In the early years of the Qing, ethnically Han men were confronted with a distressing new sartorial reality: the clothing on their bodies and the hair on their heads were suddenly deemed treasonous. Short of taking the tonsure, the only way to survive was to don new hats and robes in styles that any Ming subject would have denounced as barbarous and to shave and braid their hair in ways that Confucius would have deemed unfilial. Although these remnant frocks and locks were removed, often violently, from the repertoire of everyday life, they continued to circulate on the early Qing stage, where Manchu styles were largely verboten. It is this incongruity that structures Guojun Wang's fascinating new book on costuming in the second half of the seventeenth century. In a series of case studies drawing on a rich array of theatrical materials from the well-known to the obscure, Wang asks what it means when clothing becomes costume, and how that transformation opens up new pathways to explore identities, histories, and memories that are otherwise inexpressible.
In the first chapter of Staging Personhood, Wang provides an overview of how ethnicity was represented on the pre-Qing stage before turning to the post-transition moment and the ways in which different audiences understood the new costuming conventions. While certain forms of Manchu dress occasionally appeared in early Qing court performances, such displays were otherwise taboo. Wang argues that the reason for these restrictions hinged on the association of certain theatrical forms with Han culture. These costuming prohibitions did not arise merely from the desire of the Manchus to protect their sartorial forms from mockery or debasement; rather, Manchu rulers saw theatrical performance as an instantiation of Han subjection: Ming-style costumes were deployed “as a way to embarrass Han Chinese” (p. 53), forcing them to “continually reexperience their defeat as an ethnic group” (p. 46).
The second chapter turns to a close reading of the play Dao yuanyang 倒鴛鴦, in which a standard cross-dressing romance plot is complicated by the new codes and concerns of the transition: a Ming remnant attempts to preserve his hair by disguising himself as a woman, while a woman tries to protect herself from assault by dressing as a male Qing subject. Wang argues that the play shows how gender and ethnic identities are put into crisis by the new sartorial regime, with the “ethnic reconfiguration” of the female body as a metaphor for the emasculation of Han literati (p. 72).
In the third chapter, Wang compares various editions of Wanli yuan 萬里圓, which recounts Huang Xiangjian's famous sojourn across southwestern China to fetch his parents during the tumultuous transition. Noting the dearth of costuming information in extant versions, Wang turns his attention to the ways in which battered bodies, tattered garments, and costume changes gesture toward the central conflict between political loyalty and filial piety.
The fourth chapter focuses on two plays about the chaste exemplar Lady Hai, who was said to have stitched together her clothing to foil an assault before committing suicide. Wang argues that these plays make use of a similar costuming conceit to different ends: in one, Lady Hai's human body is treated with eroticized voyeurism, while her apotheosis as an immortal detaches her story from the historical moment. The other replaces public gawking with public mourning, with the illiterate Lady Hai's corpse serving as a rebuke of those Ming remnants unable or unwilling to die with their dynasty, while her celestial form urges reconciliation and submission.
In his final chapter, Wang examines the use of clothing as props in Taohua shan 桃花扇. Focusing on three scenes of ritual performance, Wang argues that Ming state attire becomes “corrupted by theatricality” and “severed from the bodies of Ming subjects” (pp. 171–72), solidifying the association of Han-style clothing with the past and Manchu clothing with the present. The book's epilogue traces a shift over the course of the Qing toward more Manchu-style costuming on stage. Wang notes how these costumes reverse the valences of the early Qing, with Manchu clothing now associated with loyalty and Han clothing with betrayal. No longer a shorthand for alien invaders, Manchu-style clothing ultimately comes to stand for the nation on the global stage.
Wang does an impressive job excavating a topic that has left few traces; however, there were a couple of places where some additional information might have been helpful to the reader. Neither Wanli yuan nor the Lady Hai play Hai Liefu 海烈婦 survive in early Qing editions, and much of the primary material cited in chapter 1 dates from the mid- to late Qing. These texts from later periods are often employed to make arguments about the motivations and experiences of early Qing writers, readers, and audiences and early Qing stage practice more generally. This is a problem that Wang has clearly thought about—in discussing a case in which no early Qing editions are extant and the later texts have been subjected to editing and rewriting, he writes, “we can discern that some of the materials were produced in the early period of the Qing dynasty” (p. 95). As Wang points out throughout the book, costuming practices, theatrical forms, and ethnopolitical relations changed dramatically over the course of the Qing, so a more concrete discussion of how we are to locate early Qing thought and practices within these later materials would be welcome.
However, this is a minor reservation about what is a cogently written and deeply researched book, full of interpretative insights and rarely discussed materials. An important contribution to the study of Qing literature and history, this book will be a rich trove for all scholars interested in performances of gender and ethnicity in the early modern world.
