Meng Jiangnu Brings Down the Great Wall: Ten Versions of a Chinese Legend

by Wilt L. Idema (Translator), Haiyan Lee

Meng Jiangnu Brings Down the Great Wall brings together ten versions of a popular Chinese legend that has intrigued readers and listeners for hundreds of years. Elements of the story date back to the early centuries B.C.E. and are an intrinsic part of Chinese literary history. Major themes and subtle nuances of the legend are illuminated here by Wilt L. Idema's new translations and pairings.

In this classic story, a young woman named Meng Jiang makes a long, solitary journey to deliver winter clothes to her husband, a drafted laborer on the grandiose Great Wall construction project of the notorious First Emperor of the Qin dynasty (BCE 221-208). But her travels end in tragedy when, upon arrival, she learns that her husband has died under the harsh working conditions and been entombed in the wall. Her tears of grief cause the wall to collapse and expose his bones, which she collects for proper burial. In some versions, she tricks the lecherous emperor, who wants to marry her, into providing a stately funeral for her husband and then takes her own life.

The versions presented here are ballads and chantefables (alternating chanted verse and recited prose), five from urban printed texts from the late Imperial and early Republican periods, and five from oral performances and partially reconstructed texts collected in rural areas in recent decades. They represent a wide range of genres, regional styles, dates, and content. From one version to another, different elements of the story--the circumstances of Meng Jiangnu's marriage, her relationship with her parents-in-law, the journey to the wall, her grief, her defiance of the emperor--are elaborated upon, downplayed, or left out altogether depending on the particular moral lessons that tale authors wished to impart.

Idema brings together his considerable translation skills and broad knowledge of Chinese literature to present an assortment of tales and insightful commentary that will be a gold mine of information for scholars in a number of disciplines. Haiyan Lee's essay discusses the appeal of the Meng Jiangnu story to twentieth-century literary reformers, and the interpretations they imposed on the material they collected.

Genres: China, Mythology

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

Wilt L. Idema obtained his BA and MA from Leiden University. Following continued study in Sapporo (at Hokkaido University) and in Kyoto (at Kyoto University), and research in Hong Kong (at the Universities Service Center), he returned to Leiden, where he taught in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture. He obtained his doctorate in 1974, and was promoted to Professor of Chinese Literature and Linguistics in 1976. Since 2000, he has been teaching at Harvard as Professor of Chinese Literature. Wilt Idema's research initially was focused on the early development of Chinese vernacular fiction (Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative Period, 1974), but later shifted more towards early Chinese drama (Chinese Theater 1100-1450, A Source Book, with Stephen West; 1982; The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379-1439), 1985; Wang Shifu, The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing, with Stephen H. West, 1992). In recent years he also has published on Chinese women's literature of the premodern period (The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China, with Beata Grant, 2004). His current research is focused on China's rich tradition of popular narrative ballads. He is also the author, with Lloyd Haft, of A Guide to Chinese Literature (1997). For his voluminous Dutch-language translations, especially of classical Chinese poetry, he received the Martinus Nijhof Award for 1991, the highest distinction for literary translations in the Netherlands.

Reviews

[Royce Ratterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic, interesting, and gripping read. I thoroughly enjoyed the content and format of this book.
Definitely will remain in use for reference and browsing in the future into these 10 accounts from the past 2500 years.
An historical overview filled with a treasure trove of varied tales. One takes away more than a piece of the Great Wall(s) when reading this work.
Read for pleasure and personal interest. Overall, a great book for the researcher and enthusiast.
I found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. Idema introduces the story of Mengjiang and then proceeds to translate 10 different versions of the story from different parts of China. Most of the stories translated were from the 19th or 20th century but the origin of the tale can be traced back in it's current form to around the 6th century and is based on an earlier tale of a virtuous woman from the Han dynasty (200BCE-200CE). The story at it's simplest is that the young woman Mengjiang marries a young man who is forced to go and work on the great wall, he dies because he is too fragile and the work is too hard. Mengjiang goes north to find him and bring him his winter clothes only to discover he has died and been buried in the wall. She cries and mourns him so hard that the wall crumbles revealing the bones of those buried within. She pricks her finger and uses her blood to find the bones of her husband. Then in some stories she dies, others she meets the Qin Emperor who wants to marry her. She tricks him into performing funeral rites for her husband but instead of marrying the Emperor commits suicide. What is interesting about the book is that the retellings of the story are all so different while following along the main theme. The first story is a beautiful and mournful tale focusing on Mengjiang's trip north, full of cold isolation and hardship. In some versions she meets her husband while bathing nude and decides she must marry him as only a husband can see a woman naked. In some stories they then have sex then and there, and in others she dies with the marriage unconsummated. It is probably worth noting that the only story where Mengjiang does not die is the one that is written in Women's script, and therefore by women and for women. Here instead of committing suicide she returns safely home with her husbands bones and sleeps beside them every night for the rest of her life. Another very different version is written in the form of a Taoist story with Mengjiang and her husband both as reincarnated spirits who are there to save 10,000 people who'd otherwise be sacrificed by the emperor. One thing that I learned while reading this was the "invention" of the Great Wall. Apparently the idea of uniting the Qin wall, with the modern Ming wall in people's minds came from the Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. And that it wasn't until the 20th century that the wall became a figure of might. Rather for millennia it was viewed as an example of a bad emperor's folly. This book also included a really interesting essay about how examples of this folktale were collected in the 20s and how then it was seen as an example of a young woman's passionate love for her husband rather than as an example of proper Confucian values. It was an interesting and insightful essay and reminded me of how it is important when "interpreting" things not to read too much of your own desires into them. I definitely recommend this book. I've been wanting to read it for ages as I really like the work that Wilt Idema does with women's writings and this is another excellent example of that.