The Travels of Lao Ts'an by Liu E

First transcribed:Lao Can youji, 1904-1907, serial (English translation, 1952; revised, 1990)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: End of the nineteenth century

Locale: Shandong Province, China

Principal characters

• Lao Ts’an, an itinerant intellectual
• Shen Tung-tsao and Huang Jen-jui, decent officials
• Kang Pi and Yü Hsien, incorruptible but ruthlessly ambitious officials
• Ts’ui-huan and Ts’ui-hua, young women of good family who become singsong girls
• Yellow Dragon, a hermit philosopher

The Story:

Lao Ts’an is an erudite and impoverished scholar who uses his skills in traditional Chinese medicine to earn a modest living in his native homeland of Shandong. Although he is only about thirty years old, his fame begins to grow as more and more people hear about his successful treatment of Huang Jui-ho’s running sores, which had long defied the ministrations of many other doctors. After Lao Ts’an adeptly cures a serious throat condition afflicting the concubine of an official named Kao, the official introduces the young man to his colleagues, including the governor of Shandong Province.

Lao Ts’an’s conversation with the governor and other officials quickly turns from medicine to current events and politics. Two topics that arise during this conversation are the prosecutorial overzealousness of especially ambitious officials such as Yü Hsien and Kang Pi, who would rather err on the side of punishing many innocent citizens than let a single criminal go unpunished, and the ineffective policies intended to control the Yellow River’s flooding. The governor is so impressed by Lao Ts’an’s sensible views on these problems that he offers the young man an official post. Lao Ts’an politely declines, insisting that he prefers to offer advice in an informal capacity. Privately, Lao Ts’an realizes that his fondness for frankly expressing his views on controversial topics would be difficult to maintain if he were to become an official. Also, he is not interested in the wealth and power, not to mention the restrictions on his independent way of life, that an official career would bring.

Through various inquiries, Lao Ts’an determines that Yü Hsien’s harsh crackdown on banditry in the county of Ch’engwuhsien is resulting in the torture and execution of many innocents while not actually reducing the incidence of banditry in the area. Lao Ts’an thereupon manages to persuade one of Yü Hsien’s well-meaning subordinates, Shen Tung-tsao, to take a personal letter from Lao Ts’an to one of his friends in the countryside who is well versed in martial arts and acquainted with many leaders of bandit gangs in the vicinity. As a favor to Lao Ts’an, his friend agrees with Shen Tung-tsao’s request to move to Ch’engwuhsien and persuade the bandit gang leaders to stop preying on the county’s residents—in other words, to take their business elsewhere. The county’s crime rate drops at once, for the only bandit attacks that subsequently occur involve isolated capers undertaken by unskilled local criminal riffraff. These criminals are much easier to apprehend than members of the bandit gangs, and so the county’s streets and alleys soon become among the safest in the entire province.

Lao Ts’an subsequently turns his attention to the problem of the prosecutorial fervor of Yü Hsien and Kang Pi, which has resulted in many wrongful convictions and executions of innocent persons. Like a Chinese Sherlock Holmes, the young scholar shrewdly investigates the background of a murder case involving a respectable family in the district. At considerable risk of being arrested and tortured by Kang Pi, Lao Ts’an appears at the latter’s court to defend the wrongly accused. He is too late to save all of the family members from torture, but he does manage to uncover damning evidence against the true culprit, whom he orders arrested and brought forth. By doing so, Lao Ts’an spares most of the wrongly accused from further torture and likely execution. The overzealous officials suffer a judicial setback and are transferred to another post.

Lao Ts’an learns that two young women, Ts’ui-huan and Ts’ui-hua, have been sold into a brothel as singsong girls after their families were impoverished in the wake of the Yellow River’s flooding. The kindly official Huang Jen-jui eventually convinces Lao Ts’an to redeem Ts’ui-huan from her brothel and take her as his lawfully betrothed concubine. Lao Ts’an subsequently returns the favor by setting up the already married Huang Jen-jui with Ts’ui-hua as his second wife. Premodern China’s traditional acceptance of polygamy thus allows the story’s loose ends to be tied together.

Bibliography

Holoch, Donald. “The Travels of Laocan: Allegorical Narrative.” In The Chinese Novel at the Turn of the Century, edited by Milena Doleželová-Velingerová. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980. Analyzes the two allegorical incidents in the novel’s first chapter and argues that the remainder of the novel can be seen as a structural elaboration of these opening allegories.

Hsia, C. T. A History of Modern Chinese Fiction. 3d ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Appendix 1, “Obsession with China: The Moral Burden of Modern Chinese Literature,” includes information on Liu E and The Travels of Lao Ts’an.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Travels of Lao Ts’an: An Exploration of Its Art and Meaning.” In C. T. Hsia on Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Combines a thorough analysis of the novel’s key aesthetic features with interesting historical research on the pro-Boxer Rebellion officials who served as Liu E’s models for Yü Hsien and Kang Pi, who run roughshod over the guilty and the innocent alike in order to garner fame as hanging judges.

Kwong, Luke S. K. “Self and Society in Modern China: Liu E (1857-1909) and Laocan youji.” T’oung Pao 87, nos. 4/5 (2001): 360-392. Examines Liu E’s life and career, describing how his experiences provide an idea of the thoughts, feelings, and aspirations of China’s educated elite during the last decades of the Qing Dynasty. Includes discussion of The Travels of Lao Ts’an.

Lang, D. M., and D. R. Dudley, eds. The Penguin Companion to Classical, Oriental, and African Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. Includes a section on Liu E that emphasizes the stylistic advance represented by The Travels of Lao Ts’an in its highly original prose descriptions of landscape and musical performances.

Lin, Shuen-fu. “The Last Classic Chinese Novel: Vision and Design in The Travels of Laocan.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121, no. 4 (October-December, 2001): 549-564. Places The Travels of Lao Ts’an within the literary and cultural contexts of the last years of the Qing Dynasty. Discusses the structure and “lyric vision” of the novel, its authorial point of view, its juxtaposition of the harsh realities of early twentieth century China with idealized characters and utopian settings, and the protagonist’s conflict between his scientific attitude and his traditional Chinese values.

Lu Hsün. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976. Includes a section on “novels of exposure” of the Qing Dynasty that contains an analysis of The Travels of Lao Ts’an’s portrayal of the official Kang Pi, whose incorruptibility is offset by his autocratic and ruthless ways.

Shadick, Harold. Introduction to The Travels of Lao Ts’an, by Liu E. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Informative introduction to the novel provides an excellent starting place for students of the work.