[Wang Zhaojun (O Shokun) by Hishida Shunso (1902)]
Among the many emperors of the Han, Yuandi (who reigned from 48 BCE to 33 BCE) was probably one of the weaker monarchs, but it was during his reign that the southern Xiongnu leader Chanyu Huhanye officially submitted to the Han. After he had received assistance from the Han in his rivalry with another Xiongnu Khan, in 33 BCE Chanyu Huhanye visited the imperial court to pay tribute to the emperor. In order to seal political relations between both nations, Emperor Yuan agreed to Huhanye's request to give him an imperial daughter in marriage. As an actual princess was of course out of the question, a volunteer to play this role was sought among the emperor's concubines and a young palace woman of good family, Wang Qiang (better known by her courtesy name (zi) as Wang Zhaojun) agreed to swap her luxury life in the harem for the tent of a barbaric prince.
Emperor Yuan died that very year, but Wang Qiang accompanied the khan to his homeland in the steppes of Mongolia as promised. She even bore him a son. When the khan died a few years later, Wang Qiang followed Xiongnu custom and married his son (by an earlier wife) and successor, and bore the new ruler two daughters. She probably died soon thereafter. Her relatives in China, as well as her descendants among the Xiongnu, continued for many years to play an important role in Han-Xiongnu relations.
Wang Zaojun was not the first palace lady to be awarded to a foreign prince, but she became the model in this role for poets, playwrights, painters and novelists for the next 2,000 years. Wang Zhaojun was also counted among the "the Four Beauties of Ancient China." Countless works of art were dedicated to her story, which grew over time through legendary additions. The unadorned facts given above can be found in the Hanshu, the dynastic history of the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-8 CE).
[Wang Zhaojun, by Kosumi Morikage (Edo period)]
The first small addition goes back to the Houhanshu, the dynastic history of the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE): it says that, when the emperor saw her in all her finery at the time of departure, he wanted to keep her, but eventually had to let her go to keep his word to the khan. And in the Xijing zaju ("Various Notes on the Western Capital"), a collection of anecdotes, we get the story about the court painter who made an ugly portrait because he didn't receive the required bribe from her family (unlike the other ladies-in-waiting) - and therefore she was never favored by the emperor, and, unseen by him until the last moment, made to go to the khan of the Xiongnu.
That is the story upon which Ma Zhiyuan's play is based. The playwright made the painter, Mao Yanshou, the evil genius of the work. It is at his suggestion that the emperor widely collects women for his harem. As linchpin in the selection process, he demands bribes from the families of those selected. Later, when his trickery is discovered, he flees to the Xiongnu and urges the khan to demand Zhaojun as his wife - in this way, making the villainous painter responsible for all evil in the story.
Another added element is that the emperor first meets Zhaojun in the palace when he hears her playing the pipa (the Chinese lute) and becomes curious to know who is making such beautiful music. The link between Wang Zhaojun and the pipa goes back to a 3rd c. poem, and in later paintings (as the one above) we see her plucking the strings of the lute while she rides her horse to the country of the Xiongnu.
And a last addition is the suicide of Wang Zhaojun, when she crosses the Black Dragon River, which forms the border between the land of the barbarians and the Han. She jumps into the river without crossing it and is buried at Green Hill (the name of her grave, as it forms a green oasis in the desert) - her grave, in Inner-Mongolia, is now a tourist spot.
The most poetic part of the play is the last scene, where we find the lovesick emperor looking at Wang Zhaojun's portrait and dreaming about her. It is autumn, the season that wild geese fly over the city on their way to the south. The emperor sinks into a melancholy mood while listening to the honking of one such goose, which keeps circling around the palace, as if it were the soul of Wang Zhaojun unable to take leave. This scene is justly famous for its use of autumnal imagery to depict the emperor's sorrow.
[A Peking opera actress portrays Wang Zhaojun (2014)]
Ma Zhiyuan was one of the most outstanding zaju playwrights.
Little is know about his life except that he was a native of Dadu
(modern Beijing). In his youth he was very much disposed towards an
official career, but after being disillusioned later in life he found peace in
poetry. Fifteen plays by Ma Zhiyuan are extant; a sizeable number of those are Daoist deliverance plays which betray a clear affinity with Quanzhen Daoism. Besides as a playwright, he also became famous as a poet in the genre of the sanqu, independent literary lyrics in the style of the arias in zaju plays.
As both plays are stories of imperial passion, it is good to compare A Lone Goose in Autumn over the Palaces of Han with Rain on the Wutong Tree. In that last play, the Tang emperor Xuanzang persists in his blind love for Yang Guifei, leading to a bloody rebellion, the flight of the court from the capital, and the death of the emperor's favorite concubine - as a result of the rebellion, the empire is wrecked for many generations to come, bringing great misery to the people. In the play by Ma Zhi Yuan, however, Yuandi is capable if sacrificing his love for the sake of peace, and Zhaojun sacrifices herself for the political stability of the nation.
Wang Zhaojun's sacrifice has been a very popular subject in Chinese literature: hundreds of poems by such well-known names as Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Li Shangyin, etc., have been dedicated to her story. She also figures in stories and novels, and of course other theatricals than the one described here - such as the present day Peking Opera; also modern playwrights as Cao Yu and Guo Moruo dedicated plays to her. As a subject for paintings, we also find her in Japan as shown in the illustrations above.
I have read this play in the translation of Stephen West and Wilt Idema (Monks, Bandits, Lovers and Immortals, Eleven Early Chinese Plays. Hackett 2010)
Illustrations from Wikimedia Commons
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