South of the Clouds: Tales from Yunnan (review)

© 1996 by University ofHawai'i Press Reviews 231 the only objects ofwealth. Studies by Timotiiy Brook, Fuma Susumu, Angela Kiche Leung, and Joanna Handlin Smith have shown, for instance, that around that same time, there was also a budding interest among the wealtiiy and the influential of the Yangzi Delta in shanju, or "charitable deeds." In a spirit of sharing with the less fortunate, shanju involved a broad spectrum ofactivities, including feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, burying abandoned corpses, raising foundlings, and providing relief for widows. At various places in the book, Meskill intimates a growing tendency among Songjiang's elite toward self-assertiveness, a distrust of authorities, and a willingness to take matters into their own hands. Had he broadened the scope ofhis investigation, he would surely have seen in what direction these inclinations might have been heading. Concise and well-written, MeskiU's book makes enjoyable reading. Unfortunately , it offers little more. John Lee Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada John Lee is an associateprofessor ofhistory, specializing in premodern Chinese social and institutional history, withparticular reference to the character and role ofthe elite. Lucien Miller, editor. Translations by Guo Xu, Lucien Miller, and Xu Kun. South ofthe Clouds: Talesfrom Yunnan. Seattle and London: University ofWashington Press, 1994. xiii, 328 pp. Hardcover $40.00, isbn 0-29597293 -9. Paperback $19.95, 1SBN 0-295-97348-x. This book is a gem, sparkling with lyrical translations of fifty-four stories from Yunnan Province's twenty-five minority nationalities. These fanciful tales delight and surprise the reader, and at the same time provide insights into the ways in which ordinary minority peoples coped with the harshness of daily life and the even harsher arbitrary rule oflocal headmen and kings. Folktales, myths, and legends , it may be asserted, helped these folk to survive. Readers can infer from these tales that, through their convictions and their ways oflife, the minority peoples challenged the dominant Confucian culture. Not only sons, but daughters, too, were blessings. The politically weak could conquer the strong and make laughingstocks ofrulers—whether local headmen or faraway kings and emperors. "Superstition," as the Chinese would refer to folk practices and beliefs, abounds. And coursing through these stories is a river of op- 232 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 timism—a certainty that the ordinary folk could overcome misfortune, oppression , or the vagaries ofnature. Although this optimism is not always vindicated, that it did exist—and diat it must have animated the lives and choices ofmany of the people—is clear. In his solid and wide-ranging introductory essay, Lucien Miller meets headon any possible objections that these stories—filled, as many are, with class conflict —are merely Communist propaganda (p. 21). One does not have to subscribe to Marxism to find it credible that real-life people, as refracted tiirough the imagination in these tales, would have strained against oppressive conditions, and would have sought to combat—or at least ameliorate—such conditions. Moreover , it may be noted that the very non-Confucian "superstition" that is found in many of these stories is also condemned by die Communists; yet, in these stories, it is neither implicitly nor explicitly criticized—criticism that would be expected, were they serving Communist propaganda aimed at old "feudal" practices and traditions. The objective of the three collaborators—Miller, Guo Xu, and Xu Kun—was "to understand and translate Chinese redactions ofYunnan minority tales, myths, and legends as combinations of oral and written art" (p. 23). In his introduction, Miller also elucidates die translation theory—Eugene A. Nida's "dynamic equivalence "—that guided the work ofthe three collaborators (p. 24). He describes the metiiodology of folktale collection in China, as well as the transition from oral to written literature—a process complicated by the fact that many stories must be translated from minority languages that are only oral, before they can be written in Chinese. In this transition, distinctive oral elements are retained and revised as the written texts are fashioned. Guo Xu, Miller, and Xu Kun's success in meeting their objective is amply revealed in the graceful translations which form the body of this book. In addition to fulfilling...