A Stele of Forgetfulness: An Unmemorable Name List at the End of the Phonetic Quest in The Flowers in the Mirror

Ling Hon Lam, University of Chicago

          If good memory is what usually defines gifted intelligence in traditional Chinese literature, why would the one hundred talented women celebrated in The Flowers in the Mirror (Jinhua yuan, 1828) fail to remember even each other’s name? Apparently, in the second half of the novel where the women get together in prolonged parties, even the narrator/author himself has a hard time to present this swamp of characters in a “memorable” way without confusing one with another. Why does the list of names of these one hundred exiled immortals inscribed on a huge jade slab raise such a question of memory, whereas a very similar stele of names in the earlier Water Margins never does? What story does this failure of memory – a frequent failure not only to recall names but to cite canonical sources in a literary game – tell us about the transmuted production of fiction and knowledge in early nineteenth century China? These questions cannot be solved unless we contrast the name list, which thwarts recitation from memory and is thus as silent as the stele itself, with the phonetic chart that looms large in the first half of the novel, which solicits people to fill in its gaps by varied repetition of sound. What confronts us is the vicissitudes of the voice resulting from various forms of transcription and imprint. These vicissitudes, curiously, are then mapped out in terms of gender and topography, embodied by the father’s phonetic quest overseas and the daughter’s drinking parties in the imperial capital of the only Female Emperor in Chinese history.

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