Account of Tales of the World) is one of Hu's examples. (13) Duan Chengshi clearly could not have meant zhiguai to be limited in this way, as his work does mix elements of many different types, including zalu.

The Ming bibliographer Yang Shiqi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1365-1444) includes Youyang zazu in a category together with works such as Wang Chong's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (27-ca. 100) Lun heng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], (27-ca. 100) Lun heng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Ying Shao's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (ca. 140-123) Fengsu tongyi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and Yang Xiong's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (53 B.C.-A.D. 18) Fang yan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. These represent quite a different type of work from that often thought of as "of the same kind as" Youyang zazu. The editors may have considered most important and definitive those parts of Youyang zazu that elucidate and critique Tang-dynasty popular customs, language, and religious and philosophical beliefs, as the Lun heng, Fengsu tongyi, and Fang yan do for the Han dynasty. (14)

The Qing bibliographer Ji Yun [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1724-1805) divides xiaoshuo into three subgroups: a) zashi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (miscellaneous writings), including, for example, Xijing zaji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Shishuo xinyu, b) yiwen [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (marvels heard), including Shanhai ring [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Soushen ji [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and c) suoyu, including Bowu zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], (attributed to Zhang Hua [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]...