An Excellent Description of All Kind of Characters in XingShiYan

Abstract: Xingshiyan described from many aspects of the bizarre society where political systems were seriously defective, officials corrupted while grassroots were struggling through a hard life. This works also described the scenes where different kinds of merchants were doing business with each other. Xingshiyan could be considered as the mirror of life of all kinds of characters of different classes in late Ming Dynasty.

Key words: Xingshiyan; Late Ming Society; the Theme of Philistines

1 Introduction

Xingshiyan is wonderfully blooming now after it had been in silence for more than three hundred years. In the long history of the development of China''s classical short stories written with modern Chinese, Xingshiyan, Sanyan and Erpai were like an important tripod to be prosperous, and showed their unique characteristics by relying on the comprehensive and vivid reflections to the society of the Ming dynasty. In this paper, the social customs, which were reflected in Xingshiyan, will be studied and discussed. Therefore, the author is willing to receive any suggestions and corrections from experts and scholars if inadequacy is found in this paper.

2 Suffering Struggles of People at the Bottom of Society

In the late Ming dynasty, all sorts of corrupt practices were increasingly more serious in society, and extremely severe social crisis came to appear. In the meantime, the struggle between the officials within the imperial court of the Ming dynasty had turned to be highly sharp and complex; the ruling order of the Ming government was in a total chaos; the corruption within the groups of the Ming officials from top to bottom had been extremely serious. Moreover, the natural disasters occurred very frequently [1]. Under such a social background, Xingshiyan provided a real expression to the hard and suffering life of people at that time. Therefore, it can be deemed as a mirror of the rotten and dark society in the late Ming dynasty [2].

The description by the writer in Xingshiyan was extended to all corners of society at that time, and the writer focused his eyes on the social disadvantaged groups, which were in the lowest level of society and lived a very hard and embarrassed life. Therefore, in Xingshiyan, the actual life conditions of the people struggling at the lowest level of society and the dead line were exquisitely described. At that time, the slaves and maid-servants were undoubtedly the people who were harmed the most seriously. In the Ming dynasty, slavery was widely popular among the rich. Slaves and maid-servants were kept by not only high officials and noble lords, but also by the countryside landowners. For example, in the eleventh chapter of Xingshiyan, Chen Xie living in Kunshan of Suzhou had a few acres of lands and a small garden behind his house, so he kept two man-servants to help do farm work and also sent a girl of 11 or 12 years old to serve for the teacher who was employed by him for teaching his son; in the twenty-eighth chapter of Xingshiyan, Xiucai Zhang, living in Huzhou, kept two young and beautiful girls as well as two man-servants to serve for him at home naturally because he owned a lot of gold, silver and precious things. The social status of all these servants was very low, and they had no any personal freedom and even could not ensure their life sometimes. This was because that in the laws at that time, the master, who beat his servants to death, was unnecessary to pay with his own life for killing a servant. For this reason, the servants were randomly abused by their masters at that time. For example, in the thirteenth chapter of Xingshiyan, Ergu Fu, a local tyrant in Taiping County of Taizhou of Zhejiang, accused other persons of beating the son of Cai Fu (a man-servant) to death; Fucai cried sadly when hearing about this bad news about his son''s death, but the accomplices of Ergu Fu unsympathetically said, "I was annoyed by him and heat him for a while and who knew he was so easy to die, and there was no wrong about the master if beating a servant to death". Therefore, Cai Fu wanted to provide an explanation. However, Ergu Fu threatened him and said, "He grew up by eating my food and there was nothing to worry even though I beat him to death, and I will let you die if you talk nonsense". Then, Cai Fu could do nothing but only kept silent and sadly cried with his wife. Therefore, in the Ming dynasty, the right to life could not be guaranteed, not mentioning to the self-esteem of common people. In such a society, the fate of the servants could be imagined totally.