Bao Literature Study

The stories of Bao Gong are uniquely rich and varied in the popular literature. The stories of Bao Zheng have been popular since the North Song dynasty. And the literary works on Bao Gong in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties are innumerable, which proves that the literature on Bao Gong is historically remarkable.The literature on Bao Gong refers to all the literary works about Bao Gong, the genres of which cover dramas, novels, legend and Baojuan. The study of the literature on Bao Gong focuses on the dramas and the novels before the end of the Qing dynasty. The present study, with the culture of upright officials as its background, puts great emphasis on the existence and development of the literature on Bao Gong and on exploring why the culture of upright officials since the Song and Yuan dynasties is represented by the literature on Bao Gong. Furthermore, the present study discusses both the development of the literature on Bao Gong from the angle of the evolution of the writing style and its literary significance from the aspect of literature and culture study.The study of the literature on Bao Gong is helpful to the understanding of the ancient Chinese judicial culture and spirit. The ancient Chinese culture treasures not only the relationships between law and human feelings, and law and reason, but also the feudal ethical code. The judicial spirit of the ancient China emphasizes that law should yield to human sympathy and that one should try not to bring lawsuits to settle disputes. Although the literature on Bao Gong is the result of the imperial power system and therefore inevitably accumulates the feudal political and cultural elements, Bao Gong, who enforces the law strictly, embodies the idea of putting the people first. The literature on Bao Gong attaches great importance to the daily life of the grass-roots and to revealing the crimes of the ruling party who cruelly oppress the people. This is a standpoint putting the people first, sharply different from the sympathy the literati feel for the grass-roots. The significance of the images of upright officials in the Bao Gong literature lies in the way of being officials and the morals of being engaged in politics, such as being honest, clean and upright officials who concern for and sympathize with the people. Therefore, it can be referred to as a cultural resource in today's construction of clean politics. The literature on Bao Gong contains a profound humanistic spirit, and the study of the literature on Bao Gong, surpassing Bao Zheng as a historical figure, has great academic and realistic significance.The famous upright officials before the Song dynasty are numerous. Compared with the officials of his times, Bao Gong's social position is not as high as Fu Bi, Han Qi and Wen Yanbo, his literary talent is not as great as Ouyang Xiu and Su Dongpo, and his political achievements are not comparable with those of Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi. So, why can Bao Gong represent upright officials in the popular literature? The key point of this question lies in the times of Bao Zheng—the Song dynasty, the times when the culture of upright officials flourishes. The flourishing of the culture of upright officials in the Song Dynasty is due to the historical, social and cultural conditions. In the Song dynasty, the evil political systems of the former five dynasties are removed and a clean and honest government is built. This conforms to the historical trend. The law of the Song dynasty protects the private property rights, punishes severely thieves and bandits, and raises people's legal awareness of appealing to upright officials for justice. In the Song dynasty, honesty and uprightness are the basic political rules that officials must obey. Many officials conscientiously foster their qualities with the Confucius thoughts. There are a great number of literati and officials in the Song dynasty who temper their noble qualities, which is the symbol of the existence of the upright official culture. The literature on legal cases in the folk culture is not only a vivid expression of the culture of upright officials but also an important sign of the popular of the people's awareness of upright officials. The lasting and wide spread of the works on upright officials in the folk literature fully proves that the traditional awareness of upright officials is basically a folk belief. Upright officials become a god enshrined and worshiped in the people's heart. It is in this cultural background that Bao Zheng fortunately becomes a symbol of upright officials in the popular literature, and it is only by studying the literature on Bao Gong from the angle of the culture of upright officials that we can really solve the problems.The development of the literature on Bao Gong varies with dynasties. The Bao Gong image in the Song folk literature is simply a judge. This image of a judge in the popular literature is closely related to Bao Gong's characteristics of judging cases described in both history books and collected literary works. In the history books and literary works of the Song dynasty, there are over ten stories about how Bao Gong judges cases, and emphasis is all put on describing his personalities such as uprightness, cleanness, perceptiveness and concern for the people. In judging cases, Bao Gong attaches importance to the unity of law and reason. All these lay the foundation for the later literature on Bao Gong.In the Yuan dynasty, Bao Gong is created as a warrior. Bao Gong, who upholds justice with intelligence and bravery, expresses both the writers'desire and longing for clean and upright politics and the appeal of the grass-roots who live in a precarious state in the Yuan dynasty. The appeal of the grass-roots for Bao Gong is actually a psychological illusion caused by their extreme dissatisfaction of the dark reality. Bao Zheng in the Yuan dramas, defending the imperial power and redressing injustices for the people, displays honest quality and personal charm that an upright official should have.In the Ming dynasty, Bao Gong is created as a god armed with intelligence and power. Compared with the images of Bao Gong in the Song and Yuan dynasties, Bao Gong in the Ming dynasty is created as an extremely powerful hero. All the gods, ranging form the King of the god to Yama, grant whatever is requested by him, and some local gods are even at his mercy. In the Qing dynasty, he is created as the leader of chivalrous swordsman, who is a loyal pillar of the state gifted with insight and power. In a word, Bao Gong is the embodiment of the people's ideal upright official. Most of the writers of the ancient popular literature, who, because of their grass-root social class, suffer great pain and oppression in reality but find no way to being officials, have to put their political enthusiasm and ideal on the characters of their literary works. These characters are always endowed with lofty moral standards.Therefore, such popular literary works are just their day-dreams.The literature on Bao Gong expresses a unique psychology of national culture, which can be revealed by a comparative study of Guan Hanqing's dramas on Bao Gong and Shakespeare's plays on cases. Confronting the clashes between the good and the evil, the grass-roots in Chinese literature have to appeal to the outer power—ghosts and upright officials—for justice, while the characters in Shakespeare go to law for justice and display great humanity in the meantime. In Shakespeare's opinion, the root of tragedy is in humanity, and the free will of human beings tends to fall into the evil. The Chinese, on the other hand, believe in the course of nature. Therefore, one who represents justice always has a good ending. The horrible, tragic and mysterious elements in the western tragedies are rarely seen in their corresponding Chinese literature. The Chinese tragedies put great emphasis on displaying the heroes'sense of justice and indomitable fighting spirit. Such literature can be regarded as tragedies in the form of drama.Since the Song dynasty when the literature on Bao Gong is created, the stories about Bao Gong snowball and become innumerable. Most of the stories are rewrites and adaptations. The study of the transplanting and copying of the plots in the novels and dramas on Bao Gong is helpful to investigating the evolution of the writing styles and the related literary images. The scholars have been spending a lot of time and energy on exploring the sources of the stories about Bao Gong, and so far have obtained great achievements. But there are two tendencies: one is reducing the study of the novel history to a pure examination of stories. The other is regarding the creative writing as a simple fabrication of stories.Thus, it is necessary to investigate the development of the literature on Bao Gong by the study of the evolution of the writing styles; that is, the historical evolutionary method. In the process of study, I, first of all, try to find out the new quality in change, then discover the new theoretical problems, and finally make a close analysis of these problems. The present study finds that there two kinds of adaptation in the Bao Gong literature: one is copying the notes of the former writers; the other is the evolution of the stories of Bao Gong. The adaptation in the Bao Gong literature exists not only between the literary works of the same genre (e.g. The Detective Stories of Long Tu is an adaptation of Anthology of Detective Stories), but also between story-telling and ballad-singing literature and novels. It is generally easy to adapt novels to performance arts (e.g. dramas) successfully because novels can be easily adapted to dramas which include the novel manner of narrating stories. For example, the selected drama Bao Daizhi Outwits Contract Words is a rewrite of the story-telling script On Contract Words. From the aspect of the unity of narration, the subjectivity of expressing emotions and the reinforcement of themes, the creativity which the writers employ to adapt selected dramas to novels can be clearly seen. In such a creative rewriting process, the tempos of narration can be fast or slow, and detailed or simple. Generally, the drama firstly makes a brief introduction of the novel, and then enriches some details and scenes so as to vividly depict the character's psychology and feelings, and thus gaining a strong artistic appeal and a distinctive theme.In the process of the evolution of Bao Gong literature, it is easy to successfully adapt novels to dramas, but difficult to adapt dramas to novels, because novels, without dramas'advantage of freely expressing emotions, have to appeal to the arrangement of characters and plots to portray the varied ways of the world. Nearly all the literary adaptations on Bao Gong from dramas to novels are not successful. For instance, many stories in Anthology of Detective Stories are adaptations of dramas of former writers. In the process of adaptation, a great many contents are transplanted, deleted and adapted; the plots are simplified; the narration is sketchy, and there are neither long descriptions of scenes nor vivid portrayal of characters. In a word, the novels appear to be sketchy and boring. On the other hand, the unity of the theme in Anthology of Detective Stories can satisfactorily meet the writer's need of popularizing law.In the evolutionary process of Bao Gong literature, the plots of the stories become increasingly reasonable. The stories about Ren Zong looking for his mother can be traced as early as the selected dramas in the Yuan Dynasty, titled Holding Make-up Boxes on Jinshui Bridge. In the drama, Bao Gong is not present and the plots are absurd and. After that, On Gold Ball, a legend in the late Ming dynasty, and On the stories of Wanhua Mansion, a novel in the early Qing dynasty, are both adapted from the former stories, but their plots are still unjustifiable. The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, an adaptation of the former stories, is more reasonable and all the plot loopholes are finally stopped up.In the literature on Bao Gong, it is worth to note a kind of adaptation, that is, the evolution of the theme. Ever since the appearance of The Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of the Wondering Knights and The Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of Assassins, the wondering knights have been frequently created in the literary works and have become a splendid sight in the literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties. During this period, the behavior and personality of the wondering knights have changed markedly: from admiring courageous bravery to pursuing ardent loyalty, from Mohism which puts more emphasis on promise than on life to Confucianism which advocates helping the people on earth. The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants can be looked on as a revision of ancient chivalrous spirit. Furthermore, the narrative mode in Outlaws of the Marsh which tells the story of the wondering knights pledging allegiance to the government is eventually mature in The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants.Why is the literature on Bao Gong frequently rewritten? The main reason is that since the ancient Chinese society is filled with cases of injustice, the plots of these injustice cases are inevitably alike, resulting in the rewriting and adaptation of the former stories. The writing motives of"The stories are inspired by human feelings and emotions"and"Circumstances touches a chord in the writer's heart"are the sources of the Bao Gong literature. Therefore, in the evolutionary process of the writing styles on the Bao Gong literature, the images of characters, the arrangements of plots, and the themes all change a lot.The present study makes a detailed exploration of the literary significance of Bao Gong literature from the literary and cultural aspects. The literature on Bao Gong is a satire on stupefied official system, an exposure of the villains and evil officials and a deep concern over the family moral problems. All these express the writers'critical realism and their concern for the people. Bao Gong, an upright official, has become an ideal image in the popular literature. The worship of Bao Gong is not only the appeal of the people but also the expression of the rulers'need for the"teaching officials". Therefore, it embodies a kind of people-oriented thought. Bao Gong, as a"teaching official", certainly has such morals as filial duty, loyalty and bravery. On the other hand, since upright officials are needed by the feudal rulers, they will inevitably have some faults of the feudal culture in themselves, such as judging cases according to intuition and maintaining the social morals by cruel torture. Despite such defects, Bao Gong, as the symbol of justice, will be worshipped by the people for ever, and Bao Gong spirit has already become a part of our national spirit.Most happy endings in the literature on Bao Gong are a kind of revenge and punitive justice. Both endings embody a theme of punishing evil and advocating good. In the literature, the revenge of the victims'ghosts and their revival express a deep sadness of the grass-roots and their misfortunes. From the point of view of literary writing, a happy ending is the curtain of reality. Although such a Utopian happy ending is the pursuit of arts, it is fundamentally an escape from real life by resorting to deceiving and cheating.