Legends of the Building of Old Peking by Hok-Lam Chan (review)

132 Journal of Chinese Religions Legends of the Building of Old Peking HOK-LAM CHAN. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press; Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2008. xx, 416 pages. ISBN 978-0-29598782 -8. US$60.00 hardcover. The 1950s destruction of the Ming-Period Beijing walls is doubtless among the most tragic mistakes of modern Chinese architecture. The formidable walls that for six centuries had defined the city and had oriented its inhabitants no longer exist. The elegant gate-towers and broad moats that once graced the capital have almost entirely vanished. Only the inner walls—those surrounding the imperial palace—have been spared. The tourist looking at a Beijing map will identify the names of its ancient gates now designating modern neighborhoods and suburbs such as Xizhimen 西直門 and Chaoyangqu 朝陽區, but he will be searching in vain for the venerable gates themselves, which, with a few exceptions, have all been dismantled. Hok-Lam Chan’s Legends of the Building of Old Peking is a meticulous study of the folklore surrounding the now largely-vanished Beijing walls. It is an enlarged and revised version of the author’s 1996 Chinese-language monograph on the same topic.1 The book covers a time span of eight centuries—from the legends that had accompanied the construction of the Yuan capital Dadu 大都 to Republican-period revisions of Ming and Qing lore. Despite its interest to the urban, the religious, and the social historian alike, this body of Beijing folklore has hardly received scholarly attention. Chan’s definitive study is therefore an important contribution to Beijing historiography, illuminating its cultural, religious, and ethnic complexities from a hitherto neglected angle. Two story-cycles are the focus of Chan’s investigation: The first is that of the child-god Nezha 哪吒 (originally written Nazha 那吒) in whose image the city had been fashioned. According to a thirteenth-century legend, the Yuan capital’s eleven gates corresponded to the divine boy’s three heads, six arms, and two feet. Dadu was thus drawn in the image of the god, for which reason it was referred to in Yuan sources as Nazha City (Nazha cheng 那吒 城). In early versions of the legend, Nazha revealed his divine form to Qubilai Qaghan’s maverick advisor and architect Liu Bingzhong 劉秉忠 (1216-1274). In later ones (reflecting growing Han ethnocentrism), the collaborator with the Mongol invaders was replaced by the early Ming statesman Liu Ji 劉基 (1311-1375, better known by his courtesy name Liu Bowen 劉伯溫), and the entire legend was associated with the construction of the Ming walls by the Yongle Emperor 永樂 (r. 1403-1424). Thus, the Tantric deity became the divine guardian of Ming Beijing, instead of the tutelary divinity of the preceding Yuan capital. Nezha is among the most fascinating divinities in the mythology of late-imperial China, and Chan’s thorough examination of his role in Beijing lore will be tremendously helpful to 1 Chen Xuelin 陳學霖 [Hok-Lam Chan], Liu Bowen yu Nezha Cheng—Beijing jiancheng de chuanshuo 劉伯溫與哪吒城 – 北京建城的傳說 (Taibei: Dongda, 1996). Book Reviews 133 scholars interested in the protean deity. Late-Ming novels, such as the Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi 封神演義), elaborate on the divine boy’s battles with the Dragon Kings, which led to an Oedipal conflict with his own father, the Heavenly King Vaiśravaņa (identified with the Tang general Li Jing 李靖 [571-649]). Chan rightly observes that Nezha’s significance in Beijing folklore is not unrelated to his function in popular fiction and drama. Indeed, the child-god was chosen as the city’s tutelary divinity precisely because of his dragon-subjugation powers. The Yuan capital, no less than modern Beijing, had suffered from acute water-shortages, which were attributed to the Dragon King. It was Nezha’s ability to battle the dragons that had earned him the role of the capital’s heavenly protector. Chan’s account of Nezha’s role in the Beijing mythology is the most thorough in any language. However, it might have further benefited from an examination of possible Central Asian antecedents. The renowned Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang 玄奘 (596-664) recorded several Indian and Central Asian legends of sacred sites, the construction of which had been preceded by the subjugation of...