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Posted by Victor Mair

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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventieth issue:

“The Patriarch of Empty Lies,” by Wilt L. Idema. (free pdf)

INTRODUCTION

The Tale of Empty Lies (Tuokong zhuan 脫空傳) is a prosimetric narrative in four chapters that tells the story of the poor man Ma Pianliu 馬騙六   who, unable to pay back his creditors, leaves home to escape his troubles. After meeting with characters like Bai Lai 白賴 and Wu Pin 吳品      and traveling through a world of horrors, he eventually arrives at the abode of the Patriarch of Empty Lies (Tuokong zushi 脫空祖師), who teaches him never to repay any loan even if he would by a stroke of luck become a wealthy man. This text of this catalogue of low-lifes at the bottom of Chinese society has been preserved in a set of manuscripts, collectively titled Liaozhai waizhuan 聊齋外傳 (Additional tales by Liaozhai) and copied out in the years 1908–1915 by a certain Cao Rugui 曹汝貴, whose grandson Cao Juetian 曹厥田 donated them to the Pu Songling Museum. Most of the texts included in this collection are well-known “rustic songs” (liqu 俚曲) by Pu Songling 蒲松齡 (1640–1715), but The Tale of Empty Lies cannot have been written by him in its present form, as the text mentions the institution of “Nurturing Incorruptibility Silver” (yanglianyin 養聯銀), established in 1723 by the Yongzheng emperor. This would suggest that the text was originally composed (or rewritten) in the middle of the eighteenth century. As Tuokong zhuan was transmitted together with prosimetric writings by Pu Songling, it may not only have circulated in central Shandong but also have been composed there….

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From the author:

Many thanks for including Empty Lies in SPP. What gave me most trouble in translating this piece was the great number of puns, especially in the second chapter. I am quite sure I also missed the intended meaning of several colloquial expressions in that chapter. It would be wonderful if people with some knowledge of the local dialect of central Shandong would have a look at it. Even so I thought the text curious enough to merit publication, despite the mistakes it is bound to contain. The text very well illustrates the problems one encounters when performative texts are not just written in "standard vernacular" but also make use of any local dialect, especially its vulgar aspects. Corrections are welcome.

Empty Lies in its present shape cannot be by Pu Songling as it refers to changes in official salaries of the Yongzheng period. But as a popular prosimetric performance text it became mixed up with the "rustic songs" of Pu in at least one connection. As such it illustrates the problems in identifying the borders of Pu's vernacular corpus as discussed by Zhenzhen Lu. In this case we are "lucky" in that the text contains elements that allow one to date it, but in the majority of cases such elements are missing.

From Zhenhen Lu:

Tuokong zhuan is among a number of vernacular texts transmitted in central Shandong that has at one point or another gotten grouped with the liqu attributed to Pu Songling, which for me is much more interesting as a local corpus of vernacular writings than their often uncertain connections to Pu (as professor Idema has shown through specific terms like "yanglianyin," this particular text would have been from a later time). In its spirit of parody and mockery of conventional values, Tuokong zhuan certainly elicits comparison with other texts in that corpus, such as the pair of texts on the God of Poverty that I translated in my book (see chapter 3, pp.119-125; in chapter 2.5 I discuss vernacular texts, including Tuokong zhuan, transmitted in the Zichuan area and vicinity and the manuscripts they are found in). The language of the text can use further study–it's very colloquial, but I wonder how much of it is topolectal—it would be very interesting to study it alongside texts that belong to the so-called "Liaozhai liqu" today, which Chinese linguists have studied as established corpus seemingly without much attention to other locally transmitted vernacular texts. I attach a PDF of the article which contains the text prof. Idema translated, so you can take a look and get a feel for its language (the text starts on p. 12 of the PDF)—which I think is still quite different from the Qiangtou ji that you translated. It's a real feat that prof. Idema completed the translation, given the spectacular verbal acrobatics that it delights in (for example in chapters 2 and 4).

VHM:  If anyone is truly desirous of seeing the original text that Prof. Idema worked from, I can arrange to send the pdf Zhenzhen mentioned.  Even better, it would be great if someone were willing to post the pdf online so that everybody could see it at the click of a URL.

Selected readings

• "Vernacular and classical fiction in late imperial China" (10/3/25)
• Zhenzhen Lu, The Vernacular World of Pu Songling: Popular Literature and Manuscript Culture in Late Imperial China Series:  Sinica Leidensia, Volume: 173 (2025).  xix, 312 pp.
  By Zhenzhen Lu 
• "The Wall, a Folk Opera in Four Acts", by Pu Songling.  Translated and annotated with an Introduction by Chang Li-ching and Victor H. Mair, Chinoperl Papers, 14.1 (1986),  97-152 | Published online: 20 Nov 2013.  https://doi.org/10.1179/chi.1986.14.1.97 
• "Shandong vernacular, then and now" (8/1/21)
• Strange Tales from Make-do Studio (Denis C. & Victor H. Mair). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989.

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