Triangulating Filial Piety, Ethnicity, and Nation in Late-Qing China: The Lilac Affair in Zeng Pu’s Niehai hua

The extraordinary actions of a particular father and son became a popular topic of literati writers during late-Qing times and furthermore fueled an ongoing intellectual dispute. The father, Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841), was a renowned scholar credited by Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) for having initiated the important late-Qing intellectual turn from excessive evidential research to discussions of pragmatic statecraft. As we see in this study, various personal records and literary inventions, taken as a whole, make an ambiguous case for his having engaged in a love affair with a Manchu woman, Gu Taiqing 顧 太清 (ca. 1799–1877), who was the consort of a Manchu prince. Both parties of the alleged romance were celebrated poets, and it was through poetry that the name “Lilac Affair” (dingxiang an 丁香案) came about. The affair was savored with interest by many at the turn of the twentieth century and it garnered numerous details through memoirs and fiction. Yet it was vehemently denied by those who defended Gong’s and Gu’s reputations.