Author ｜
Huang Hsuan-chang
Abstract ｜
For historians, the Yung-cheng Emperor was a great monarch of Qing dynasty. But he was transformed into a despot and peculiarly into a knight-errant in popular novels in late Qing and early Republican period, which was massively produced in order to invoke the public awareness of the distinction between the Chinese and the barbarian. This article uses the perspectives of the collective of memory and narrative production to examine how the knight-errant Yung-cheng and his violent death, in which he was decapitated by the female knight-errant Lü Siniang (Lü’s fourth daughter), were characterized, and how the Han’s traumatic memory of Yung-cheng’s totalitarianism and the ideals of anti-Manchuism were represented in the series of chivalric fiction. This article begins with a reevaluation of the unofficial histories about Yung-cheng, which were recorded in Dayi juemi lu (Record of Awakening) and its numerous sequels in Late Qing. Next, it analyzes the process in which Yung-cheng was shaped into a cruel knight in popular fiction through Dayi juemi lu, especially in chivalric fiction. In the fictional narrative, the assassination of Yung-cheng (the fourth son of the Qing royal family) by Lü’s fourth daughter leads the readers to contemplate the Qing’s legitimacy and the position of the Han Chinese against the Manchus. Finally, the article argues that the decapitation of Yung-cheng compensates the public for their traumatic experiences under the Queue Order, the literary inquisition, and the memory of hsüeh ti-tzu (flying-guillotine gang) of Qing dynasty.
keywords ｜
Yung-cheng, Chivalric Fiction, Historical Fiction, Lü Siniang, Collective of Memory