Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren (1648-1718)

Author(s): Guojun WANG

Source: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) , December 2019, Vol. 41
(December 2019), pp. 59-82
Published by: Chinese Literature: essays, articles, reviews (CLEAR)

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/27137475

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 Dressing Self and Others in the
Poetry of Kong Shangren (1648-1718)*

Guojun WANG
Vanderbilt University

Hairstyle and clothing are important tropes for the representation of self and others
in traditional Chinese poetry. The Manchu hair and dress regulations made obligatory
during the Ming-Qing transition gave rise to a sartorial landscape with different dress
codes for various sectors of society. How were such changes registered in poetic
writing? Kong Shangren’s poetry explores different dimensions of being a man of
letters in early Qing China. In poems about Manchu hairstyle and clothing, Kong
described himself and his colleagues as Qing subjects, distinct from the Ming subjects
that belonged to the past; in poems on theatrical performances, he identified himself
with the spectators witnessing the exile of Ming state attire to theatrical space;
meanwhile, he used metaphorical Han-style apparel to portray himself as an elderly,
reclusive, and off-duty official, thereby transcending the dynastic boundary and
connecting himself with scholars of the past. The language of dress allowed Kong to
probe the boundaries between the social and theatrical worlds, and offers a material
approach to revisiting the relationship between authors, literature, and society in a
specific historical context.

In both English and Chinese scholarship, Kong Shangren has been one of the most
heavily studied authors of early Qing China. One group of studies focuses on Kong as
a person, especially his political identity––was he or was he not a Ming loyalist? 1

* This paper is based on a presentation delivered at the 2018 AAS annual conference. I thank the

panelists Stephen West, Wendy Swartz, Yingzhi Zhao, and especially the panel organizer
Nicholas Williams, who helped me with the translation of Kong Shangren’s poems cited in this
paper. I also benefited significantly from comments by Antonia Finnane, Allison Bernard, and
the reviewers for CLEAR. I am also grateful for a research leave made possible by a Luce/ACLS
Postdoctoral Fellowship in China Studies.
1 The second half of the twentieth century saw the publication of more than 260 papers in Chinese

on Kong Shangren, many of which focus on his drama The Peach Blossom Fan. A large number of
these papers discuss Kong’s “nationalist thinking,” his attitudes toward the Ming and Qing
courts, and his reflection on historical events. For a summary of those studies, see Liu Zhenghong
劉政宏, ed., Ershi shiji Taohua shan yanjiu 20 世紀『桃花扇』研究 (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu
chubanshe, 2010), esp. chap. 1.

©Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

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60 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

Scholars have used his literary writings as evidence of his political belonging, and in
turn, based analyses of his writings upon his reconstructed political identity. Since the
1980s, another group of studies uses Kong’s case to probe different dimensions of early
Qing society. As Richard Strassberg suggests, a comprehensive review of Kong’s life
and works not only provides his literary biography, but also helps to “restore the
texture and patina of the early Ch’ing” and “recreate the complexity of a lost world.”2
This paper revisits both groups of scholarship through reading Kong’s poetic writings
on hairstyle and clothing.
Dressing provides a way into discussions about Kong Shangren’s identity because
it is the most direct embodiment of a person’s sense of self and role in society,
particularly in early Qing China. Scholars and students of late imperial China are
familiar with the Manchu government’s hair and dress regulations during the Ming-
Qing transition and their depictions in early Qing literature. The Kong family in Qufu,
especially Kong Shangren himself, took great pains to justify their abandoning Ming
attire in favor of Manchu apparel in the wake of the Manchu conquest.3 Kong Shangren
was a prolific writer of poetry and prose as well as a renowned playwright and an
expert in Confucian ritual and music. His writings captured the material nuances of
early Qing society including different types of clothing. In his poems, Kong not only
directly described hairstyle and clothing but also commented on clothing in portraiture
and theatrical performance. Therefore, Kong’s poetry serves as an intermedial anchor.
The practices of dressing discussed in this paper mostly pertain to men since male
clothing was at the center of confrontation between Han Chinese and Manchu cultures.
To study dressing in Kong’s poetry, we have to place the poems back into the
literary tradition of self-expression and self-fashioning. Robert Hegel differentiates
between two variants of the literary self––created selves and revealed selves, the former
being fabricated individuals and the latter being “those features of individual writers’
psyches unwittingly or deliberately manifested as self-expression in their work.” 4
Poetry, Hegel further argues, can “readily present a fictional self” despite being a genre
that reflects the poet’s persona more directly than fiction.5 Dressing was a time-honored
trope for traditional Chinese poets to create imagined personas with varying relations
to the poet’s self.6 During the Ming-Qing transition in the seventeenth century, self-

2 Richard E. Strassberg, The World of K’ung Shang-Jen: A Man of Letters in Early Ch’ing China (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. xiv.
3 For a study of the Kong family’s response to the sartorial changes especially during the Kangxi

emperor’s visit, see Guojun Wang, “The Inconvenient Imperial Visit: Writing Clothing and
Ethnicity in 1684 Qufu,” Late Imperial China 37, no. 2 (2016): 137-70.
4 Robert E. Hegel and Richard C. Hessney, eds., Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 3-4.

5 Ibid., pp. 27-28.

6 As an archetype of poetic self-fashioning, the character Qu Yuan in “Li sao” 離騷 frequently

describes his self-made apparel and uses various flora in nature as decorative accessories. For a

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 61

expression––especially for Han Chinese scholars––was overshadowed by ethnic and

cultural conflicts concomitant with the dynastic change. In everyday life, Ming loyalists
invented a variety of ways to resist the Manchu hair and dress regulations; hairstyle
and clothing, or yiguan 衣冠, became effective props for their performances as remnant
Ming subjects.7 Poetry provided those scholars with an expanded space to comment on
history and communicate their sense of political belonging.8 It is in this context that the
paper explores Kong’s writing about himself and his contemporary scholars and
officials.
The paper brackets the resistance narrative and instead explores how Kong utilized
various dress codes as resources for literary writing. Rather than reading Kong’s poems
to decipher a consistent political identity, we can read them to see how Kong performed
different roles conditioned by sartorial changes, his life experiences, and the nature of
the poetic genre. In addressing those issues, I revisit a classical question in literary
studies: the relationship among authors, their works, and society. The study
demonstrates that poetic writing encompassed different modes of dressing for different
persons and different media of representation, thus allowing Kong to probe various
roles relating to himself and his scholarly circle.

Writing Manchu Clothing and Hairstyle

The Manchu government demanded that non-clerical Han Chinese males wear
Manchu hairstyle and clothing.9 In this section, I consider Kong’s poetic references to
and descriptions of actual clothing worn by early Qing officials and scholars including
himself. Official uniforms constitute the largest group of apparel that appear in Kong’s
poetry. Kong’s writings about Qing official uniforms closely accord with his acquisition
and loss of official titles. This section thus follows a chronological order to unveil the
changing meanings of Manchu clothing, especially official uniforms, in Kong’s poetry.
Before 1685, Kong largely stayed at his hometown Qufu in Shandong province. He
attended the civil service examination multiple times but failed to obtain a jinshi degree.
Few of his early poems are preserved in his poetic collections. In 1684, Kong

thorough study of sophisticated modes of self-representation in poetic writings, see Nicholas

Morrow Williams, Imitations of the Self: Jiang Yan and Chinese Poetics (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
7 See detailed discussions in Lin Li-yueh 林麗月, “Guguo yiguan: Dingge yifu yu Ming Qing zhiji

de yimin xintai” 故國衣冠: 鼎革易服與明清之際的遺民心態, Taiwan shida lishi xuebao 30 (2002): 39-
56.
8 For some representative studies of early Qing poetry as a response to the dynastic change, see

Wilt L. Idema, Wai-yee Li, and Ellen Widmer, eds., Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing
Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), pp. 73-218.
9 Manchu or Han clothing were not given terms in early Qing China. The Manchu regime

continuously reformed the specifications of its state attire borrowing from existing Ming-dynasty
sartorial traditions. The Qing government used terms such as mingchao guanfu (Ming-dynasty
official uniforms) but seldom referred to those garments as Han-style clothing.

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62 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

participated in receiving the Kangxi emperor during the imperial visit to Qufu and was
appointed Erudite in the Directorate of Education 國子監博士 in Beijing the following
year.10 Kong’s poetic descriptions of clothing closely accorded with the timeline of his
official services. One of his poems, “Pawning My Coat” 典裘, features a sheep-skin coat
he carried around between his official posts. The poem reads:

Three years, one sheepskin coat;

In the morning it drapes over my body and at night it covers my feet.
The fur is loose and the leather remains;
The accumulated dirt is hard to wash off.
…
I carried the coat away and pawned it for a thousand cash.
How cruel it is to give up what I treasure.
…
Autumn wind, autumn wind, it starts to blow frost.
How can my emaciated body live in a place like Du Fu’s Qu River!
三載一羊裘，朝披夜覆足。
毛脫皮尚存，積垢難浣浴。
…
抱裘典千錢，割愛亦云毒。
…
秋風秋風漸吹霜，羸體何以住曲江！[1688] 11

This poem uses a sheepskin coat to string together two temporal schemes
corresponding to two primary aspects of Kong’s identity. The poem starts with a
reference to the three years of his official service, from 1685 to 1688 when Kong
successively served as Erudite in the Directorate of Education and an assistant to the
Vice Minister of Works overseeing water control along the Yellow River. Although
Kong could not possibly portray the pawning of an official uniform, he still closely tied
the sheepskin coat with his official career. In a self-deprecating tone, Kong mocks his
poverty by describing the material deterioration of the coat explicitly mentioning the
fur and leather. Other lines in the poem refer to Kong’s constant travels by boat,
evidence of his diligence in trying to fulfill the mission entrusted him by the Kangxi
emperor.
At the same time as it comments on Kong’s services in early Qing China, the poem
alludes to historical figures. The poem starts and ends with a note on Kong’s inability
to resist the cold weather. There is good reason to assume that he was exaggerating
when lamenting on the loss of his only remaining winter coat. Instead, by writing about

10 About Kong’s early career, Xu Zhengui 徐振貴, Kong Shangren pingzhuan 孔尚任評傳 (Nanjing:
Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2000), pp. 43-62.
11 Kong Shangren 孔尚任, Kong Shangren quanji jijiao zhuping 孔尚任全集輯校註評, ed. Xu Zhengui

徐振貴, et al. (Jinan: Qilu shushe, 2004), p. 926. This collection, hereafter KSQJ, is the source of all
of Kong’s poems cited in this paper. The year of composition, when available, is given in brackets
immediately after the quotations.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 63

cold and pawning his clothes, Kong was imitating the Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu. The
last couplet, in particular, alludes to Qu River, where Du Fu resided when he pawned
his clothes and wrote “Two Poems at Qu River” 曲江二首.12 In this context, the repeated
invocation of autumn wind in the last couplet can be interpreted as alluding to another
poem by Du Fu, “Maowu wei qiufeng suopo ge” 茅屋為秋風所破歌. Kong recurrently
exploited the theme of pawning his clothes in other poems, a few of which specify that
the pawned garment was made of sheepskin. 13 The detailed description of the
sheepskin coat differentiates Kong’s experience from that of Du Fu. As historian
Jonathan Schlesinger points out, the use of fur in the Qing dynasty had initially been a
Manchu practice not followed by Han Chinese.14 Some decades into the Qing dynasty,
it became common practice for Han Chinese people to wear fur products. The
sheepskin coat, obviously different from Ming dress and possibly different from the
coat Du Fu once pawned in Tang China, nonetheless serves as a point of entry for Kong
to make connections between himself and scholars of a millennium earlier.
The two roles projected onto the sheepskin coat––those of diligent official and
frugal scholar––constitute the two pillars between which Kong positions himself in
relation to other people in early Qing China. In some poems, Kong explicitly used Qing
uniforms to indicate his official position. During his eighth year of official service (1692),
Kong wrote a series of nine poems about his life in winter. Two couplets among them
read:

Over eight years, the gold top of my marten cap has grown dim;
One inch of dust covers the shoulder of my python robe.
This night, I once more brush and polish them by lamplight;
Their splendor on horseback will shine on a bright day.
八年金暗貂冠頂，一寸塵封蟒服肩。
今夜燈前重拂洗，風光馬上映晴天。(KSQJ, p. 1562 [1692])15

As an Erudite in the Directorate of Education, Kong’s official title was in the seventh
rank, second class, whose corresponding uniform included a gold cap top. The “marten
cap” referred to a cap with a marten’s tail. In the Qing dynasty, the Manchu royal family
often used marten fur to decorate their caps. It was unlikely, however, that Kong’s
official cap used marten fur. The term marten cap, therefore, is likely a metaphor for
Kong’s official position. “Python robe” referred to Kong’s ceremonial dress (jifu 吉服)

12 See Du Fu, “Qujiang ershou” 曲江二首, in Dushi xiangzhu 杜詩詳注, ed. Qiu Zhao’ao 仇兆鰲
(Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), p. 447. The couplet directly related to Kong’s poem reads 朝回
日日典春衣，每日江頭盡醉歸.
13 For some other examples mentioning Kong pawning his coat, see 工詩難免典宮袍 (KSQJ, p.

986); 五冬羊裘三綻補 (p. 821); 早起典寒衣 (p. 822); 羊裘不脫老長安 (p. 1585); 毅然典我裘 (p. 1416);
不妨春冷裘先敝 (p. 1644); 書函花卷多名墨，布襪羊裘似野人 (p. 1562).
14 Jonathan Schlesinger, A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural

Fringes of Qing Rule (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), esp. chap. 1.
15 For a poem in the same spirit of this one, see 一官居八年，朝衣滿塵翳, KSQJ, p. 1348.

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64 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

that included pythons (mang 蟒) in its decoration. Mixing terms for actual Qing-dynasty
uniforms and ancient apparel, Kong’s poem depicts a diligent Qing official committed
to his service.
Just like his official uniform, Kong’s hair and hairstyle frequently appear in his
poems as indicators of his self-perception. Many of those poems simply use white hair
to indicate Kong’s aging. 16 When describing his hairstyle, however, Kong’s poem
stresses his identity as a Qing subject. In a poem explicitly about shaving his head, Kong
wrote:

Shaving My Head

I look for a prescription to darken my white hair,

But in vain, as the snow on my head refuses to be tinted.
People of the past wore hairnets (wangjin),
Which could hardly discipline temple hair.
My appearance wastes away in the mirror;
Hence my heroic ambition diminishes.
Born at the beginning of the sagely epoch,
I keep growing older with nothing accomplished.
Under sunny roofs I shave my white hairs, in front of ripples of the basin water.
A thin knife of Bingzhou darts about like the whirling wind.
As I scratch where it itches, my frosty hair has already fallen into the basket.
Rubbing my head I play like a child, to momentarily hide my ugly aging.
It is valuable that thatch grass be removed frequently,
and each day one should examine and cultivate himself.
If not in service of stimulating one’s ambition,
What is worth praising about a well-trimmed appearance?

剃頭
覓方烏白髮，頭雪不受染。昔人裹網巾，難以鬢毛斂。
鏡里形先衰，英雄志亦貶。我生聖世初，無成老冉冉。
晴簷剃白頭，盆水光瀲灩。一片薄倂刀，飛運如風閃。
方快癢處搔，霜毫已落簞。摩頂學兒嬉，老醜暫時掩。
茅草貴勤芟，日日自防檢。不因勵壯懷，修容奚所諂。(KSQJ, p. 1332 [1691])

Like many of his other poems mentioning hair, the poem comments on Kong’s aging
and, in particular, his fruitless efforts to darken his hair. The poem revolves around the
theme of time––personal and dynastic. By using such expressions as “play like a child”
and “ugly aging,” Kong depicts an old man mocking his shaven head. The description
of hair extends to hairstyle and headgear based on a contrast between past and present.
The first couplets refer to those wearing hairnets as “people of the past” (xiren).

Examples involving the hair include: 脫帽頻搔衰鬢笑 (KSQJ, p. 936 [1688]); 三年白髮漸垂垂,海
16

上求仙未有期 (p. 979 [1689]); 誰知醉後思何事？往往搔將鬢似蓬 (p. 1035 [1689]); 蕭蕭帽底二毛

加，嘆老傷秋未有涯 (p. 1576 [1694]); 科頭脫屐裙，四窗風易透 (p. 1382 [ca. 1696-1700]).

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 65

Obviously, the hairnet could not be used to cover one’s temple hair, which allows Kong
to criticize its inconvenience. Although indirectly, the poem indicates the process of
shaving his head in accordance with the Manchu hairstyle. Further, Kong points out
that the timeline of his personal life coincides with that of the Qing dynasty by stating
that he was “born at the beginning of the sagely epoch.” As a subject of the splendid
world of the Manchu Qing dynasty, Kong positioned himself at a distance from the
previous Ming dynasty, its loyal subjects, and its sartorial system. Although shaving
one’s head used to be a site of ferocious contention between the Manchu invaders and
resisting Han Chinese in mid-seventeenth-century China, Kong used the topic to
represent himself as an elderly person whose entire life had been contained within the
Qing dynasty.
In the same way that Kong portrayed himself, he used Qing state attire to comment
on his fellow officials. One of those poems features the military uniform in a story of
Qing loyalism. During a military insurgency in Wuchang, a deposed officer, Ding Wei
丁煒, was captured by the rebel army and refused to surrender. In a 1688 poem titled
“Ding the Surveillance Commissioner” 丁廉使, Kong praised that officer.

They sharpened their knives and forced the officials to surrender, who
Stomaching their humiliation, together paid their respect toward the barrack gate.
One officer alone wore an old dress with a one-horned deer;
His unyielding neck startled the rebel headman.
…
The Son of Heaven summoned the mister who left in haste;
Crimson maple leaves and white reeds sweep his combat dress.
霍霍磨刀逼官降，忍辱齊向轅門拜。
獨有一官舊豸衣，強項能使渠魁怪。
…
天子召公公去疾，丹楓白葦拂征衣。(p. 924 [1688])

The phrase “old dress with a one-horned deer” (jiu zhiyi 舊 豸 衣 ) simultaneously
indicates the protagonist’s identity as a Qing officer and resonates with his current loss
of official title.17 The couplet centers on the conflict between the officials and bandits.
Toward the end of the poem, Kong uses “combat dress” to refer to the officer’s uniform.
Due to his intrepidity in fighting the rebels, Ding’s official title of Surveillance
Commissioner was restored after the rebels were quelled. Accordingly, the “combat
dress” might simply refer to his “old dress.” That piece of clothing is no longer an

17Lianshi 廉使, short for lianfang shi 廉訪使, was an honorary reference to ancha shi 按察使
(Surveillance Commissioner) in the Qing dynasty. Lianfang shi was an official title in the Yuan
dynasty. The responsibilities of ancha shi in the Qing corresponded to that of lianfang shi in the
Yuan. The rank badge for ancha shi in the Qing dynasty featured xiezhi (one-horned deer), a
legendary animal able to tell the just from the unjust. The editors of Kong Shangren quanji often
provide biographical information about the figures mentioned in Kong’s poems. For conciseness,
I will not provide their biographical information unless important to my argument.

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66 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

obsolete dress but instead a garment symbolizing Ding’s military honor. The Qing
government followed Ming state attire in using badges to indicate official ranks. The
Qing official’s uniform, as a result, was a hybrid of Manchu and Han sartorial traditions.
The mixing of ethnic elements, however, do not detract from the official uniform’s
symbolic connotation of loyalty to the Qing. Using the ancient style (gufeng 古風), the
poem resonates with many medieval Chinese poems praising the heroic deeds of a
general. In that sense, the uniform––albeit a particular sartorial artifact in early Qing
society––transcends dynastic history and signifies the universal virtue of political
loyalism.
The poems discussed earlier feature individual persons living in early Qing China–
–either Kong himself or his official colleagues. When Kong described groups of people,
their clothing again tied them to the current Qing dynasty. Kong occasionally portrayed
customs of everyday life that were particular to the Manchu Qing dynasty. In one poem,
Kong wrote:

Just visible––the green on willows grows thicker and thicker;

Parties of young fellows try on their spring robes….
Tobacco pipes in the wind give out fragrance like Borneo camphor and musk;
Tasseled caps in the rain are like wet red cherries.
纔見垂楊綠漸高，少年結伴試春袍。…
風里煙筒噴腦麝，雨中纓帽濕櫻桃。(KSQJ, p. 984, [1689])

As historian Carol Benedict has discussed, tobacco was introduced to China by

European visitors through the maritime southern coast and the northeastern frontiers
around the seventeenth century. 18 She points out that “tobacco was only gradually
introduced into the cultural world of the Han elite” and that “Qing bannermen and
officials…played a crucial role in the gentrification of tobacco because they made
smoking respectable for those who held office.”19 Smoking tobacco and using tobacco
as gifts have been a lasting custom for Manchu men and women up to today. The poem
aptly captures the practice of smoking tobacco pipes which became increasingly
popular in early Qing China. It also includes two references to clothing––spring robes
and tasseled caps. The former refers to Manchu-style robes for civilians and the latter
to official caps decorated with red tassels. Although Kong did not provide an explicit
explanation, he juxtaposed tobacco and Manchu clothing in one couplet possibly
because both were nascent items of Manchu culture. As this poem illustrates, Kong
incorporated novelties in society into his poetry in a timely manner. The beginning line
points out the time––early spring, and the phrase “young fellows” indicates they grew
up in the Qing dynasty. The entire poem conveys a sense of the present––in natural
time, personal time, and dynastic time.

18 Carol Benedict, Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2011), p. 15.
19 Ibid., pp. 61-62.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 67

Whereas Kong used Manchu clothing to describe Qing subjects, he occasionally

contrasted his Manchu-style uniform with clothing of the past. In one poem he
compares himself to a Buddhist monk.

Seeing Monk Shuju Return to Jinling

Beyond the four pieces of poems, [he has left] not a single word;
In misty rain he returns south to the old imperial capital.
Wearing cassock sleeves or a court gown––who is the real sojourner?
Palace flowers and wild grasses are equally worth depiction.
…
送僧樹居還金陵
四篇詩外一言無，煙雨南歸舊帝都。
衲袖朝衫誰是客，宮花野草并堪圖。
…
(KSQJ, p. 1597 [1696]).20

In this poem, Kong uses his uniform––a court gown 朝衫––to indicate his identity as an
official in the Qing court. His court gown contrasts with the monk’s cassock just as
palace flowers contrast with wild grasses. In addition to the differences between an
official and a monk, the poem refers to Nanjing––the Monk’s destination––as the “old
imperial capital.” Nanjing was the capital of the Ming dynasty at its founding and
ending periods––and had been the capital of another six earlier dynasties. The old
imperial capital, therefore, could refer to the extinct Ming dynasty. The monk, as the
poem has it, is not only leaving for the south, but also leaving for a city of the past,
whereas Kong himself is staying near the palace in the capital of the current Qing
dynasty. The contrast between Kong’s uniform and the monk’s dress thus defines Kong
as a Qing official and a person of the present.21
The poems discussed above were all written when Kong served in office. Manchu
hairstyle and clothing––especially Qing government uniforms––allowed Kong to
describe himself and his contemporaries as subjects of the current Qing dynasty. When
Kong was removed from the post of Vice Director of the Guangdong Bureau in the
Ministry of Revenue 戶部廣東司員外郎 in 1700, the meaning of clothing in Kong’s
poems changed drastically.
When describing the Qing loyalist Ding Wei’s uniform, Kong identified both
himself and Ding as fellow officials of the Qing government. After his removal from
office, official uniforms hindered Kong’s interaction with his friends. Since official
uniforms could only be used in accordance with one’s official rank, they could not be

20 The editors of Kong Shangren quanji note that the first line alludes to the “four emptiness” 四無
in Buddhism. However, I understand the line as referring to the poetic exchanges between the
monk and Kong on that very occasion.
21 For similar lines mentioning Kong’s court gown, see 朝衫那及舊漁蓑，兩度看花鬢已皤 (KSQJ,

p. 1604); 手解朝衣到上方，蕭然雅會不能忘 (p. 1631).

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68 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

transferred to others. Clothing exchanges were especially precluded between officials

and ordinary scholars. After losing his official title, Kong wrote about exchanging
clothing between himself and his friends.

He caught sight of my clothing for the returning trip,

So ragged it could barely cover my elbow.
He desired to untie his brocade robe as a gift for me,
But was afraid the insignia would not befit my body.
顧我還鄉衣，捉肘何藍縷。
手慾解綈袍，恐非身章黼。(KSQJ, p. 1393 [1700])

This poem, written soon after Kong had lost his post, describes his parting with an
official friend. In these couplets, the brocade robe (tipao) alludes to a Warring-States
story recorded in Shiji about the Wei-state official Xu Gu offering his own brocade robe
to his former friend Fan Sui.22 The second couplet, however, makes it clear that the
uniform of Kong’s friend cannot be used as a gift because it does not fit Kong’s identity
as a non-official. By talking about his threadbare clothes, Kong indicates his adherence
to the virtue of frugality as a former official and current scholar. Together with the
removal of his uniform, Kong consciously distanced himself from his former official
identity as shown in this poem.
Although official uniforms severed the ties between Kong and his former
colleagues, Kong wrote about ordinary clothing in a way that still connected him and
his scholar friends. In “The Host at the Pingyang Prefecture Gave Me a Robe as a Gift”
平陽郡署主人贈袍 (1707), Kong talked about receiving a gown from an official friend.
Although his friend was serving as the governor of Pingyang Prefecture, the poem’s
title referred to his position only indirectly. It includes a couplet reading: “Devoted to
composing verses, I have grown thin with a waist like Shen Yue’s; / A piece of colorful
robe brings warmth to my entire body” 吟詩瘦盡沈腰存，一襲霞袍竟體溫 (KSQJ, p.
1715). This couplet includes two references to Kong’s body. The first line compares
Kong’s slim waistline to that of the Liang dynasty scholar-official Shen Yue 沈約 (441-
513) whose belt became increasingly loose due to his illness. With that allusion, Kong
portrays himself as a writer who pines away from deliberating on poetic composition,
a motif connecting him with scholars in the ancient past. The second half of the couplet
mentions the bodily warmth brought by the offered robe which comforts him, a writer
consumed by literary composition. The two references to body and clothing link the
three persons in the poem: Shen Yue, Kong Shangren, and his friend in Pingyang. This
poem does not address the meaning of the official uniform or the impossibility of giving
it away as a gift. Instead, the robe in the poem signifies a friendship between two
scholars unhindered by official identity.

22See “Fan Sui Cai Ze liezhuan” 范睢蔡澤列傳, in Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju, 1982), vol. 7, juan 79, p. 1413.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 69

No longer part of his everyday dress, Qing official uniforms reappeared as memory
in Kong’s poems. After 1700, Kong frequently referred to his leaving office by talking
about his old uniform. In the fall of 1703, Kong composed a group of poems collectively
titled “Random Musings in the Autumn Hall” 秋堂漫興. Some of the couplets read:

Without boarding a rustic carriage, I hold onto my walking staff.

Once I removed my court gown, everything becomes relaxed.
…
Honor and demeanor of the muraled ministry I have left behind;
Devoted to tilling, I have returned to be a mountain farmer as of old.
柴車不駕自扶筇，一脫朝衫事事松。
…
畫省風流渾忘卻，躬畊還我舊山農。(KSQJ, p. 1674)

The poem hinges on a contrast of lifestyles before and after the removal of his court
gown. The emphasis on an unbridled life nonetheless belies his uneasiness regarding
the loss of an official title; similarly, the stress on forgetting reveals his attachment to
his luminous days in office. As in this poem, Kong often referred to his old court gown
abandoned in dust which betrayed his disappointment with the demotion and
nostalgia for days past.23
Kong not only conveyed those sentiments about his former official life through
writing about his own clothing, but also projected his misgivings onto another
character in a poetic commentary. After losing his official post, Kong stayed in Beijing
for approximately two years before returning to Qufu. During that period, he
composed a group of poems on paintings at the request by his friends.24 One of them,
titled “On a Painting about Zen Meditation” 題坐禪圖, is likely about the portrait of a
Qing official. It reads:

A layperson sits in meditation by a valley bend.

His hand holds a string of the 108 beads. What is on his mind?
Once among the official rows in court, he had coral beads hanging on his dress;
Contemplating his body and fame––how much has been misjudged!
居士參禪坐澗阿，手持百八意如何？
朝班曾掛珊瑚子，檢點身名失算多。(KSQJ, p. 1827)

In this portrait poem, baiba refers to the string of rosary beads (nianzhu 念珠) used by
Buddhist practitioners symbolizing the effort to transcend one hundred and eight types
of worries in life. Coral beads refer to the string of court beads (chaozhu 朝珠) which
was part of the uniform for officials above a certain rank––a sartorial invention of the

23 Also see: 客榻又隨新舍掃，朝衫仍付舊塵封 (KSQJ, p. 1654); 一脫朝衫懶更穿 (p. 1800); 閱人雙

冷眼，壓向舊朝冠 (p. 1516).
24 See Kong’s explanation in the title of one of his poems, KSQJ, p. 1819.

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70 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

Qing dynasty modeled after the Buddhist bead string.25 By invoking the court beads,
Kong probes the mind of the person and imagines that he is reflecting on his previous
life as a government official. The reflection Kong imagines resonates with his own
experience as a demoted official with recurrent reminiscing of his previous life. Kong’s
career as an official is thus reflected in the practices of dressing and undressing as
illustrated in his poems.
By the time these “sartorial poems” were written (1680s-1700s), Manchu clothing
had become the dominant dress code in society. Kong did not directly address the
sartorial changes during the Ming-Qing transition, nor did he elaborate on the ethnic
features of Manchu clothing. In other words, although I retroactively use “Manchu” to
describe a group of clothing and hairstyle that appear in Kong’s poems, Kong himself
did not explicitly address the Manchuness of those items. Instead, in those poems we
see efforts to integrate different pieces of Manchu clothing––newly prominent
garments in China’s clothing history––into the received coalescence between clothing
and personal identities. Although Manchu clothing shattered the previous sartorial
order in society, the sartorial order in the poetic tradition remained unchallenged;
rather, Kong attempted to incorporate the new dress code into the existing poetic
language.

Han Clothing and Hairstyle as Metaphors

In Kong’s poems discussed earlier, Manchu hairstyle and clothing, especially

government uniforms, marked Kong’s identity as a Qing official and subject. The
current section considers another group of sartorial terms––those developed in the Han
Chinese tradition prior to the Qing dynasty. Throughout the millennia of Chinese
history leading to the Qing dynasty, sartorial practices of different ethnic groups
continuously interacted with each other.26 The founding emperors of the Ming dynasty
endeavored to eliminate the Mongolian influence on people’s clothing by establishing
a sartorial system purportedly based on the Tang tradition.27 With the Manchu rulers
introducing new sumptuary rules, most of the items representing the Ming state––
especially uniforms and scholarly dress––disappeared in everyday life. The question,
then, is whether Kong ever wrote about actual Ming-dynasty clothing. The Kong family
of Qufu, Shandong province, collected a large number of ritual costumes passed down

25 For a stipulation on the use of court beads, see Qinding Da Qing huidian 欽定大清會典, in Siku
quanshu, shibu, vol. 239, juan 30, 13a-b.
26 About the integration between Chinese and non-Chinese fashions in medieval China, see Kate

A. Lingley, “Naturalizing the Exotic: On the Changing Meanings of Ethnic Dress in Medieval
China,” Ars Orientalis 38 (2010): 50–80; for a discussion of the “cosmopolitanism” in the Tang
empire seen through clothing, see BuYun Chen, Empire of Style: Silk and Fashion in Tang China
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), chap. 1.
27 On the Ming emperor’s reform of clothing, see Zhang Jia 張佳, Xin tianxia zhihua: Mingchu lisu

gaige yanjiu 新天下之化: 明初禮俗改革研究 (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2014).

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 71

from the Ming dynasty. In Xiangjin bu 享金簿, Kong recorded 157 items mostly in his
family collection including antiques, instruments, paintings, and books. He took
particular note of music instruments and paintings formerly collected by the
Chongzhen court, but ancient clothing was not part of the records. When discussing
everyday clothing for men in early Qing society, Kong’s essays rarely include
references to Han clothing.28
In contrast with the general absence of Han clothing from his essays, in his poetry
Kong used existing terms about Han clothing to depict himself and his acquaintances
including the Manchu emperor. In traditional China, some terms for official attire
became synecdoches for official titles. Although those terms were derived from apparel
in society, over time they were dissociated from actual pieces of garments. A few of
Kong’s poems involving the Kangxi emperor illustrate such usage. During Kangxi’s
second southern inspection tour in 1689, Kong was one of the officials receiving him in
Yangzhou.29 Kong wrote a group of poems in praise of Kangxi. In one of them, Kong
described himself:

One can pity my haggard look after inspecting the lakes and seas;
Today I am again able, calm and composed, to worship the crown hung with pearls
(mianliu).
堪憐憔悴巡湖海，又得從容拜冕旒。(KSQJ, p. 987 [1689])30

In another poem describing Kangxi, he wrote:

Openly, [the emperor] stood there to watch flowers, wearing a ceremonial cap and
robe (gunmian);
Extraordinarily, [he] allowed fishermen and woodcutters to walk close to his
procession.
公然袞冕看花立，竟許漁樵近仗行。(KSQJ, p. 989 [1689])

Mianliu and gunmian originally referred to the ceremonial caps for emperors and high
officials in early China and gradually became a reference to the emperor alone. Those

28 Kong explicitly described Ming attire in only one poem. When Kong Shangren paid a visit to
the Ming martyr Shi Kefa’s tomb in 1689, he wrote “Plum Flower Ridge” 梅花嶺 (KSQJ, p. 1094)
involving a quick reference to Shi’s clothing. But the described clothes were invisible to Kong
and were thus imagined items.
29 For a study of Kangxi’s southern inspection tours, especially the first one in 1684, see Michael

G. Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680-1785
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007). According to Antonia Finnane’s study,
Kangxi’s intervention in the Huai-Yang water control system started during his first southern
tour. See Antonia Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), p. 150. About the meeting between Kangxi and Kong in
1689, see Xu Zhengui, Kong Shangren pingzhuan, pp. 83-4; and Strassberg, The World of K’ung
Shang-Jen, pp. 210-15.
30 Translation from Strassberg, The World of K’ung Shang-Jen, p. 212 (modified).

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72 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

caps differed conspicuously from the caps of Manchu emperors. The terms for the
crowns, however, maintained their reference to the emperor despite the changing forms
of imperial headgear across dynasties.
Sartorial terms with fixed meanings also include references to officials and scholars.
For example, when Kong was parting with a friend who left his official post, he wrote:
“He packed away the hairband and hairpin and carried a bagful of orchids and
melilotus” 束裹組與簪，一囊雜蘭茝 (KSQJ, p. 1385 [ca. 1696-1700]). The hairband and
hairpin in this couplet refer to the official uniform and the friend’s official identity.
Putting them away thus indicates leaving one’s official post, usually against one’s will.
Hairpin and hairband in this couplet are clearly no less metaphorical than the “Li sao”-
derived orchids and melilotus, since scholars in the Qing dynasty no longer kept their
hair in buns and therefore did not need a hairpin. In the same vein, Kong used zanzu
hui 簪組會 (gathering of hairpins and hairbands) in reference to the parties of scholar-
officials and used jiezu 解組 (untying the hairband) to refer to the loss of official
positions.31
Besides sartorial terms as part of everyday language, Kong used a set of imagined
apparel with particular connotations to depict his contemporaries. A few of Kong’s
poems are about portraits of early Qing scholar-officials. One poem describes the
portrait of Mao Qingruo 冒青若, the second son of Mao Xiang 冒襄, a famous late-Ming
scholar and a friend of Kong.

For a long time I have loved his masterpieces rivaling Xie [Lingyun] and Li [Bai];
Dressed in cap and gown (guanshang) he indeed resembles virtuous scholars of the Jin
and Tang.
久愛佳篇兼謝李，冠裳果似晉唐賢。(KSQJ, p. 812 [1687])

The poem discusses Mao Qingruo’s writings and clothing, both of which, as the poem
has it, put Mao on par with virtuous scholars in the Jin and Tang dynasties. If Mao’s
clothing in the portrait resembles ancient dress, it should be in the traditional Han style.
However, Mao served as a sub-prefect 同知 in the Qing government. It is thus unclear
whether Mao was actually depicted wearing Han clothing or Kong simply compared
Mao’s Manchu dress to ancient Chinese clothing.
Whereas the expression “cap and gown” in the above poem broadly refers to Mao’s
dress, another poem names a particular headgear. The poem describes a portrait of Qiu
Yinyu 裘殷玉 who held a jinshi degree from the Kangxi reign. Comparing Qiu to the
Jin-dynasty recluse Tao Yuanming, Kong wrote:

31For other examples, see 洛社常逢簪組會，江村舊有鷗鷺盟 (KSQJ, p. 1618 [1699]); 每逢簪組會

(p. 1756 [before 1700]), referring to his gathering with scholar-friends when he was in office. Also
see 解組歸去人曰可 (p. 1454 [ca. 1700-02]); 解組方鬆綬，牽絲又續綸 (p. 1761 [1701]), referring to
his loss of official title in 1700.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 73

In the vase is the same chrysanthemum [as that of Tao];

On his head is what kind of jin?
瓶中仍此菊，頭上是何巾。(KSQJ, p. 1554 [1708])

According to the poem, the portrait depicts Qiu wearing a headcloth (jin) in emulation
of Tao Yuanming who used his headpiece to filter alcohol, as recorded in one of Tao’s
“Drinking Wine” 飲酒 poems. Jin was a type of headgear with which Ming literati
scholars were obsessed. The Ming-dynasty encyclopedia Sancai tuhui 三 才 圖 會
included about twenty types of jin designed and possibly used in the Ming dynasty.32
Just like zanzu 簪組, the jin headgear was no longer used in the Qing dynasty. In fact,
the wangjin (hairnet), which was typical headgear in the Ming dynasty, was strictly
banned by the Manchu government.33 In his portrait, Qiu was likely impersonating an
ancient recluse like Tao Yuanming.
The art historian Richard Vinograd has discussed the trend of impersonation in
seventeenth-century portrait paintings. One such painting produced in 1652 features a
gathering of late-Ming scholars who are depicted wearing caps following the styles of
the Jin and Tang dynasties, an embodiment of “late Ming escapist fashion.”34 Vinograd
argues that late Ming scholars “assumed the roles of culturally notable figures from the
past” while at the same time remaining “aware of the gap between the present and the
past.”35 After the Ming-Qing transition, impersonation in painting became ever more
complicated. Whereas some Ming loyalists depicted themselves in traditional Chinese
clothing to express their nostalgia of the fallen Ming,36 some Qing subjects did so as a
way to perform the role of recluses. Even the Yongzheng emperor playfully employed
traditional Chinese clothing in the portraits of himself and his concubines. 37 The
clothing in the portraits of Mao Qingruo and Qiu Yinyu challenged the convention of
impersonating ancient sages because the permitted dress of Qing scholars

32 Wang Qi 王圻 and Wang Siyi 王思義, eds., Sancai tuhui 三才圖會 (1609 print edition), clothing

衣服, juan 3, 20a-27b.

33 See Lin Li-yueh 林麗月, “Wanfa juqi—wangjin yu Mingdai shehui wenhua de jige mianxiang”

萬髮俱齊—網巾與明代社會文化的幾個面向, Taida lishi xuebao 33 (2004): 133-60.

34 Richard Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1992), p. 40.

35 Ibid., p. 35.

36 For discussions of the paintings by Chen Hongshou and other Ming loyalists, see Peter Charles

Sturman and Susan Tai, eds., The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century
China (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Munich: Delmonico Books/Prestel,
2012).
37 For a discussion of those portraits, see Wu Hung, “Beyond Stereotypes: The Twelve Beauties

in Qing Court Art and the Dream of the Red Chamber,” in Writing Women in Late Imperial China, ed.
Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 306-96.

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74 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

conspicuously differed from that of the Jin-dynasty scholar Tao Yuanming.38 Although
the Manchu government issued strict regulations over hairstyle and clothing in society,
poetic writing and painting gave early Qing scholars some imaginative space to
represent hair and clothing. The portrait poems created a double-layered space in
which Kong freely participated in those identity performances.
In the group of poems discussed above, Kong used clothing with metaphorical
associations to depict his friends as recluse scholars. When he used similar terms for
Ming loyalists, those terms helped identify those recluses as remnant subjects of the
Ming dynasty. One of those poems comments on his friend Fang Pushi 方僕士:

He did not escape from the Qin, nor does he live by picking vetches;
Vicissitudes have left this most leisurely body….
With broad sleeves he brought utensils to buy alcohol;
Onto a skiff he pulled along with him a flute-player.
不采山薇不避秦，滄桑遺下最閑身。…
大袖攜來沽酒具，扁舟拉上弄簫人。 (KSQJ, p. 1100 [1689])

“Picking vetches” alludes to the story of Boyi and Shuqi––the loyal Shang subjects who
escaped to the mountains after the Zhou conquest; “escape from the Qin” alludes to the
story in Tao Yuanming’s “Peach Blossom Spring” in which a community flees the rule
of the new dynasty. Those allusions obviously resonate with the Ming-Qing transition.
Meanwhile, the first line states that Mr. Fang was not living in seclusion like the people
alluded to, giving us reason to assume that he was living in Qing society and was
dressed in the Manchu style. However, the other couplet mentions his broad sleeves––
a typical feature of Han-style dress for Ming-dynasty scholars. It is possibly another
metaphorical use of clothing to illustrate Fang’s unconstrained lifestyle as a Ming
loyalist.
The description of sleeves is sometimes coupled with descriptions of hair and
headgear. Portraying another Ming loyalist Du Yuhuang 杜於皇 (1611–1687), Kong
wrote:

The old man of the previous dynasty wears threadbare sleeves;

His grand essays are treasured within the seas. …
Moss grows on the temple bed;
Snow climbs up his head onto the kudzu headcloth.
禿袖前朝老，雄文海內求。…
蕭寺苔生榻，葛巾雪上頭。(KSQJ, p. 772 [1687])

This poem mixes descriptions of actual things and imagined items. “Threadbare sleeves”
can simply refer to the ragged condition of Du’s clothes. However, when the term is

38For a discussion of Kong’s “portrait-poetry” and the two poems in particular, see Allison
Bernard, “Poetics and Persona: On Reading Kong Shangren’s Portrait-Poetry,” unpublished
paper.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 75

coupled with “the old man of the previous dynasty,” it becomes unclear whether those
sleeves were the wide sleeves of a Ming-dynasty garment passed down through the
decades of Qing rule. In the last line, the snow metaphor indicates Du’s high age;
whereas that metaphor could be interpreted as referring to the actual color of Du’s hair,
the kudzu headcloth (gejin 葛巾) is probably a metaphor for Du’s recluse identity. The
few phrases regarding Du’s clothing and hair, therefore, reveal a multifaceted image of
the scholar––as Ming loyalist, elderly man, and impoverished recluse scholar.
Since Kong used traditional Han Chinese clothing to portray the Manchu emperor,
Qing officials, and Ming loyalists, how did he use those items to describe himself? It is
somehow surprising to see that Kong occasionally used Ming state attire to mark his
identity as a Qing official. Kong wrote about his stay in a temple when he was traveling
in south China as a water control official.

The mountain dweller wearing a gauze cap has a distinct residence:

Three dilapidated office rooms inside the temple gate.
紗帽山人住不同，三間破廨寺門中。(KSQJ, p. 870 [1688])

“Mountain dweller” (shanren) is synonymous with “hermit.” However, the gauze cap
(shamao), or black gauze cap, was part of the uniform for Ming-dynasty officials.
Obviously, Kong at that time was wearing Manchu-style uniforms, not a Han-style
gauze cap. Juxtaposing gauze cap and mountain dweller, Kong depicted himself as a
sojourner temporarily living in a temple, not an actual recluse. The gauze cap serves as
a poetic costume for Kong to perform the role of a reclusive official.
Except for the gauze cap, Kong did not use other Han-style sartorial terms to
indicate his official identity. Rather, he continuously employed Han clothing to portray
himself as a traditional scholar. Many of the terms do not correspond to actual clothing
in Qing society, nor do they directly indicate official ranks or social status. For example,
describing one of his trips, Kong wrote:

My cart stops by alleys and thoroughfares;

Spring breeze over my crane-feather cloak.
停車巷衢邊，春風吹鶴氅。(KSQJ, p. 1326 [1691])

The crane-feather cloak used to be Daoist apparel and was gradually adapted for use
in everyday life by scholars in the Ming dynasty. The use of non-factual garments in
describing his everyday life obscures the boundary between actual and imagined
activities. In a poem describing ice collection during the winter, Kong contrasted his
own crane-feather cloak with the fox fur robe of some officials, the former simply
indicating Kong’s identity as a witness on that particular occasion.39

39我披鶴氅履冰看…岸上怒殺狐裘吏 (KSQJ, p. 1442). The poem is included in Changliu ji 長留集,

a collection of Kong’s poems composed during and after his water control post. The poem starts

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76 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

Kong’s poetic description of different headgear provides us a clearer picture of his

self-fashioning. Kong frequently depicted himself and his scholar friends wearing the
jin headgear.

Seeking shade in an ancient temple, I temporarily remove my headgear.

古寺乘涼暫脫巾 。 (KSQJ, p. 1003 [1689])

Ten thousand green bamboos are dustless;

I remove the pleated headpiece and find my way through.
萬竿綠竹凈無塵，穿入先除折角巾。(KSQJ, p. 1010 [1689])40

The examples were written when he served as an official in Beijing and south China.
On many occasions, Kong was visiting temples or scenic resorts with his official or non-
official friends. It is clear that no one at the gatherings was actually wearing anything
like the pleated headpiece. Like his friends who depicted themselves in traditional
Chinese attire in their portraits, Kong simply used the jin headgear to signify the
received practice of scholarly gathering. References to the jin headgear continued after
Kong lost his official position. During his last years residing in Qufu, he still used the
pleated headgear to refer to his visitors. One example reads “a guest of honor with
pleated headgear arrives at the rainy alley” 雨巷折巾來上客 (KSQJ, p. 1755 [ca. 1714-
18]).
In poems of his late years, even the Han Chinese hairstyle became a trope for
Kong’s self-fashioning. In the 1691 poem about shaving his head, Kong explicitly
described himself as a Qing subject. More than two decades later, Kong wrote another
poem involving hairstyle. The poem is titled “Tree of Conjoined Bliss” 合歡樹 and some
of the couplets describe Kong sitting by the tree blossoms:

Extremely like the severed red threads in an embroidered boudoir—

I suspected it to be the thin hair brushed off a crane’s head.…
I also sit and lean against the flower tree with my head uncovered,
leaving the snow-white hair bun entwined with red threads.
絕類繡窗剪紅絨，又疑刷洗鶴頂毳。…
我亦科頭坐倚花，盡教朱絲挽雪髻。 (KSQJ, p. 1478 [ca. 1715-1718])

Both couplets involve the head and hair: the first one uses a crane’s head as metaphor
and the second contrasts the color of his white hair with that of the crimson tree flowers.
In the second couplet, Kong used the conventional expression “snow-white hair bun”
(xueji) to indicate his high age despite the fact that he was wearing a Manchu-style
queue instead of a hair bun. Whereas the first line in the second couplet describes the

by mentioning the imperial river 御河, possibly the moat surrounding the imperial palace in
Beijing. This poem was likely composed between 1690 and 1700.
40 Other examples include 雅會名流盡折巾，江南江北聚芳鄰 (KSQJ, p. 723 [1686]);相逢卻值黃花

侯，親見東籬漉酒巾 (p. 708 [1686]); 往往飲興高，頭上巾自漉 (p. 1089 [1689]).

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 77

actual condition of his head as uncovered (ketou), the second line slips into an imagined
scene with himself wearing a counterfactual hairstyle and living in his private
household. Read against his earlier poem on shaving his head, this verse demonstrates
that Kong’s self-representation shifted from a Manchu official to a retired and reclusive
scholar. Manchu- and Han-style clothing furnished Kong with poetic tropes to portray
that transition of identities.

Ming Attire as Theatrical Costume

When Manchu hairstyle and clothing entered Chinese society in the mid-
seventeenth century, they reshaped the modes of dressing characters in various forms
of artistic representation. Although Han-style male clothing largely disappeared in
society, theatrical performances preserved a unique space to display those clothes.
Following its artistic tradition, theatrical performances continued to use costumes
based on clothes in Ming society and only gradually and in limited circumstances
adopted Manchu-style clothing. 41 Theatrical costumes constitute a special type of
clothing that Kong wrote about in his poems on drama performances (guanju shi 觀劇
詩 ). 42 Those poems describe special sartorial spectacles in which Kong positioned
himself in relation to the performers and audiences.
Some of Kong’s poems on theatrical performances comment on Ming state attire
displayed onstage. In 1686, Kong attended a drama performance at an official bureau
in Yangzhou and recorded that experience in a poem:

Each tune sings over the peaceful spring of the prosperous age,
Accompanied by black silk hats, ivory tablets, swords and official boots.
A dwarf full of humor entertains us all
By imitating a dignified manner with powder and paint.
曲曲盛世太平春，烏帽牙笏雜劍履。
亦有侏儒嬉諧多，粉墨威儀博眾喜。(KSQJ, p. 711 [1686])

The second line includes a set of costumes––black silk hats, ivory tablets, swords and
official boots, all of which mimicked Ming official uniforms and were used onstage for
official characters. Those garments––in the style of the past Ming dynasty––were yet
employed to decorate the peaceful era of the current Qing dynasty. As the phrase fenmo
(powder and paint) indicates, Ming state attire in such a performance served simply as
a toy for entertainment. Since the performance took place at a banquet for officials, the
audience would have been wearing Manchu-style attire befitting their official identities.

41 See the discussions in Guojun Wang, Staging Personhood: Costuming in Early Qing Drama (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2020), esp. chap. 1.
42 For a study and anthology of poems on drama performances, see Zhao Shanlin 趙山林, ed.,

Lidai yongju shige xuanzhu 歷代詠劇詩歌選注 (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1988).

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78 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

While Ming attire was relegated to the theatrical space, Qing attire became the dress
code for the spectators.
The poem above records a performance at a government hall for a limited audience.
In a group of fifty ditties collectively titled “Bamboo Songs of Pingyang” 平陽竹枝詞,
Kong described a series of temple-fair performances open to the public. 43 The first
sixteen songs feature performances dedicated to the God of Spring. The first one
indicates that a group of female actors send the God of Spring (donghuang 東皇) to
people’s households. The sixth song further explicates that the actors change into
costumes to perform officials and clerks of the spring (chunguan chunli 春官春吏) in a
makeshift shed in front of the prefect’s government hall. Song number fourteen
captures details of their performances:

In rows and lines they pass by the government hall;

Paying obeisance and presenting songs of praise, they rival the imperial music bureau.
So long as the governor of spring breeze is pleased,
Why does it matter that black gauze caps are thoroughly sported?
行行隊隊過公堂，拜獻謳歌讓教坊。
管領春風官得意，烏紗盡戴亦何妨? (KSQJ, p. 1846 [ca. 1708])

In this context, the performances were both ritualistic and theatrical. They were
simultaneously dedicated to the deities of spring and presented for the entertainment
of residents in Pingyang. 44 The group of songs together reveal that some female
performers dressed up as male deities wearing costumes in the style of Ming official
uniforms including the black gauze cap. The last line betrays the fact that it was
inappropriate to wear the black gauze cap in other occasions for reasons unstated;
however, at a performance to entertain deities, costumes in the Ming style could be
used at ease.
Han clothing used as theatrical costumes included not only official uniforms but
also apparel for ordinary scholars. The forty-fifth song in “Bamboo Songs of Pingyang”
records an occasion of male impersonation.

A group of red sleeves whose names are unknown:

Each is capable of singing with mellifluous voice to the musical rhythm.
Wearing white collars and black pleated hats, holding mica-decorated fans;
Which of them resembles the bearing of a true Scholar Wang?
一群紅袖不知名，按板都能唱曼聲。

43 Regarding the three main performance venues in Qing China, see Andrea S. Goldman, Opera
and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770-1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012),
chap. 2.
44 Pingyang was one of the prefectures (fu 府) in Shanxi province in the Qing dynasty. David

Johnson has discussed what he calls the “ritual-operatic performance complex” that characterizes
performances in today’s Shanxi. See David Johnson, Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations
of Village Life in North China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), p. 4.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 79

白領烏巾雲母扇，幾人風度似王生。(KSQJ, p. 1850 [ca. 1708])

Kong listed that poem in the category of “Lyrics on Female Actors” 女優詞. The poem
describes a group of female actors who were capable of not only singing Chinese opera,
but also performing male characters. Black pleated hats were the headgear for reclusive
scholars not serving in the government. In the performance described in the poem, such
garments were onstage props for male impersonation. The poem celebrates gender
performance within a theatrical performance as a pleasant spectacle to be viewed by
Qing audiences.
The Manchu hair and dress regulations were gender-specific because Han Chinese
women were exempt from the decree of changing into Manchu hairstyle and clothing.
The Manchu sartorial policies rendered Han culture effeminate by subjugating male
clothing and dressing practices.45 The poems resonate with the sartorial changes in that
traditional Han clothing, especially the scholarly and official attire of the Ming dynasty,
could only be used as toys for gender and theatrical performances. The few poems
discussed here reveal Kong’s perception of Han-style costumes in drama performances
in both south and north China in the Qing dynasty.
Both poetry and drama provided Kong spaces for self-representation. In his poems,
Kong used Manchu and Han clothing to depict different aspects of himself––a Qing
subject, a demoted official, a Confucian scholar, and a recluse. Similarly, in his drama
Peach Blossom Fan, Kong stealthily associated himself with the Ceremonial Assistant
whose life spans the Ming and Qing dynasties and who enjoys the highest level of
versatility in terms of dressing.46 Different from the variegated dress codes in his poetic
writing, however, in his drama Kong predominantly used Han clothing and referenced
Manchu clothing only in oblique ways. Han clothing was the dress code for the
theatrical space, both in the dramas he wrote and in the drama performances he
witnessed. Meanwhile, poems on drama performances provided Kong a metatheatrical
space in which he took the perspective of a spectator. In contrast with the Han clothing
on stage, it was the Manchu clothing of the invisible audience that defined Kong as a
peer among the scholars and officials of Qing China.

Dressing and Writing as Performance

The above examples show that Kong’s poetic world includes three types of clothing:
actual Manchu clothing, metaphorical Han clothing, and Han-style theatrical costumes.
A large majority of the poems discussed in this paper are about actual people and

45 For example, discussing some early Qing court paintings in which the Yongzheng emperor and
his concubines are depicted in Han clothing, Wu Hung argues that the portraits symbolize “a
defeated nation [the Ming dynasty] that was given an image of an extended feminine space with
all its charm, exoticism, and vulnerability.” See Wu, “Beyond Stereotypes,” p. 363.
46 For a discussion on costuming in Peach Blossom Fan, see Wang, Staging Personhood, chap. 5.

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80 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 41 (2019)

events in Qing society. The three types of clothing epitomize a range of approaches by
which Kong engaged with the social world––through describing clothing as actual
objects, poetic metaphors, and theatrical props. In society, the Ming-Qing transition
occasioned a relocation of different dress codes in time and space: Qing attire in the
Manchu style became clothing of the present whereas Ming attire became clothing of
the past; Qing attire dominated the social space whereas Ming attire was banished to
the theatrical space. Kong’s poetic world incorporates all those types of clothing to
represent contemporary events.
Those different types of clothing in Kong’s poetry in turn accord with different
dimensions of Kong’s self. Scholars working on Kong Shangren have been troubled by
the issue of intention, or Kong’s political identity as seen through his writings. While
some scholars argue that Kong was a Ming loyalist, others point out that he actually
portrayed himself as a Qing subject. 47 As this paper shows, in his poems involving
actual Manchu clothing, Kong explicitly portrayed himself as a Qing official and loyal
subject; Manchu hairstyle and clothing anchored him in the present, distinct from the
Ming subjects that belonged to the past. In his poems on theatrical performances, Kong
described himself as one of the spectators witnessing the exile of Ming state attire to the
theatrical space. Meanwhile, he used metaphorical Han-style apparel to describe
himself as an elderly, reclusive, and off-duty official; that particular type of dressing
allowed Kong to transcend the dynastic boundary and connect with scholars in the ages
before him. Conflating those modes of dressing, it becomes difficult to distinguish
between the revealed self and the created self that together constitute the poet Kong
Shangren.
I further argue that practices of dressing and poetic writing provided Kong with a
unique venue of identity performance. Anthropologists and sociologists have
extensively discussed different types of dress as a primordial medium for interpersonal
communication in different cultures. Regarding an individual’s social activities as
“performance,” Erving Goffman uses the term “front” to refer to “the expressive
equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual
during his performance.”48 He further distinguishes between the scenic aspects of front
(setting) and the “personal front” which includes the use of clothing.49 In Goffman’s
explication, the front is like a stage on which one performs a certain role with such
props as insignia, clothing, and posture when interacting with others. Noticeably, most
of Kong’s poetic descriptions of clothing are set in a social occasion in which he interacts
with other scholars and officials, such as meeting with the Kangxi emperor, parting
with his official friends, or attending a gathering with recluses. His poems describe
what clothing he saw on the bodies of his friends as well as how his own clothing was
perceived by his interlocutors. Occasionally, clothing was used as gifts. The possibility

47 Xu Zhengui has phrased the conflict as one between loyalty to the emperor and antagonism
against the barbarians. See Xu, Kong Shangren pingzhuan, pp. 240-64.
48 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959), p. 22.

49 Ibid., pp. 23-24.

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 WANG Dressing Self and Others in the Poetry of Kong Shangren 81

and impossibility of exchanging certain types of clothes, as discussed in Kong’s poems,

indicate the nature of communication on those particular occasions.
Just as dressing is inherently interpersonal, so is poetic writing. Many of the poems
discussed in this paper were derived from occasions of social interaction. When Kong
wrote poems about receiving clothing as gifts, he certainly meant for those poems to be
understood as a message of gratitude to his friends. When he wrote about the recluse
scholars he met, he was using those poems to communicate and identify with that
group of people. Kong’s poetic composition was a social practice particularly because
he saw to the publication of several collections of his poems. 50 The production,
circulation, and reading of those poems created another cycle of communication that
Kong could expect when composing those poems. Whereas dressing allowed Kong and
his male friends to perform certain roles in society, their Manchu-style clothing
simultaneously limited the scope of personas they could perform because the incipient
Manchu dress code was not yet associated with all the facets of being a traditional
scholar. Despite so, Kong frequently wrote about imagined Han clothing for himself
and his acquaintances who performed scholarly roles with costumes available only in
the poetic world. Poetic imagination thus helped break the constraints of actual dress
codes. Through writing about different clothes and hairstyles, Kong created a matrix to
position himself and the persons in his poetic world.

50Kong edited at least three collections of his poetry––Huhai ji 湖海集, Antang gao 岸堂稿, and
Changliu ji 长留集. See Yuan Shishuo 袁世碩, ed., Kong Shangren nianpu 孔尚任年譜 (Jinan: Qilu
shushe, 1987), pp. 8-9.

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