Divination and fate manipulation in a popular myth of late imperial China
Résumé
Peach blossom girl may be characterized as a popular myth of late imperial China. First appearing in a Yuan dynasty zaju play, it was retold in many vernacular novels, popular operas and folktales. This article, after recalling the way diviners and divination are depicted in late imperial Chinese literature, focuses on a vernacular Qing Dynasty novel that recounts how Zhougong, leaving his post as a minister within the corrupt Shang dynasty, establishes himself as a professional diviner. All of his readings of fate prove accurate until the Peach blossom girl begins to help those whom he has doomed to die to escape their fate. Enraged by this unexpected opposition, Zhougong tries to turn his divinatory skills into a mortal device. He asks his young opponent to wed his own son, while carefully selecting the most baleful days and hours for the moment of the wedding in order to have her perish. Thanks to her own divinatory and magical skills, Peach Blossom girl survives the ordeal and ridicules Zhougong.
This rather brilliant comedy, poking fun at the prestigious name of the Duke of Zhou, sheds interesting light on the Chinese conception of divination and fate seen from the point of view of popular culture. Zhougong is portrayed as a skilled, well-wishing diviner. Peach Blossom Girl is a diviner too, but she is also a mistress of the white magic arts that permit people who are doomed to die to escape their fate and thus disprove the very decrees of Heaven. She uses some specifically feminine magic to disturb the yin-yang陰陽order of fate, and is thus able to “break the trigrams” (pogua破卦) of her opponent. This narrative is a late imperial comic illustration of a very old Chinese conception: that, though we all have a ming命, an allocated lifespan, this “fate” can be manipulated in various ways, and that it may always be possible to “extend longevity”, yanshou延壽,
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