Ling Mengchu
Encyclopedia
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
writer of the Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
, known for his vernacular short fiction collections Astonished Slaps Upon the Desktop (拍案驚奇), I and II.
Biography
Ling Mengchu was born into the Ling clan of Wucheng in northern ZhejiangZhejiang
Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...
province (modern day Wuxing District
Wuxing District
Wuxing District is a district in the prefecture-level city of Huzhou, Zhejiang, China....
). His style name was 'Xuan Fang' (玄房) and his pseudonym was 'Chu Cheng' (初成). Many of the Ling family became government officials. The Ling family prospered on leasing land and farming. In addition family members were actively engaged in the printing business with a local specialty of books in polychrome. The Wucheng area was adjacent to the commercial and cultural areas of Hangzhou
Hangzhou
Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...
and Suzhou
Suzhou
Suzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...
where reading materials were in increasing demand. Ling Mengchu was certainly a merchant businessman and also certainly a traditional scholar with civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
ambitions.
The business motive of the Ling family was originally discussed by Ling Mengchu’s contemporary Xie Zhaozhe (谢肇浙 1567-1624) in his Wu zazu (五雜俎 - Five Assorted Offerings). Such were the times. Ling repeatedly failed at the examinations and did not take a government post until he was fifty-four. Ling would finally perish in fighting against the Li Zicheng led rebels in 1644.
Ling’s short stories were a detailed study of his 17th century moral world. A new factor that Ling Mengchu insisted on was empiricism, an objective study of what existed before the eyes of the observer. In the prefatory material to his first short story collection he insisted it was infinitely more difficult to paint a likeness of a dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
or horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
one had actually seen than to render a ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
or goblin
Goblin
A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...
one had never observed (a quotation from Han Feizi). These refreshing new literary directions were still in the age of Wang Yangming
Wang Yangming
Wang Yangming was a Ming Chinese idealist Neo-Confucian philosopher, official, educationist, calligraphist and general. After Zhu Xi, he is commonly regarded as the most important Neo-Confucian thinker, with interpretations of Confucianism that denied the rationalist dualism of the orthodox...
philosophical idealism and Zhu Xi
Zhu Xi
Zhū Xī or Chu Hsi was a Song Dynasty Confucian scholar who became the leading figure of the School of Principle and the most influential rationalist Neo-Confucian in China...
metaphysics.
Further reading
- Carpenter, Bruce E., 'The Ming Short Story Collection "P'ai-an ching-ch'i."' Tezukayama Daigaku Jinbunkagakubu Kiyo (Tezukayama University Journal of Humanities), Nara, Japan, 2000, pp. 41–111.
- Goodrich and Fang ed., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644 ( bio. by Li Tienyi), New York,1976, vol. 1, pp. 930–931.