Zhu Dake: The Narrative of Desire in Three Thousand Years of Cultural History

A narrative of desire in three thousand years of cultural history

Text/Zhu Dake

This article was first published in China News Weekly, Issue 886

By its very nature, any cultural history is a history of desire, which reveals to people the process of the growth of desire, the form of expression, as well as the mechanisms and causes of desire, the various ways in which people deal with desire, and so on. Compared with the history of traditional culture, the history of desire will show the historical essence of civilization more clearly.

In Freud and Lacan, desire is the mental state of the subject triggered by lack, with spiritual characteristics of scarcity, contraction, and negativity, even mirror images or deceptions in language. Lacan firmly believed that desire was just a "signifier chain" that did not refer to it. But Deleuze, on the other hand, saw desire as an element of creation, production, expansion, and certainty, with the power of emancipation and revolution, and should be fully encouraged. This serious divergence in postmodern philosophy confirms to us the great significance of the motif of desire.

Borrowing deleuze's concept, it may be possible to think of the Chinese agricultural civilization as an ancient machine of desire, which produces crops and desires according to the rhythm of the twenty-four solar terms, which in turn produces a powerful group energy and greatly modifies the appearance of fields and towns. Such machines usually have a binary structure: a driving force from matter or words, and an effective braking mechanism. It is based on such a drive/brake mechanism that the movement of desire always oscillates between indulgence and repression, and its movement traces the basic outline of cultural history.

The first big bang of desire

Compared with hunter societies, the "herbivorous" agricultural civilization did not significantly increase the number of living resources, but improved the ability to store food. In the era of Cangjie's characters, "cang" was a symbol of grain, and in the era of the rule of the sun god, Shun was murdered by his family for repairing the granary and was almost burned to death.

On the other hand, the unethical behavior of shuo rats in stealing barn grain has also been attacked by folk singers ("Shijing Wei Feng Shuo Rat"). These myths and historical narratives prove that the "warehouse" is a crucial thing, and this crude architectural container has greatly improved the farmer's reserve capacity, built the illusion of "abundant food and clothing", and then puffed up the desire for consumption. Hunger and thirst for grain and meat gushed out from the depths of the stomach and mouth, burning fiercely in the Yin Shang and the two-week ding, reflecting the early years of Chinese civilization.

Almost all historical narratives are keen to create the negative myth of "desire to destroy the country". Behind the legend of the calamity of sisters, concubines, and praises is a moral condemnation of the lust of the last kings. It was repeatedly told that it was the king's desires that engulfed his own country. It is said that in order to win the smile of the concubine who suffered from severe depression, the king of Jie did not hesitate to tear up the silk veil in large quantities. This is the aesthetic scene of schizophrenia, where the soul of the artifact screams, containing the great pain of the rupture of desire, but also a source of relief and pleasure. In this way, the rift transcends the limitations of things, and together with the woman, becomes the bearer of lust and sin.

In the Axial Age around the 6th century BC, the reserve of the "Warehouse of Desire" had been completed, and it needed a more intense expression, that is, regional wars. The pre-Qin princes' struggle for land and population triggered the first explosion of desire at the level of the magnate. They knew that the "weekly ritual" must be destroyed in order to open the way for the growth of desire.

In order to extinguish or bless this fire, the hundred families of the sons were urgently mobilized. Thought is divided under the oppression of power: scholars and masters either stand on the opposite side of desire, such as the Mo and Taoists; or on the side of desire, such as the Dharma and the famous masters; or maintain some ambiguous vacillation, such as Confucianism and "Huang Laozhi". In the chaotic "hundred schools of thought", there is only one real theme, that is, how to deal with people's desires. Mo Zhai walked barefoot on the land of the Central Plains, with dark skin and a determined look, demonstrating to the world the state of life of low desire. But in the age of the big explosion of desire, few people are willing to listen to the lonely voice.

From the pre-Qin era to the Northern Song Dynasty, the main stage of desire performances was basically located on the "eastern axis", that is, from Chang'an and Qinling mountains along the Han River (including the neighboring Luoyang and Kaifeng areas in Henan) to Xiangyang. This axis was the battlefield of the Sijung people and the early cradle of imperial civilization and desire.

The main achievement of the first Great Explosion of Desire, in addition to contributing to the hundreds of sons and hundreds of families, also contributed to the famous Desire Tyrant First Emperor Yingzheng. The significance of building the Great Wall is not only to stop the invasion desire of the northern barbarians, but also to stop the rebellious desire of the native farmers. The Great Wall was the harshest "siege of desire" in the agricultural era. Not only that, after conquering the Six Kingdoms, the emperor actually ordered the sale of the world's weapons and cast into twelve bronze men, which were placed in the palace. This grandiose action has a stronger symbolic significance, that is, to violently collect the desires (copper) of the people and monopolize them, turning them into the private collection of the emperor himself. He thus became the greatest dictator of desire in history, monopolizing power, institutions, ideas, speech, people, women, messages, pamphlets, land, goods, and roads to the world's most lavish graves.

The second big bang of desire

After the struggles of the Two Han and Wei Jin, the suppressed desire began to grow again. The "bamboo forest intellectuals" hid in the countryside four hundred miles away from the capital Luoyang, and while indulging in alcohol, taking medicine, practicing the piano, chanting poetry and pretending to be crazy, they asked the Taoists for secret recipes to resist desire, but they could not avoid the crisis of death. Ji Kang's performance of "Guangling San" before his execution made the world hear the sound of grief and indignation, which announced the failure of the desire to avoid the strategy.

In the Tang and Song dynasties, agricultural cultivation technology had gradually matured, and Chang'an Avenue was inhabited by residents of different skin colors, creating a prosperous scene of globalization or semi-globalization. In those confused green buildings, the chants of prostitutes have become a fashion trend. The literati's style was amplified in chanting, and for thousands of years afterwards, it continued to elicit lingering and mournful echoes.

Not only that, but storytellers have sprung up in large numbers, and the stories they tell (love, ghosts, martial arts, and detectives) constantly refresh the breadth of the space of desire. In the depths of the harem, the love between the emperor and the concubine is also unfolding in secret. This love of the highest rank, although it had to face the condemnation of the historian, was applauded by the literati Bai Juyi. As a court sample, it demonstrated to grassroots people the depth of love.

The biggest result of the second big explosion of desire was the establishment of the "foot binding aesthetic". It is said that it was the slender feet of the Southern Tang Dynasty dancer Lady Miao, who was favored by the later lord Li Yu, which triggered a protracted wave of foot fetishism. It is a two-way regulation of desires– on the one hand disciplines a woman's feet, breasts, and soul, and on the other hand inspires a man's lust. Women must walk slowly and carefully with their heads bowed, trying to suppress their desires. But the posture of the small-footed woman instead issued an ambiguous call to the men. Carnal desire burned and jumped on the three-inch golden lotus, like thousands of candles, illuminating their confused expressions.

Echoing the "foot-binding aesthetics" is the establishment of the imperial examination system. It is the big foot of desire, providing a convenient way for the low-level scholars to enter the upper echelons of society. It also establishes the linkage logic of desire: as long as the "gold list nomination", it can be "cave flower candle". It is a package of power, lust, and family desires. No student can be indifferent to this.

China is a highly sustainable moral state that is governed by the trinity of Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist ethics. Men inscribe serious political ideals in the imperial examination, while women embroider fervor in female red. Not only that, but in the Song Dynasty, the management of desire reached a historical climax in terms of harshness. Theoreticians, who have insight into the reality of the explosion of desire and try to stop their rapid growth, have put forward the slogan of "destroying human desire", which confirms the current situation of the flood of desire from the opposite side. The moralist with a worried expression declared war on worldly desires, but it was discovered long before it was discovered that desires had not been interrupted, and that moralists had earned a prominent reputation.

The Meta-Empire under the Kublai Khan family, the intellectual narrative of desire, faced serious racist obstacles. Unable to exert his ability to write, the scholar gradually became a silent generation, and only a few lower-class literati mingled in hook bars and liquor stores, writing scripts for "vulgar comedy" (miscellaneous dramas), and paying tribute to folk desires in this way. But the ideals of most farmers are actually very limited, and their desire to travel routes cannot even cross the boundaries of the village head social drama stage.

The third big bang of desire

The Ming Dynasty was an era of cultural revival. Beyond the years of barbarian rule, the Han people expected to recall the cultural ghosts of the Northern Song Dynasty, which triggered a third wave of desire for liberation. Beginning with the Southern Song Dynasty, China's center of power shifted to the east, forming a canal axis (i.e., the eastern axis, which echoed the western axis) from Hangzhou to Beijing. It is close to the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, connecting the mainland and the sea, creating a new geographical pattern of population and institutional logistics.

We have seen the astonishing rise of craftsmen and their crafts in the Taihu Lake Basin, forming the largest center of artifact manufacturing, trade and consumption in history. Wood, weaving, porcelain, iron, sauce and book have gone beyond the species limits of ancient silk, and the genealogy of utensils has been roughly complete. The city is full of five-colored flags of business names. In this wave, Zheng He brought back utensils, jewelry, wood and spices from the West, providing a new source of inspiration for Chinese craftsmen.

In this era, given the booming illegal trade at sea, a variety of potatoes and vegetables were widely introduced, making Chinese recipes more complex. Not only that, the dining system of eating around the table is widely adopted, and the dual system of wine and tea has also been established, forming a gastronomic revolution that has swept all tables. Everyone joined the battle for the table of the delicacies. And this kind of imitation and competition at the dinner table has become the driving force for appetite. There is no doubt that Chinese, while facing the great famine, also experienced the demagogic moments of the great explosion of appetite.

Special mention should be made here of peppers from the Americas. As one of the sharpest hormones of desire, it landed in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and then spread rapidly throughout the country, becoming the core spice of the people's kitchen. No other seasoning can be so inexpensive and sharp-tasting as it is, invading every dish, stinging and delighting the tongue, striving to transform the taste of Chinese. Chili peppers are a dark flame that burns inside the body. Sweetness, on the other hand, as a symbol of wealth, occupies the table in the Taihu Lake Basin, arrogantly pushing away the salty taste in an attempt to sentence it to the company of the poor. On the level of taste, desire launches a dark battle for the lips.

Jiangnan private garden is the highest achievement of the third wave of desire. It is the exquisite cradle of the performance of desire, the exhibition room where utensils are displayed, the complex of homes, stages, gardens, landscapes and shelters, and an encyclopedia of all desires and their projections. In the name of retired officials, it issued a charming call to scribes, dramatists and prostitutes.

After the collapse of moral taboos, the customs of civil society began to change dramatically. The 2.0 version of The Narrative of Desire is the evolution of the novel from storytelling to literati fiction. All kinds of erotic novels with arrogant content were written and shamelessly circulated in the anecdotes. The decaying book industry has revived. Scribes struggled to write books, using neat fonts to spread the literary and artistic virus full of desire. One of the most typical examples is the "Golden Plum Bottle", which was copied and read so widely that it became a major mark of the liberation of lust in the Ming Dynasty. The figure of Ms. Pan Jinlian appears in the window frame of the street, like a charming erotic genre painting, inspiring the forbidden impulse of the public class.

The narrative of desire in the late Empire quickly matured. Those popular novels have various archetypes of desire—the rebellious desire of "Water Margin", the loyalty desire of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the superhuman desire of "Journey to the West", the desire of Oedipus in "Dream of the Red Chamber", and the desire to deform in "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and so on. After more than three thousand years, the narrative genealogy of desire of Chinese agricultural civilization has been presented in an unprecedented and complete way.

Not only that, but six kinds of Chinese desires are stereotyped: abundant food and clothing, prosperous people, fame and fortune, wealth and glory, longevity and eternal happiness, and years of peace. These patterns of desire, solidified by the blessings, eventually condensed into intimate images of the three gods of Fulu Shou. Happiness, Guanlu and Yongshou, which is the sacred trinity of Sinicization, is the personification crystallization of all modes of desire, and they enter various media such as rap, scroll, music and relief in the form of narration, inscription and engraving, driving a huge "desire word system" and shouting out the highest ideal of Chinese agricultural civilization. To this day, these desire-blessing patterns continue to guide the daily lives of the world.

Desire to export was a by-product of the silk trade and the most intriguing achievement of late Chinese civilization. In the hot and short-lived international trade in porcelain tea silk, the Trinity Desire Machine secretly went out on a journey. Thanks to the exploits of the British East India Company, silk tablecloths, Jingdezhen porcelain cups and Fujian black tea soup were organized into elegant scenes of "Royal Afternoon Tea". Then it spread among the secular middle class into a wave of national consumption. Although the British eventually found a cheap substitute for Chinese porcelain tea shreds and supplemented them with three new elements — milk, cane sugar, and small sweet biscuits — they couldn't resist the invasion of the "Chinese-style desire machine." The British defeated the Eastern Empire with gunboats, while the Chinese conquered puritanized Britain with lust, dragging it into the trap of Eastern consumption, and to this day, the British have not woken up from the defeat of this war of desire.

The author is a cultural scholar, cultural critic, novelist, and currently a professor at the Cultural Criticism Research Center of Tongji University.