Huang Zhijuan (黄之隽) was a writer, scholar, and official who lived between 1668 to 1748 AD during the Qing dynasty in China. The Qing dynasty, established by invading Manchu tribes who came from present-day north-eastern China and who indirectly toppled the previous Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The Qing were the last imperial dynasty of China and lasted from 1644 to 1912 AD. Huang was a native of Jiangsu, but his family was originally from Xiuning in Anhui province. In the Qing dynasty, the literati was still mainly focused on the production of works of high literature such as classical poetry and highly-refined prose. However, theatre was the preferred art of the general populace and narrative fiction was also quickly gaining a foothold. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were many short story collections published under the name of “Yu Chu”, an ancient figure from the First Han dynasty, and purported creator of the novel as a genre. Huang's story appeared in one of these collections. As mentioned, Huang lived during the early Qing period, which was characterized not by the dominance of narrative fiction, but by poetry and serious prose as respected genres, and theatre and drama as popular genres. As a member of the scholar-official or literati class, Huang had his own personal collection of works: his poems, essays, and other many works attributed to him. However, he was best known in his day for his dramas. Along with most other literati, Huang desired to serve the imperial court, and to pursue public office he undertook the rigorous imperial civil service exam many times, which was more or less the only way to gain given office in the imperial administration. Huang took many years and finally passed the exams at the ripe young age of 53, which was in a way quite common at the time, as the imperial exams were extremely difficult and many never did pass. At the time, many literati had to make a living in other ways because of how long it took them to pass these exams, and these ways included selling calligraphy, composing pieces of theatre and drama, and writing fiction. Despite his unsuccessful career, Huang was nevertheless a recognized writer in his day, and was even recruited to edit the official history of the previous Ming dynasty in his later years.
The early period of the Qing dynasty was considered the golden age of drama and theatre. At the time, drama, stories and novels became increasingly popular though not esteemed enough to be considered serious and respectable forms of art. Huang Zhijuan was best known for his dramas, of which he wrote two kinds: zaju (杂剧) and chuanqi（传奇）. Zaju is a form of Chinese drama that centers around reciting poetry, dancing, singing and miming that originated during the latter half of the Song dynasty (1127-1279) and came into fruition during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), meaning it had already been around for a while in Huang Zhijuan’s time. The actors in zaju dramas use a northern accent and the style is considered more simplistic and vernacular. The second kind of dramas that Huang wrote were in a category called chuanqi (传奇), which was more popular during his time, as it was considered more artful and refined, with its text often incorporating large amounts of classical Chinese along with a more refined vernacular. In contrast to the zaju performaces, a southern accent was used during chuanqi performances. Some of the operas he wrote include “yulunpao” （郁轮袍）, “yinzhongxian” （饮中仙）, “lanqiaoyi” （蓝桥驿）, “mengyangzhou” （梦扬州）, the four of which he later compiled together and called “sicaiziqishu” (四才子奇书) . This work “sicaiziqishu” means the “four books of a talented scholar”. His most famous work is a drama of the chuanqi genre titled “zhongxiaofu” （中孝福）. Not many playwrights in the Qing dynasty were able to achieve what he did. His famous opera “zhongxiaofu” was performed many times in Suzhou and Guilin, and his compilation of the four dramas called “Sicaiziqishu” (四才子奇书) is still sometimes performed in China.
Sources:
王雅静 . “黄之隽戏曲研究.” 南京师范大学. 2015
蒋星娱. “清初上海名戏曲家黄之隽”.
Notes on the Text:
The story of the “Tiger Grandmother” has quite a few versions in China. The earliest written version of this story is Huang Zhijuan’s “Tale of the Tiger Grandmother”, which can be found in Huang's personal collection of works. It can also be found in a certain version of the "Yuchu" chronicles. The “Yuchu” chronicles or "Yuchu Zhi" was a series of anthologies of short narrative fiction, mostly folktales, legends and supernatural stories, that was first published in the Ming dynasty and continued to be renewed all the way into the late Qing period. These collections contained stories from the Liang all the way to the Tang dynasty. During the Qing dynasty, many publishers produced "updated" versions of the Yuchu chronicles. This particular “Tiger Grandmother” story is found in a collection of books called “Guang Yuchu Xinzhi” (Additions to the New Yuchu Chronicles) from 1803 that were edited by a certain Huang Chengzeng (1796-1821, unrelated to Huang Zhijuan), who was another Qing era scholar. The first version of the "Tiger Grandmother" story can be found in the 19th book of this collection, which is Huang Zhijuan's "Tale of the Tiger Grandmother".
As can be inferred from its title, Additions to the New Yuchu Chronicles consisted of additional stories to a previous book entitled New Yuchu Chronicles, an earlier Qing era collection of stories which was itself an addition to the much older and original Yuchu Chronicles, a Ming dynasty collection and the first of its kind (the title of Yuchu was itself in reference to the legendary personage of Yuchu, a Han dynasty alchemist who was said to have invented the “novel” or “story” as a genre). Considering these repeated additions to the Yuchu Chronicles, we can conclude that the particular story of our concern probably belonged to a long and complicated lineage of storytelling and circulation. Although the current written version we have is composed by Huang Zhijuan, it is possible that earlier versions of the story might have existed within this previous lineage of storytelling in an oral form before it found its to Huang's attention.
Since it is virtually impossible to track the oral lineage of this story, we focused on researching the written lineage of the “Tiger Grandmother” legends. The way we prepared this reprint was first by choosing our version of the Tiger Grandmother legends from the many Chinese versions available. We decided to choose Huang Zhijuan’s version because it is the earliest known written record of the story in China. We then moved on to locating an original copy of the story by Huang Zhijuan that was obtained through some assistance from the Chinese language department at Brandeis. We were able to get a scanned copy of the original story, which was then translated into English by Zhongzhi.
Sources:
Chen, Hung-Shu. “Translation of Cultural Images of World and Tiger.” Fu Jen Studies, vol. 49, Sept. 2016, pp. 77–93.