96. See the preface to the “Story of the Gentleman and Two Sisters” (Jin Yun Qiao Zhuan 金雲翹傳), the Master of the House of Heavenly Flowers (Tianhuazang Zhuren 天花藏主人). See Martin Huang, Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China, 49–50; and Ying Zou, “Talent, Identity, and Sociality,” 174–175.

97. The “seven talents” refer to the four protagonists of Pingshan Lengyan 平山冷燕 (The two talented beauties) and the three of Les deux cousines (Yu Jiao Li 玉嬌梨).

98. Kao, “Self-Reflexivity,” 72 (with minor changes added).

99. Ying Zou (“Cross-dressing,” 119–153) demonstrates how this drama rewrites the narrative conventions and ideological meanings of cross-dressing from a woman’s perspective, thereby calling into question rigidly defined categories of gender and class. Despite the insistence on the heroine’s chastity, the evocation of sexuality and sexual matters through cross-dressing transgresses sexual and social rules. See Toyoko Yoshida Ch’en, “Women in Confucian Society”; and Marina Sung, “The Narrative Art of Tsai-sheng-yuan.” On cross-dressing writings, see also Idema, “Female Talent and Female Virtue,” 561–563; and Siu Leung Li, Cross-dressing in Chinese Opera. In another drama, A Dream of Glory (Fanhua Meng 繁華夢) by Wang Yun 王筠 (ca. 1749–1819), in her dream the heroine becomes a man who not only succeeds in passing the civil service examinations but also goes about pursuing beauty, taking a wife and two concubines (quoted in Ying Zou, “Cross-dressing,” 123). For an English translation of Fanhua Meng see Qingyun Wu, A Dream of Glory.

100. Two plays deal with girls who put on their father’s clothes respectively to take his place in battle (Mulan) and to take the imperial examinations, and the last play on the Chan Master Yu who is reincarnated as a beautiful young courtesan. See Shiamin Kwa, “The Shape of Things,” 175–191.

101. Shiamin Kwa, “The Shape of Things,” 178–191.

102. Honglou Meng, 36: 529; trans. Hawkes, in Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, vol. 2. 205–206. It would be interesting to compare this passage with an analogous refusal of heroism for chastity reasons, as described by another thinker, Lü Kun, whereby the case is that of a widow’s suicide done “not in the name of righteousness (yi), but for passion and love (qing).”

103. Yuan Mei, Xiaocang Shanfang Shiwenji 小倉山房詩文集, 22: 4, cited in Schmidt, Harmony Garden, 59–60.

104. Gōyama, “En Mai no kō Shoku Ron,” 146.