The Blacks of Premodern China. Don J. Wyatt
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Название: The Blacks of Premodern China
Автор: Don J. Wyatt
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
Серия: Encounters with Asia
isbn: 9780812203585
isbn:
Grandfather was Zhu Lin [fl. ca. 1025–90], who served as an official in the post of assistant director in the Palace Library (bicheng) and who, among his works, wrote the Personal Record of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu siji) and the Outer Record of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu waiji).
[His] father was Zhu Fu, who was styled Xingzhong. While he was young, Zhu Yu was dependent on his mother’s Hu family and resided at Changzhou. Later, he accompanied his father during his service as an official to Kaifeng and such prefectures as Lai and Run. At the beginning of the Chongning era (1102–7), they arrived at Guangzhou; they had only a short time earlier gone to the Southern Sea (Nanhai) to see Su Shi [1036–1101].8
The visit with Su Shi had to have occurred between the years 1097 and 1100. The fact that Zhu Fu was on intimate enough terms with Su, who was probably the most highly regarded litterateur of the day, to visit with him in the region of the Southern Sea affords us important clues regarding not only the grandeur of the elder Zhu’s social and intellectual connectedness but also very likely the directions of his political courage, for Su was, at that time, the loser in a factional power struggle and in the midst of his second and final exile from court and capital on remote Hainan Island (Hainan dao).9 Hainan was a sweltering and pest-infested zone of mostly aboriginal population that constituted then, as it does now, the southernmost extreme of the Chinese world. Especially during Song times, which were rife with factional infighting, to visit with the vanquished who had been consigned by the victors to banishment in such a remote and hostile place was to make a loud and clear statement, and it suggests that Zhu Fu felt owing to no one with respect to the advancement or the retardation of his career.
By contrast to that of his father, Zhu Yu’s “career,” should we choose to call it such, being an unusual one by the standards of his times, must be assessed quite differently. Even as an adult estimably in his twenties, the younger Zhu evidently spent much (if not all) of his time as a kind of voluntary shadow of his more distinguished father, literally trailing after him on his various assignments during his years of sundry service. To be sure, the proof of how well connected Zhu Yu was via his father Fu is clearly borne out in the passage by what appears to have been more than a passing acquaintance with the great Su Shi. However, one senses strongly that Zhu Yu was included in such a vaunted social circle only because of the friendship between the prestigious literatus and his father.
Indeed, Zhu Yu does not appear to have ever voluntarily endeavored to establish either a name or a position for himself. While it was unquestionably an uncommon path to take for that time, there are nonetheless some plausible explanations for his having taken it.10 However, the absence of a certifiable rationale for it notwithstanding, foremost in importance for us is that we prepare ourselves for the exertion of the “partnership” between father and son on the content of Pingzhou Chats on Things Worthwhile. This connection through lineage of the two Zhus will profoundly influence our understanding of and appreciation for the text that Zhu Yu wrote. This is the case because, if the contentions of traditional scholars are indeed correct, the observations, encounters, and experiences that supply much (if not most) of the material for the narrative of the book are predominantly those of the father Zhu Fu channeled and, on occasion, perhaps filtered or embellished through the son Zhu Yu.11
Evaluation of the internal chronology of Pingzhou Chats on Things Worthwhile also supports this conclusion that Zhu Yu’s main contribution throughout the book was that of providing the extensive prosopopoeial service of speaking in the voice of Zhu Fu, bringing his likely already deceased father’s views and observations back to life, for the generally accepted date of authorship for the work is the year 1119. Scholars have deduced this date mainly from the fact that the events—some noteworthy and others quite ordinary—recounted in Zhu Yu’s book all occurred between the years 1056 and 1118.12 However, there are also sound reasons for proffering a somewhat earlier date of composition, one near the conclusion of the eleventh century, for the material pertaining to Guangzhou. Such is the case because Zhu Yu prominently mentions the years 1086 and 1099 with reference to that city,13 with the latter year especially closely corresponding to the period of Zhu Fu’s tenure of office there. Consequently, yet another tenable explanation of Zhu Yu’s role in relation to Zhu Fu is that, as the son of a high official, the author mainly functioned quite intentionally, deliberately, and self-effacingly as recorder and raconteur of his father’s far richer life experiences.
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