The story “The Jest that leads to disaster” is a Chinese short story that addresses the ways in which people make jokes and the dire impact that these jokes can have on people’s lives. These jokes can leads to a number of disasters. The persons who have made the jokes or who are the recipients of these jokes are often left to face these deadly consequences. This stems from the Huaben or Huapen genre which is a reflection of the Chinese narrative type that features a short and a long story within one story. But, these two stories serve a similar purpose. The longer story presents the consequence as grave and almost always results in death. The main purpose of this research paper is to further evaluate the deeper meaning of the story “The Jest that leads to Disaster” and to bring across the author’ message that one must be mindful of the jests and jokes that are common practices of a number of persons ad these can have serious consequences for everyone involved.
"Stories to Awaken the World” is a collection of stories that spans the historical era in China and the new stories of murderous abbots, holy monks, nuns, Daoism magicians, and immortal maidens. In this collection, Feng Menglong's insignificant and interlinear comments reveal the values that the Chinese cultural elite share and help the original readers to understand and appreciate the collection of stories based on the writer's art. In addition, the readers are able to appreciate Feng's moral engagement with the social challenges of the society. Lorri Hagman argues that “even Chinese editions of the stories have omitted elements of the original, such as sexually explicit passages, which the Yangs translate in full” (Hagman 3) as this will allow the readers to become integrated into the stories in order further appreciate the elements of these stories. The translation in these works creates “an important editorial feature” (Hagman 3) that is clear as the stories translate in Feng’s original arrangement and their thematic pairing (Hagman 3).
The style of the Yang’s translation of these stories are captivating and Feng Menglong had collected a number of stories over the years and modified and even freshly composed a number of stories himself (Hagman 4). Interestingly, the language in these stories cannot be classified as classical but instead are representative of the Chinese vernacular. The vernacular Chinese reflect the elements of usage and grammar that is unique to the common speech. Feng’s common speech is several centuries old and makes it easier for those who are no followers of Confucianism to understand. Yang translates Feng Menglong’s stories and their foundations in the common speech of the Ming-dynasty. The translation is “slightly old-fashioned cadence of the English phrasing, which reflects Feng’s language: things happen “in a trice,” or to “all and sundry’” (Hagman 4).
In addition, Chinese literature in the past focused on the premise that "the marvellous and splendid energy of the universe is always concentrated in the woman and not in man” (Ming-Qing 5). The society at the time also focused on the Chinese society and their experiences with “the great economic and social developments” (Ming – Qing 4) and a number of international and internal factors. The increase in commercialisation and the rise in the circulation of money and goods increased social mobility and in turn influenced the intellectual life in a positive way. During this time, writers such as Feng Menglong “contributed to the success of an entertainment literature, where human sentiments and love were the main themes” (Ming – Qing 4). Chinese literature strived on these elements and human beings eventually turned away from the inner fears that were associated with super human forces and began to focus more on the power of their bodies and minds (Hsu 71).
Feng Menglong captures the essence of the relationship between the Chinese traditional and modern vernacular as “Fifteen Strings of Cash: A Jest that leads to disasters.” The traditional Chinese society improved on the “formulation of moral obligations and prohibitions and traditional Chinese” (Ming – Qing 47) and the reinforced the priority of the important needs of the individuals in “acknowledging the fundamental importance of personal stimulus in every activity” (Ming – Qing 47). In fact, Chinese writers adopted modernism to denounce the traditional construct of the literary world. The vernacular tale of Feng Menglong’s “Shiwu guan xiyan cheng qiaohuo” or “Fifteen Strings of Cash: A Jest that Leads to Disaster” is a deliberate construction of a more modern form of Chinese literature that includes an exceptional person who is bound by the humour of the genre.
Jing Feng suggests that the male character relies heavily on the performance and the representation of the suffering of the female character (Feng 65) and this explains the tension that exists between the presence of the traditional writings and the modernity that existed at the time and within the context of Chinese literature. In addition, the vernacular of the story “Fifteen Strings of Cash” is quite straightforward and the readers find “the modern provocative identification of man with the desiring machine” (Ming – Qing 47) and this is confined to the needs and necessity of the characters that shows that these needs differ from the desires. Nonetheless, these desires are often induced or acquired because the characters are able to quantify and limit their desires to evoke happiness. Of course, the happiness may be short-lived as the characters may lose their social position because of their desire to achieve happiness.
“Fifteen Strings of Cash” uses a candid plot to tell the story of an unsuccessful scholar who becomes a tradesman. He is murder on his home one night and the robbers take his fifteen strings of cash. The short story that precedes this longer story gives an explanation of why the concubine would have been implicated in the murder. Menglong goes against the traditions of the love as the transcendent and universal dimension that shows love as the basic rule that is present in the lives of all human beings. Wei Peng jokes about marrying a concubine and his wife also jokes about marrying another man. It is the jest of this short story that leads to the authorities blaming the concubine for the murder. She had fled the house prior to the murder as the drunken tradesman jested and taunted her that he had sold her for fifteen strings of cash (Feng 66). Understandably, the concubine would flee “all beings originate from love, and end for love” and as a result, the thought of being sold to another man evokes negative emotions in the concubine as she attempts to accept that the tradesman had little or no love for her.
Menglong continues with the series of events that leads to the arrest of the arrest of the concubine as she travels to her parents’ home. The events are interesting as the readers realize that an innocent vendor, Cui Ning, whom she meets on the road, is also arrested. Both the concubine and the vendor are falsely indicted and later executed for robbery, murder and adultery. None of the victims were guilty of these crime, but because of Wei Peng’s and the concubine’s early jests about marrying someone else, the concubine face their deaths. Clearly Menglong sends a valuable lesson to the readers as he reveals that jokes often become deadly and can destroy the good name of a person. Even though their good names are restored eventually and the real perpetrators are charged for their crimes, the fact that the innocent victims died is a lesson that Menglong brings about clearly. His message is that jests can be funny for a moment but they ultimately lead to disaster.
Interestingly, the plaintiff is the wife of the murdered tradesman and she exposes the real murderer. She marries a highway man after her husband’s death. The irony is that she settles into a happy and comfortable routine after her husband’s death. It is this ironic twist of faith that she realizes that her new husband is responsible for the death of her former husband and she reports this to the magistrate. The new husband faces execution after he is tried and convicted. Through these ironic events, Menglong shows the readers that life is a circle and a cycle and that one cannot hope to avoid the punishment for sins committed. In addition, Menglong reveals the sufferings that the woman faces as a result of the jest that her husband plays and makes it quite clear that the narrator embodies the modern subjectivity of the loss and disaster that comes with a jest.
“Fifteen Strings of Cash” has an illuminating dialogue that contains a distinctive narrative which allows the readers to appreciate “the formulaic storyteller manner” (Feng 67). The omniscient narrator in this vernacular take changes to a first person narrator that is ignorant of the ways of the real world (Feng 68) and further shows numerous changes in the structure and tempo of the story. Arguably, Menglong addresses the audience directly as he uses “I” to reveal the pre-modern vernacular tale. In addition, Menglong uses this first person narration to reveal the external and impersonal aspects of the story and contrasts this use of a first person narrator to the self-conscious Western device. This style of writing is common to the writers who portray a style that promotes the internalization of the narrative.
The use of the first person narrator clearly shows that each character will withhold information effectively. This occurrence is natural in the pre-modern vernacular tale where the omniscient storyteller maintains knowledge of the events that take place. The narrator is quite aware of the events surrounding the murder, the arrest, the trails, the conviction and the execution of the two defendants. In addition, the narrator is also cognizant of the restoration and the clearing of the “good names” of the concubine and Wei Peng. Despite being abreast of all the events in the story, the narrator is unable to predict the actual fates of the defendant and this leads to the suspense in the story. The vernacular narrative that is common in “Fifteen Strings” is a representation of the particular time and locale of the story.
Jin Jiang suggests that this representation is also indicative of the theatrical representations in China and this impacts the role of women. But, Wei Peng’s actions are not representative of the twentieth century woman or the “equal rights in political, economic, and social relations as well as their right to romantic relationships” (Jiang 125). Instead, Menglong depicts women as the inferior counterpart to the men and shows the suffering of the women through the torture of the judiciary system. Feng reiterates this view as he suggests that the “human suffering can be externalized” (Feng 2000) and the case of the concubine is a clear representation of the torture that the judiciary system metes out on the concubine.
The superior knowledge of the narrator again unfolds as the narrator shows his wisdom and knowledge and keeps the readers meticulously informed through a structured and uniformed pace during the story. Menglong shows a strong preference for the commentary mode of the narrator and spends less time on the descriptive events. Interestingly, the readers see that women are not often the active and autonomous subjects in sex and morality (Feng, 74) but are instead the “ objects of male desire or passive recipients of sexual pleasure generated by male actions” (Jiang 125) and therefore the fall victim of the jest that men play on women in the Chinese society. The vernacular stories allow one to truly understand the complexity of Menglong’s writings and establish “rhetoric of vernacular stories” (Ling 1). In fact, Menglong stories serve as the epitome of the common view that highly educated editors and writers create stories that have a moral mission (Ling 1). Furthermore, the population at the time was scarcely literate and therefore stories such as those created by Menglong reached the audience because of the voice of the storyteller and helped to simulate the context based on the voice of the story-teller in the short vernacular.
The narrator becomes quite vocal in the story after the defendants face wrongful convictions and the narrator appears to question the actions of the system and the negligence of the judiciary system. The narrator speaks directly to the audience and creates the though provoking question of the validity of the concubine murdering Peng for money. He probes the readers and the audience to help him to justify the fact that the concubine had not left the night of the murder and gone to spend the night with a friend or neighbour. In addition, the narrator’s though provoking questions lead the readers to understand the flaws in the Chinese judicial system and the limitations to the rights of the accused. The injustice in the system is clear as the narrator voices the concerns that the case lacked a number of close examinations of the facts which would have proved the innocence of the accused.
Conversely, Menglong’s use of the narrator to question the validity of the system suggests that these are questions that are important to understand the Chinese society. The narrator is the voice of knowledge and superiority and reveals the striking reminder of the psychology of the good storytelling (Feng 75). The narrator is realistic in his assertion that there is a need for justice as he appeals to the audience to see that there is hope for moral rewards in the afterlife. He expresses his moral sympathy and outrage for the victims and finishes by taking the audience back to the events in the story.
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