The Casting of the Great Bell (Chinese legend)
"The Casting of the Great Bell" is a poignant Chinese legend set during the Ming dynasty, centered around the emperor Yongle's order to create a magnificent bell for Beijing's newly constructed bell tower. The story follows Guan Yu, a nobleman with experience in metal casting, who faces immense pressure from the emperor to produce a flawless bell after two unsuccessful attempts. As the stakes rise, Guan Yu's devoted daughter, Ge-ai, learns from an astrologer that the key to success lies in the inclusion of a maiden's blood in the casting process. In a tragic act of love and sacrifice, Ge-ai leaps into the molten metal during the third attempt, ensuring the bell's perfection but losing her life in the process. The bell, upon ringing, produces a deep sound accompanied by a wailing echo of the word "xié," which is interpreted as Ge-ai's haunting call for her lost shoe.
This legend encapsulates themes of filial piety, criticism of imperial cruelty, and the complexities of sacrifice and gender roles within Chinese culture. It highlights the deep reverence in Confucianism for parental devotion while subtly condemning the harsh practices of the emperor. The story has left a lasting cultural legacy, illustrating the intertwining of personal sacrifice and the pursuit of immortality through memory and legacy.
The Casting of the Great Bell (Chinese legend)
Author: Traditional
Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE
Country or Culture: China
Genre: Legend
PLOT SUMMARY
When the Ming dynasty emperor Yongle (Yung Lo) moves the Chinese imperial capital from Nanjing (Nanking) to Beijing (Peking), he orders the construction of many new buildings. When the city’s bell tower is finished, the emperor orders Guan Yu (Kuan Yü) to cast a suitable bell, “the sound of which should be heard . . . in every part of the city” (Werner 394). Guan Yu, a nobleman, is chosen because of his prior experience in casting guns.
Guan Yu sets to his task with zeal and devotion. Emperor Yongle witnesses the moment when the hot liquid metal rushes into the waiting mold. The emperor withdraws as the metal cools off inside the mold. When the mold is removed, the bell is flawed and unusable.
Even though he is displeased, Yongle orders Guan Yu to conduct a second attempt at creating a bell. Very worried and very carefully, trying to avoid any past mistakes, Guan Yu prepares another casting, but the result is another failure. Enraged, Yongle gives Guan Yu one last chance. Should he fail again, the emperor will have Guan Yu beheaded.
At his home, Guan Yu’s only child, his beautiful sixteen-year-old daughter Ge-ai (Ko-ai), learns about this. Deeply devoted to her father, Ge-ai tries to cheer him up and prays for his success. She also consults an astrologer to learn the reasons for the previous failures and the way to avoid them next time. The astrologer tells Ge-ai that the casting will fail again if “the blood of a maiden were not mixed with the ingredients” of the metal for the mold (Werner 397).
On the day of the third attempt, Ge-ai asks and is given permission to witness the process. At the moment that the molten metal rushes into the mold, Ge-ai jumps into the liquid, yelling, “For my father!” (Werner 398). One of her servants tries to catch her but only manages to save one of her shoes. Her father is forcibly restrained from following his daughter into the mold and is “taken home a raving maniac” (398). When the mold is taken off, a perfect bell is revealed. There is no trace of Ge-ai’s body.
The bell is suspended for its first ringing in the presence of Emperor Yongle. Its deep boom signals the triumph of the casting. Everybody is shocked when this boom is followed by a low wail, like the sound of a woman crying the word xié (hsieh), the Chinese word for shoe. To this day, the legend concludes, xié is heard after every boom made by the great bell, which is interpreted as Ge-ai asking for her shoe, left behind after her sacrifice for her father.
SIGNIFICANCE
The Chinese legend “The Casting of the Great Bell” developed around the historical casting of a great bell in 1405 CE during the reign of China’s Emperor Yongle. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, the legend reached the West from China via three Western authors, but it was first published in Chinese in 1871 in the book Bai Xiao tu Shuo (One hundred examples of filial piety) by Yu Baozhen. Excerpts of this book, including “The Casting of the Great Bell,” were then translated and published by French Sinologist Claude Philibert Dabry de Thiersant in 1877. From Dabry’s book, international writer Lafcadio Hearn translated the legend into English and published it as “The Soul of the Great Bell” in his 1887 anthology Some Chinese Ghosts. In 1922, British Sinologist and sociologist Edward Werner rendered a condensed version of Hearn’s text as “The Casting of the Great Bell” in his Myths and Legends of China.
In China, the legend of the casting of the great bell is popular and significant for three key reasons. First is its illustration of extreme filial piety. Filial piety—the love, devotion, and loyalty of children toward their parents, called xiào—is a key Confucian concept and a prime element of Chinese culture. Ge-ai’s sacrifice for her father’s sake is esteemed as the ultimate extent that love for one’s parents can reach.
Second, through the human sacrifice of Ge-ai, the legend expresses criticism of the historic emperor Yongle. Popular in ancient China, human sacrifices to river deities were abolished through the efforts of the fifth-century BCE hydraulic engineer Ximen Bao. Human sacrifices of the servants of a lord after his death were outlawed in 384 BCE. However, facing death, Emperor Yongle continued the tradition of human sacrifices revived by his father after centuries of disuse. Yongle ordered that thirty of his concubines be hanged and then buried with him in 1424. Human sacrifice was outlawed again for members of the royal family in 1464. Sympathy for Ge-ai in the face of Yongle’s threatened punishment of her father subtly critiques the emperor’s cruelty.
Third, the motif of Ge-ai’s shoe points to her nascent sexual maturity that is thwarted by her self-sacrifice. Among the Han Chinese, foot-binding became popular after the tenth century CE. The tiny shoes holding a woman’s bound feet became a sign of a woman’s sexual appeal. Ge-ai is sixteen years old and is on the cusp of being married. However, she sacrifices herself for her father, which, in a sense, ritually marries her to the bell. This significance is heightened by the fact that Guan Yu treasures Ge-ai as his only hope “of perpetuating his name and fame” through her eventual offspring (Werner 396). As the bell rings out xié, or shoe, in Ge-ai’s voice for generations to come, she and her father’s lineage have accomplished a version of immortality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bush, Laurence C. “Some Chinese Ghosts.” Asian Horror Encyclopedia: Asian Horror Culture in Literature, Manga, and Folklore. Lincoln: Writers Club, 2001. 170–71. Print.
“The Goddess Who Cast the Bell.” Activity Village. Lindsay Small, 2012. Web. 18 June 2013.
Hearn, Lafcadio. “The Soul of the Great Bell.” Some Chinese Ghosts. 1887. Mineola: Dover, 2008. Print.
Mooney, Paul. “Big Bell Temple.” National Geographic Traveler: Beijing. Washington: National Geographic, 2008. 180. Print.
Werner, Edward T. C. “The Casting of the Great Bell.” Myths and Legends of China. 1922. New York: Dover, 1994. 392–98. Print.