Strong women and revolting aunts in 10th century China

This large dish or charger in the famille verte style dates from the Kangxi period (1661-1772), Qing dynasty. It sold at Bonham’s recently for a nice £25,000, well above the estimate. While I’m not a big fan of the green tones of famille verte, I was intrigued by the catalogue note stating that: “It depicts a legendary moment during the Northern Song Dynasty when, after all the men had been slaughtered by the Khitan invaders, the women of the Yang family took up arms and bravely galloped out to meet the enemy.”

Some readers may mutter “Oh, the Yangs”, and indeed they are an important strand in Chinese popular culture, but I had never heard of them. Their story is a mix of truth and legend (mostly the latter), complicated by re-telling in plays, operas, films and television.

There is historical evidence of a distinguished military family named Yang, led by General Yang Ye, who came to prominence under the great Northern Song emperor Taizong (r. 976-997). Wilt Idema in his book Generals of the Yang Family: Four Early Plays cites an 11^th century tomb inscription which praises the Yangs’ military prowess. He also notes repeated references in popular tales such as the Judge Bao stories (13^th-15^th century).

But the Yang legend really gets going in the 16^th century through two sets of fictional tales detailing their exploits against the Khitan invaders. It is from here that stories of the Yang women warriors begin to proliferate, the most famous being Mu Guiying who defeated one of the Yang sons in battle and then proposed marriage to him. According to legend, her strategies later played a key role in breaking the Khitans’ hitherto undefeated Heavenly Battle Array.

The Yang family did not lack for strong women however, many of them being widows of Yang menfolk killed in war. Mu’s mother-in-law She Saihua was famously feisty, and in one version, actually led the women into battle herself at the age of 100 (perhaps as illustrated on the Qing dish above). In a more recent TV version cited by Khoo Poh Cheng in a paper at MIT, Mu even has to deal with a revolt by senior aunts who question her authority as military leader. What would PG Wodehouse have made of that? Did they bellow like mastodons across the primeval swamp?

While the exploits of the Yang women were almost certainly fictional, their role as a cultural and political symbol in China has been very real. A key example is Women Generals of the Yang Family (Yangmen Nijiang), a staple of the Beijing Opera’s repertoire. Based on an earlier play, the opera was created around 1960 at a time when political and economic changes opened up opportunities for women in China. During the Cultural Revolution, the opera was banned by Mao Zedong’s powerful wife Jiang Qing, citing some guff about it being contrary to Mao’s views. After the fall of Jiang’s Gang of Four, the opera was gleefully restored and lauded for showing the right spirit of female dedication to political life. I’m still kicking myself for missing the performance at Sadlers Wells last winter (see below).

The depiction of the Yang women on Qing dynasty ceramics is not particularly rare: a few have come up at auction in recent years. One could go on about the various manifestations of the Yang women (I’d like to see The 14 Amazons, a 1970s Hong Kong flick starring Ivy Ling Po), but the final word must go to Mu Guiying, who has even had a crater named after her on Venus (see below). A very elegant one too.