Craftsmanship and the Making of Urban Spectacles in High Qing Yangzhou: A Case Study of Li Dou (1749-1817)

Abstract

The prosperity of economic and cultural consumption in eighteenth-century Yangzhou nurtured groups of people who made a livelihood through their specialties and techniques. This paper examines how the traditional Chinese literati attempted to reposition themselves in urban culture and how they revisited the Confucian discourse on craftsmanship. I argue that Li Dou李斗 (1749-1817) can serve as an important case study through which we can investigate the profession, social status, aesthetic taste, and knowledge culture of the literati in High Qing Yangzhou. By a close reading of Li Dou’s well-known city guidebook Yangzhou huafang lu 揚州畫舫錄 and personal collection of poems, as well as his two unnoticed playscripts, this paper discusses how Li Dou, as an urban Flâneur, appreciated and genealogized a variety of crafts which were closely related to the making of urban spectacles; and how he, as a professional playwright, contributed to urban splendor by designing playscripts that were characterized by performability, techniques and appreciatability. He went as far as to stage the notorious pornography The Plum in the Golden Vase and highly appraise those performers excelling in salacious acting, seemed to suggest that there is something amoral conceded to art. This paper argues that Li Dou’s discourse and practice on performative art, along with his rich knowledge on architectural technology and many other crafts which were often regarded as trivial or even inferior, are strong evidence of the development of the idea of “craftsmanship” in High Qing Yangzhou.