Literary Women of the Hui-Yang Families in mid-Qing Yangzhou and Beyond: From Xu Deyin 徐德音 (1681-1760?) to Jiang Zhu 江珠 (1764-1804)

Abstract

This paper is part of an ongoing project on literary women from the Huizhou mercantile lineages and their rise to cultural prominence during the Qing period. I am particularly interested in women of the “Hui-Yang” background – namely, those whose families originated from Huizhou and resided in Yangzhou. It was the enormous salt wealth of the Hui-Yang merchants, as scholars have acknowledged, that stimulated the splendid cultural and intellectual developments in Yangzhou and, more broadly, in the lower Yangtze area during the late imperial era. In this paper I draw on records from the Huaihai yingling ji 淮海英靈集 andGuangling shishi 廣陵詩事 by Ruan Yuan 阮元(1764-1849), and the sequel to the Huaihai yingling jiby Wang Yu王豫 (1768-1826) and Ruan Heng 阮亨 (1783-1859), to uncover literary women’s ties to the vibrant culture of salt wealth in Yangzhou and elite social networks in the cultural heartland of the lower Yangtze area during the mid-Qing period. I focus on two cases, Xu Deyin (1681-1760?) and Jiang Zhu (1764-1804), to illustrate the flow of cultural capital through these networks and the interregional dynamics between Yangzhou and the cultural heartland. Understanding Yangzhou in the above light calls into question the stereotypical images of the women of Yangzhou - as part of the city’s notorious “commerce of women” – and draws attention to locality as a vital factor underlying the rise of literary women during the Qing era.