This book is about the culture of sex, not sex itself. In other words, it is not about what people actually did (though it is hard to believe this can have been in any way different from what people do today) but how sex was represented in literature, mainly poetry.
What the author sets out to investigate is how the act of sex was used metaphorically. He also looks at the well-known concepts of yin and yang, and at how traditional Chinese medicine believed -- and of course still believes -- in the benefit to two lovers of an exchange of these complementary essences.
Early on he establishes his credentials as a Chinese specialist, taking to task, for example, the eminent feminist Julia Kristeva when she praises ancient Chinese sex manuals -- which were written exclusively for men -- for their stress on the woman's orgasm. He points out that this was not, as Kristeva assumes, because of any enlightened concern for female pleasure, but because of the medical belief that without an orgasm on the woman's part the yin essence would not be transferred successfully to the male partner.
In this context, homosexuality was not disapproved of as being a perversion, as was so often the case in the West, but rather looked down on as being of no benefit to your health. By definition, no exchange of yang and yin could take place in an act of same-sex coupling.
The author is also interested in how the image of copulation was used in different contexts. One ancient Chinese school of thought, he points out, saw two sexual partners primarily as the penetrator and the penetrated. This image could be, and was, applied to warfare. Hence, in one military manual, fortresses that could be penetrated were considered yin while those that were impenetrable were yang. One was not necessarily superior to the other -- they were just two different types of fortress. You could, for instance, entice the enemy into a yin fortress and them massacre them. Both types had their uses, however brutal.
The author is at pains to point out that many of our assumptions about traditional Chinese culture are generalizations to which there were in reality many exceptions. Early Confucian tradition, for example, didn't see women as inferior (as is usually assumed) but as the moral equal of men. And the end of the Han dynasty witnessed widespread challenges to ideas of filial piety, deference to one's elders, and the importance of ritual. He quotes one famous ballad, usually called The Peacock Flies South-East, featuring a situation in which a husband has brought disaster on both himself and his newlywed wife through obeying his mother.
The author comments on this work as follows: "If you love someone," the poem tells us, "and your family stands in the way, the more difficult and praiseworthy course of action is not to overcome your heart but to overcome your family." This is, of course, in direct opposition to what we usually perceive as being the Chinese tradition. You can't help feeling that many young Taiwanese today would benefit from receiving the kind of advice this poem implicitly contains.
Another topic the author is interested in is the political pressure brought to bear on irregular sexual relationships. Illegitimate children confused the succession at all levels of society, and when this occurred at a high level wars could ensue in which thousands of ordinary people would be killed. The protection of male property was certainly an issue -- it had to be kept in the family -- but it wasn't the only one. There was a very ancient Chinese tradition that argued that settled sexual relationships in general made for greater happiness, prosperity and peace all round.
On the other hand, the firm control of a husband over his wife was frequently used as a model for good government. Women were pliable as was the populace as a whole, it was argued, and both had to be ruled with a rod of iron. Such traditions are, of course, very far from dead.
At the same time, many things that appear strange to us today were standard practice in ancient China. For a son to sleep with his stepmother might be to us bizarre, but for long centuries it was quite normal in the upper classes, and indeed was expected behavior on the death of the father. It was seen as a sign that the son had officially inherited what had previously been his father's rights.
Several old stories are re-told, such as that of the First Emperor's mother, the Queen Dowager, and her scandalous relationship with the generously endowed Lao Ai, supposedly a eunuch but in reality someone who'd had nothing more cut away than his eyebrows. And, along with these well-worn tales, the old China of flashing swords, conspiracies, banishments, cities surrounded and burned with all their inhabitants, and families found disloyal to the emperor exterminated to the third degree of relation, is once again evoked.
This volume originated as a collection of four papers delivered at academic conferences, and is nothing if not scholarly. One of the most remarkable things about it is that there are 70 pages of notes to 122 pages of text; the book's entire second half consists of footnotes, bibliography and index. These notes are in places not without their interest, but elaboration on this scale can scarcely make for popular reading.
Paul Goldin (who teaches Chinese history and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania) will be the first to acknowledge that his book, for all its scholarly sophistication, merely scratches the surface of a vast topic. He states at the start that it is only now that the international study of human sexuality has reached a "requisite level of sophistication" that the serious examination of ancient Chinese concepts on the topic can begin. The word he uses to describe the task now facing scholars approaching the task is "daunting."
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