A case for Confucian sexuality: the eighteenth-century novel Yesou Puyan.

Some books are not necessarily good literature but are all the same unique in marking extremes of creative determination. Yesou puyan, or A Country Codger Puts His Words out to Sun, is just such a book, written by an eccentric polymath who never amounted to anything in what counted in China, official life. ' In his novel China is being threatened by demons, barbarians, and forces of Buddhist and Taoist perversion, which only a thorough Confucian revival can eradicate. The hero is a latter day Confucian superman who (like the author) never passes the official exams, but manages to rise to a position of advisor to the emperor, conquer the forces of evil and even to eradicate Buddhism from the earth. The novel combines a strict orthodox moral vision with extensive descriptions of bizarre, unorthodox behavior which often take sexual form. The author portrays scenes of bestiality, sexual vampirism, and genital acrobatics. Throughout pages of erotic danger and adventure, the hero displays superhuman sexual control and unswervingly preaches that sex is for procreation only: "... the two ways of yin and yang are only meant to proliferate Heaven and Earth and to continue the descent of the ancestors. They are in no way meant for lustful enjoyment." The genitals should be looked upon as "ordinary, tiring things—only then are they like treasures" (ch. 68, 8b). At one-hundred and fifty-four chapters2 Yesou puyan is one of the longest Chinese novels ever written. Twentieth-century specialists have placed it in a group of Qing works called novels of erudition or scholar-novels.