Jon Dutko November 30, 2011 Chinese History to the Opium War Hill Analysis of the Writings of Yuan

Mei

Yuan Mei was an eighteenth century Chinese intellectual, scholar, poet and artist whose slant toward hedonism and self-satisfaction represented a departure from other moral philosophers of the Qing Dynasty. Where Yuan Meis intellectual predecessors in Chinese intellectual society would have concerned themselves with the larger questions of religion, the Way, and the relationship of man and state, Yuan Mei is one of the few prominent Chinese philosophers of his time to ruminate on the nature of individual taste and self-satisfaction. His writings are of significance in that they represent an oft-overlooked reaction of a subsection of the Chinese people to the staunch Neo-Confucian tenets adopted by the central imperial government at the time.

In the scope of his own life, Yuan Mei was a figure of great literary importance. A patron of the language arts, Yuan Mei was a tireless promoter of other peoples poetry.1 As anachronistically liberal in his views on poetry as he was in his social and philosophical thought, Yuan Mei often endorsed poetry and prose that went against the traditional but artistically limiting conventions of Chinese literature. As an artist in his own right, Yuan Mei was both prolific and celebrated. William T. Rowe, in Chinas Last Empire: The Great Qing, states that Yuan Mae was a highly popular and financially successful professional writer of fiction,

Mair, Dennis. "Yuan Mei, Champion of Individual Taste."Hawai'i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture. 1st ed. One. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Print.

nonfiction and quasi-fiction prose.2 His garden, Suiyuan, was a famous location for great thinkers of the time, both literary and otherwise.

In the perspective of the whole of late imperial China and, specifically, the imperial society of the Qing Dynasty, Yuan Meis writings embodied what some considered to be a radical departure from conventional and contemporary philosophy. His writings consider little the topic of collective governance or society at large. Instead, he chooses to focus on the topics of personal taste and the importance of the individual, especially in terms of artistic appreciation and individual religious and philosophical preference. For instance, in his Suiyuan Poetry Talks, he details his reactions to a certain powerbrokers poems. He states that although they possess clarity of diction and good technique if I want to find fault, theres nothing to find fault with; if I want to make fun of them, theres nothing to make fun of; if I want to select some, there are none that stand out theyre close to humaneness, but not to poetry.3 In essence, he states that was is technically superb must be differentiated from what is inherently and artistically beautiful; this is a departure from many traditional Chinese cultural thinkers, for whom technical prowess and aesthetic beauty were one and the same.

In addition to writing about the fundamentals of artistic beauty, Yuan Mei offered written rebuttals to the rigid tenets of Buddhism and Confucianism. In his Letter to Xiang Jinmen, he uses a metaphor for culinary tastes to relate to his views on religion. Some have a taste for jujubes, and roast meat does not appeal to them; some have a taste for lychee fruit, and wild

Rowe, William. China's Last Great Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge: The Pelknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. Print. 3 Yuan Mei. "Suiuan Poetry Talks." Hawai'i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture. 1st ed. One. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Print.

greens do not appeal to them, he states. I dont have an us-and-them mentality about Confucianism versus Buddhism When it comes to grounds of argument, I have my own place to stand.4 In effect, Yuan Mei is stating that one does not need to draw entirely from one religious source as a wellspring for personal philosophy. Each belief system, he argues, has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the strengths from each should be ingested without the weaknesses.

On a personal note, I find Yuan Mei to be a representation of an incredibly interesting and anomalous attitude in imperial Chinese and, specifically, Qing Dynasty social philosophy. By most (if not all) major moral systems at the time, Yuan Mei was certainly no saint. He was publically sexually promiscuous with both singing girls and handsome male actors, and in his personal letters stated that he found oblivion while lying atop a woman, rather than on a meditation mat. Regardless, his evidently radical views were still, as Rowe states, respectfully considered, if not necessarily followed, by many high officials. This accomplishment, along with his socially and politically liberal attitudes, and his patronage of the liberal arts, marks for me Yuan Mei as a philosopher of great regard in Chinese history.

Yuan Mei. "Letter to Xiang Jinmen." Hawai'i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture. 1st ed. One. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Print.