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Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700)

Li Yü: “On Being Happy Though Poor”

Date: 1671

Author: Li Yü (Li Liweng)

Genre: Essay

Summary Overview

The Chinese playwright and novelist Li Yü was one of many wealthy men in early Qing dynasty China who decided to enlighten people with his notions of how one should live “the good life.” Unlike most of his contemporaries, Li had a sense of humor about the enterprise, as he showed in “On Being Happy Though Poor.” The more important point of the work was that it was indicative of the prosperity of China in the era when the Ming dynasty ended and the Qing dynasty began. China was able to feed and maintain a vast population, had begun to build trade contacts with the west through Catholic missionaries, and its government improved dramatically with the collapse of the corrupt Ming emperors and their advisors. When a civilization is able to feed itself, indulge in the arts, prosper beneath an efficient governmental administration, and maintain control over its relations with the rest of the world, it is easy for its people to philosophize about the best means to achieve a happy life. Educated Chinese men regularly published works like Casual Notes in a Leisurely Mood (1671), the book from which “On Being Happy Though Poor” is extracted. It is a sign of the affluence of Chinese society in the mid-seventeenth century.

Defining Moment

China was a land of 130 million people by the year 1600. Simply by dint of its sheer demographic and geographic size, the Chinese Ming empire entered a period of positive economic development, where trade and artisanal production picked up to supply this teeming population. Mongol invasions had petered out; northeastern China, an area known as Manchuria, had opened up to agriculture. Rice flowed out of the Yangtze River valley, and trade connections extended to SouthEast Asia and India. Chinese manufacturers perfected porcelain making for export—the product euphemistically known as “china”—which was renowned in Europe for its fine construction.

In the production of textiles, Chinese manufacturers learned about cotton from Korean traders, and began building mills to create cotton cloth. The silk industry also made massive profits, particularly overseas in Japan, and Chinese silks sold in Europe at six times their prices in China. To produce both textiles, Chinese manufacturers invented looms and spinning machines to speed up the production process. In other industries, printers came up with new printing block techniques, banking financed economic development, engineers came up with the world’s first suspension bridges; Chinese farmers even came up with a prototype for a tractor. China was on the verge of an industrial revolution.

At this very point, Ming economic prosperity started to decline. Bad winters and bad harvests hit Manchuria, and people there, many of them still nomads, migrated south to find food, past the Great Wall into China proper. Manchurian warriors under a khan named Nurhachi had helped Chinese armies drive the Japanese off the Korean peninsula in the late sixteenth century; now those same nomads sought to end Ming dynasty decadence and corruption, and replace the Ming on the imperial throne. Nurhachi’s sons and grandsons eventually drove the Ming out of the Forbidden City and inaugurated the Qing dynasty in 1644.

The Qing emperors were never popular due to their “foreign” origins; as with the Mongols, Mandarin-speaking Chinese saw the Qing dynasty as a political humiliation. However, social and economic development returned to its previously high levels—China prospered once again under the Qing.

The seventeenth century, then, was an era of political instability and social and economic riches. Being a Confucian civilization that prized knowledge, order and decorum above all things, the Chinese people were inclined to behave themselves well during this period. This was in part due to the growing popularity of “morality books,” or shanshu, popularly published manuscripts that purported to tell the reader how to live a positive life. Shanshu first began to be published during the Song dynasty (960-1279), but the advent of the printing press and the prosperity of the times made many wealthy men eager to promote their own spiritual values as the key to material improvement. Shanshu combined Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist principles, usually telling parables that told the reader how to live a positive moral existence that was within natural boundaries and which would accumulate good karma for the future. One such work was Li Yu’s Casual Notes in a Leisurely Mood (1671), and one of its most popular chapters was the amusing parable “On Being Happy Though Poor.”

Li Yü By ismeretlen, Közkincs, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

DD17_Li_Yu.jpg

Author Biography

Li Yü (1610–78) was perhaps the most talented literary figure in seventeenth-century China, renowned as a playwright, novelist and essayist. He published his own and other people’s works and owned his own theatrical troupe, for which he occasionally acted parts. He was also well versed in landscape architecture and gourmet eating.

Li was originally a Confucian scholar. He did not pass the civil service examination to attain a job in the Ming Chinese state, but that turned out to be fortuitous when the dynasty collapsed to Manchurian invaders in 1644. Instead, Li gave himself the alias Li Liweng, in order to avoid trouble with the new Qing dynasty, and in 1651, he moved to the city of Hangzhou and decided to use his Confucian education to become a playwright. He became one of the most successful playwrights and storytellers in Chinese history, producing a series of erotic works and satirical commentary on Chinese life at the time. Often his works included anecdotes about city life and folk customs which made them popular with ordinary people. To stimulate sales of his work, Li opened up a bookstore in Beijing; to be assured that his plays would be performed, he started his theatrical troupe. Obviously a born promoter, Li Yü was the best-selling writer of his time in China.

Like many wealthy men, Li Yü decided to publicize his experiences in life as he got older, for the benefit of his readers. The most popular of these works was Xianqing Ouji (1671), translated in many ways but best rendered as Casual Thoughts in a Leisurely Mood. It was divided into eight parts with 234 different topics, including chapters on writing, acting, architecture, gardening, food, sex and clothing. One of its topics was a matching satirical essay called “On Being Happy Though Rich.” Another section of the book was on Li’s thoughts on the production of theater, for which it is most often read today; in general, though, it is a work on “the art of living.”

Toward the end of his life, Li fell afoul of Qing dynasty authorities and had to move back to the city of Hangzhou and go into hiding. He died in 1678.

Historical Document

Excerpt from “On Being Happy Though Poor” by Li Yü

The recipe for being happy when one is poor contains nothing more arcane than the simple prescription, “one step back.” I may consider myself poor; but there will be other men poorer than I. I may count myself lowly; but there will be other men lowlier than I. I may regard my wife as an encumbrance; but there are widows and widowers, orphans, and childless folk who strive in vain to acquire just such an encumbrance. I may deplore the calluses on my hands; but there are men in the jails and in the wild lands who long without prospect for a livelihood with plough or shovel.

Rest in such thoughts as these, and the sea of sorrows gives place to a land of joy; but if all your reckoning is in a forward direction, weighing yourself against your betters, then you will know not a moment’s peace but live fettered forever in a prison cell.

A man of substance once spent the night in a courier station. The humid summer was at its height and his bed-curtains admitted swarms of mosquitoes which would not be driven off. He fell prey to reminiscences of home, of a lofty hall arching like the sky itself over him, of bamboo matting cool as ice, and a whole bevy of fan-wielding concubines. There he would hardly be aware of summer’s presence; how had he ever managed to get himself into his present predicament? Thoughts of bliss increased his frustrations, and the upshot was a night of total sleeplessness.

The station sergeant had lain down on the steps outside where clouds of mosquitoes gnawed at him until it seemed his bones must be exposed. In desperation at last he began running up and down the yard, his arms and legs ceaselessly flailing so as to afford no foothold to his attackers. His movements back and forth were those of a man bothered and annoyed, yet the sighs he gave were sighs of relief and satisfaction, as though he had found a source of pleasure in the midst of his misery.

The rich man was puzzled, and called him over to question him. “Your sufferings,” he said, “are a dozen or a hundred times more severe than mine, yet I am miserable and you seem to be enjoying yourself. Can you explain this?”

“I was just remembering,” said the sergeant, “the time some years ago when an enemy of mine brought charges against me and had me thrown into jail. That was summer too, and the jailor to prevent my running away bound my wrists and ankles every night so that I could not move. There were more mosquitoes then than tonight, and they bit me at will, for however I longed to dodge and hide I could make no effort to do so. But see how tonight I can run up and down, moving my arms and legs just as I wish—it’s like I’m comparing a living man with a devil in hell. Thinking of the past I realize how pleasant things are now, and I can ignore whatever sufferings there might be.”

His words roused the rich man to the understanding of his own error; for what he had heard was the secret of being happy though poor.

Document Analysis

Li’s thesis in “On Being Happy Though Poor” is to recognize that someone always has it worse than you do. This is a very Confucian prescription for living a good life. Confucianism is especially concerned with one’s responsibilities in life—to be deferential to one’s superiors, to be indulgent and protective of one’s inferiors. It is also reminiscent of Buddhism, by the seventeenth century a very popular foreign religion that had spread throughout the entire empire. Buddhism calls on its adherents to ignore the material life for the salvation of one’s spirit, and when people can recognize themselves as being lucky to have more wealth than others, more social status, a better family life, a better working life, this proves to be the key to happiness. Li counters that “…if all your reckoning is in a forward direction, weighing yourself against your betters, then you will know not a moment’s peace but live fettered forever in a prison cell.”

As with many stories in morality books, this one concludes with a parable. The story is of a wealthy man staying in a hostel during a sweltering summer, who cannot get the mosquitoes to leave his bedroom. His thoughts drift off to his home, where he would be much happier than in the nasty confines of his room at the inn, and he spends a sleepless night in his bed. Then he notes that the innkeeper, or station sergeant, is similarly flailing his arms and legs to get rid of mosquitoes, but with a smile and sighs “as though he had found a source of pleasure in the midst of his misery.” When the wealthy man asks him how he can be enjoying himself when being harassed by mosquitoes, the sergeant tells him he had once been bound at the wrists and ankles when being attacked by mosquitoes, and he had had no way to defend himself. Therefore, the ability to run about like a crazy man swatting at bugs was a positive pleasure in comparison to his memories of the past. Thus, the rich man recognized that “what he had heard was the secret of being happy though poor.” The image of a man wildly waving at bugs and laughing about it cannot help but bring a smile to the reader’s face, but the point is still made: To be happy, count your blessings.

Essential Themes

When Li Yü died, China was in the beginnings of the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1661-1722), the longest reigning emperor in Chinese history. Kangxi was a Confucian scholar and poet, who ruled firmly and fairly, exercising tolerance to everyone within his purview. In the midst of his emperorship, he even came close to accepting Christianity and converting to the religion, in part due to the excellent trade connections represented by the European presence in China. His grandson, the Qianlong emperor (1736-1795), was just as effective, making the eighteenth century a high point in the history of the dynasty and in Chinese history in general. Accordingly, scholarly productions like morality books increased during the early Qing dynasty, along with dictionaries, encyclopedias and histories.

Li Yü himself has long remained recognized as China’s seventeenth-century version of Shakespeare, a man of letters. His works were widely published, and eventually translated into several languages, including English, by the philosopher and scholar Lin Yutang (1895-1976). Using some of Li’s writings as guidance, Lin published his own shanshu in 1937, The Importance of Living.

—David Simonelli

Bibliography and Further Reading

Brokaw, Cynthia Joanne. The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. Princeton University Press, 1991.

Chun-shu Chang and Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang. Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China: Society, Culture, and Modernity in Li Yü’s World. University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Hanan, Patrick. The Invention of Li Yu. Harvard University Press, 1988.

Porter, Jonathan. Imperial China, 1350-1900. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

"Li Yü: “On Being Happy Though Poor”." Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700), edited by David Simonelli, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DD17C_0026.

APA 7th

Li Yü: “On Being Happy Though Poor”. Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700), In D. Simonelli (Ed.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DD17C_0026.

CMOS 17th

"Li Yü: “On Being Happy Though Poor”." Defining Documents in World History: The 17th Century (1601-1700), Edited by David Simonelli. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=DD17C_0026.

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