Reading Carnal Reality and Sexual Knowledge in Late Ming Erotica Xiuta Yeshi

Abstract

The late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) saw a boom in the book printing industry, rising literacy, and a burgeoning market for vernacular fictions, producing texts that circulated widely beyond elite literati. Among these, Xiuta yeshi (The Embroidered Couch, ca. 1597), stand out as one of the earliest Chinese erotic novels, unabashedly explicit yet simultaneously invested in transmitting sexual knowledge. This essay examines the relationship between Xiuta Yeshi and its readers, showing how vernacular erotica spoke of carnal reality at a moment when society remained silent or adorned sex with euphemism. Through an analysis of the novel’s linguistic register, narrative structure, and the density of sexual encounters, this essay argues that Xiuta Yeshi normalized sexual desire as a bodily need, diverging from Confucian literary conventions by privileging coarse, accessible language over elegance. The text functions as both entertainment and a pragmatic guide, offering solutions to sexual troubles and instruction for young literati and women raised under rigid moral codes. Drawing on book-historical evidence, including print editions, materials, and readership patterns, the essay situates Xiuta yeshi within the material and commercial conditions of the late Ming print culture. By foregrounding how erotic literature circulated, instructed, and normalized desire, the analysis demonstrates the novel’s role not merely as titillation but as a medium for embodied sexual knowledge, contributing to broader understandings of sexual pedagogy, vernacular literary culture, and knowledge production in late imperial China.

Determined to keep her fires supplied with fuel, the Morning Dusk Scholar ran untiringly from bookshop to bookshop, buying more books of the same kind, such as the Xiuta yeshi […] ¹

— Rouputuan (The Carnal Prayer Mat, 1657)

China in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) saw a boom in the book printing industry, a growing literacy rate, and a subsequent burgeoning market for vernacular fiction. ² Increasing varieties in publication led to a broader understanding of “useful” and “valuable” knowledge. ² As it flourished beyond the borders of the Great Ming, Chinese vernacular literature found its way into the collections of powerful families in Edo Japan (1603–1868), often for the purpose of studying Chinese language and culture. ³ Nevertheless, apart from the literary classics San Guo Zhi Yan Yi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Xi You Ji (Journey to the West), and Shui Hu Zhuan (Water Margin), a large amount of erotic literature flooded into Japan as well. ³ The Seisokudō Library Collection of the Tokuyama Mōri family held an edition of one of the earliest Chinese vernacular erotica, Xiuta yeshi (The Embroidered Couch, ca. 1597).^4–7 It was no doubt a book that leaned unabashedly into “obscenity” by the standards of contemporary literary circles. ⁸ While teasing Confucian morality in its blatantly vulgar portrayals of sex, Xiuta yeshi promised sexual knowledge relevant to the private lives of its common readers. ⁹ This research adopts material and critical textual analyses to interpret this late sixteenth-century book within its historical and cultural frameworks. By focusing on the relationship between Xiuta yeshi and its readers, this essay shows how the vernacular erotica spoke of the carnal reality when the society—the public realm—remained either silent or adorned the matter with literary euphemisms.

According to Robert Hegel’s approach, examining the quality of the printing itself, Xiuta yeshi, as an artifact, provides clues to its wide readership. While the Ming dynasty playwright Lü Tiancheng was often believed to be its author, the authorship of Xiuta yeshi remains contested, given that it was signed under different pseudonyms across the three major editions of the book. ¹⁰ Archived in the library of Yamaguchi University, the present copy is the Zhongdetang ben version, in which the author signed under the pseudonym Qingdian zhuren (the host of the peak of sentiments). ⁴ This edition consists of four chapters in total, divided into two parts. Apart from the handwritten front page and preface, the entire book—including occasional crude illustrations—was printed. However, the printing on the yellowish paper does not resemble the exquisite printing techniques associated with those in elite-targeted copies. ² Still, studies of book history revealed that the same book could be printed with different materials and was often priced differently for its elite class readers. ² In other words, perhaps printing quality in this case is not the best indicator to locate the book’s intended audience.

Nonetheless, the sheer number of sexual intercourses and the sophisticated sexual relationships between the characters make it difficult to appear on the bookshelf of a literati household, at least on public display. The story featured four main characters: thirty-year-old scholar Yao Tongxin (Scholar of the Eastern Gate), his wife Jin, his younger bisexual lover Zhao Dali, and Zhao’s widowed mother Ma. In the simplest terms, the story chronicles the promiscuous and at times incestuous relationships between any pairings or trios of the four (not to mention their servants), with the only exception being the mother-son pair—perhaps that was where the book drew its boundary.^4–7 Ka Wong observed that Xiuta Yeshi “seemed more interested in organs than people.” ⁹ Indeed, the proportion of sex to character development is so overwhelming that one might find the plotline subservient to the presentation of desires. Moreover, though the story concluded with the deaths of most characters and the Buddhist salvation of Yao, it ends very abruptly, breaking sharply from a prolonged sex scene. ¹⁰ In comparison with the rest of the story, the ending thus seems unlikely to be of didactic value—namely, to genuinely critique the characters on a moral basis.

Linguistic characteristics of Xiuta yeshi reveal the accessibility and affinity of its language to the common folks as well. In Chinese literary tradition, scholars tend to portray erotic matters with literary euphemisms, as elegance and decorum are congruent with the respectable poetic genre. Xiuta yeshi challenged this tradition with its coarse and foul language. For instance, instead of using yujing (jade stalk) to denote penis, characters talked incessantly about niao’er (cock).^4–7 Similarly, instead of using floral or jade metaphors for the vagina, characters simply referred to it as the xue (cunt).^4–7 Moreover, the wife, Jin, talked dirty with Yao Tongxin as well as his bisexual lover, Zhao Dali, the way they would to her: “I can be very wild. Put any very hard cock in my cunt and have a try. It doesn’t matter if it’s built of well-tempered iron, windmill-ground bronze, antelope’s horn or diamond, it’ll wear itself out in there all the same.” ¹¹ This blatant admission of sexual desire and indulgence in carnal pleasures normalizes sex as a bodily need.

For young literati and girls raised under rigid Confucian teachings, late Ming erotic literature served as a means of sexual education, albeit not in the modern sense of the word. In the book Rouputuan, a newlywed man named Weiyangsheng (Morning Dusk Scholar) handed his wife Yuxiang erotica in hopes of teaching her the ways of sex. ¹ Despite initially being appalled by the explicit contents, Yuxiang became an “assiduous student” and began to apply her learned techniques to her sex life. ¹ As the epigraph of this essay demonstrates, Xiuta Yeshi was cited as one of the 20 such “educational materials” that Morning Dusk Scholar sought after and brought home to study with his wife. ¹ In other words, Xiuta yeshi appeared as a guide that contains solutions to sexual troubles. It seems reasonable to imagine that contemporary readers of Xiuta yeshi—from the inexperienced to the advanced—would use the book to learn and try new techniques just as Yuxiang did.

By demonstrating taboo kinks and exaggerated amounts of sexual interactions, Xiuta yeshi promised a wide variety of sexual knowledge to its readers. Throughout the story, sexual play ranges from oral sex, sodomy, intoxication, and voyeurism to cuckoldry, threesomes, and incest. When Jin was waiting for the arrival of Zhao for a second night—knowing the popularity of nanfeng (gay sex) among male literati—she cleaned her anus with jasmine water and stuffed seaweed inside. ⁶ From this description, readers could not only see Jin’s impatient lust for Zhao, but also get access to a procedure to prepare for anal sex, regardless of its actual scientific validity. In addition, numerical counts of thrusts, often in the units of hundreds and sometimes thousands, are central to the illustration of passionate sex in the book. Notably, when Jin and Ma discussed the sexual stamina of men, numerical counts were their basis of evaluation. ⁶ In doing so, the women derived their power as a participant of an intercourse capable of critiquing men rather than passively waiting to carry on the reproductive mission for their husband’s lineage.

Late Ming erotica is, after all, a commercial product. The book market in which Xiuta yeshi appeared spoke for suppressed yet palpable lusts, “everyday” desires (self-)censored under Confucian propriety. As Wong noted, the “confessional” tone by which the book described Yao’s sexual inabilities truthfully presented the erotic body, with limitations that readers might find in people they know as well. ⁷ In a sense, embedded in the story of affairs between Yao, Jin, and Zhao is a discourse of sex, perhaps easier to open up privately in print than in person. As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, this discourse—born out of commercial circulation—would then travel beyond China to Japan, influencing Japanese collectors and the emergence of ukiyo-e prints, but that is beyond the scope of this essay. ¹²

In any case, by portraying the countless number of sexual activities among sophisticated sexual relationships in staunch defiance of social taboos, Xiuta yeshi stirred beneath the placid surface of society, shattering its decorous façade in the language of the masses. Unorthodox as it seems, the Ming vernacular erotica was nevertheless pedagogical to people who, when stripped bare in their private chambers, perhaps found answers to their lust and desire from books that unapologetically spoke to their carnal reality. This private space remained even under state censorship in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), as officials regarded the selling and reading of erotica as a less serious offense and often looked the other way in the absence of lawsuits despite the Qing court’s repeated efforts to ban “obscene” books such as Xiuta yeshi. ⁸ Ming dynasty historian Michael Szonyi has famously written about the equivocal relationship between the state and the people in The Art of Being Governed:

[F]or most of the people who in the past several centuries have lived in what is today China, the critical political decision was not whether to engage with the state but how best to do so. […] Except in very unusual circumstances, engaging with the state did not mean escaping the state or changing the state or openly resisting the state; it meant dealing with the state and the demands of its agents as best one could. ¹³

In light of this art, future research on the topic of Ming and Qing vernacular erotica would benefit from exploring the specific measures readers took as they engaged with state censorship, the formal and informal institutional structures that played a critical role in upholding a space for the erotic arts, and finally, the roles of Japanese collectors of the Edo period in the spreading and re-education of Chinese erotic literature.