Lady Meng Jiang
Later versions are set in the Qin dynasty, when Lady Meng Jiang's husband was pressed into service by imperial officials and sent as corvee labor to build the Great Wall of China.
The story is now counted as one of China's Four Great Folktales, the others being the Legend of the White Snake (Baishezhuan), Butterfly Lovers, and The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid (Niulang Zhinü).
[5] The legend developed into many variations in both form and content, with different versions emphasizing different elements of the story such as Meng Jiangnu's marriage, her relationship with her parents-in-law, the journey to the wall, her grief.
[6] Although the later, fully developed forms of the legend take place in the Qin dynasty, the seeds of the tale lie in a simple anecdote in the Zuozhuan, a chronicle of the far earlier Spring and Autumn period.
Qi Liang's wife replied that she could not receive condolences on the road, and Duke Zhuang visited her at home and left only when the proper ceremonies had been completed.
[8] In one version, Qi Liang flees the hardship of labor on the Great Wall in the north and enters the Meng family garden to hide in a tree and sees the young lady bathing.
[11] Popular versions only at this point tell the reader that this story happened during the reign of the wicked, unjust Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, who decided to build a wall to keep the barbarians from invading his kingdom.
Over her parents' objections and paying no attention to her own fatigue, she traveled over mountains and rivers to arrive at the Great Wall, only to find that her husband had died.
[13] It recounts that when Qi Liang died his body was built into the wall his soul wandered "among the thorns and brambles," but spoke to his wife saying "A poor soldier under the earth will not ever forget you.
Still another version portrays Lady Meng as a goddess who descends from heaven to follow her husband, who chooses to be reborn on earth in order to take the place of 10,000 men who would have been sacrificed to build the Great Wall.
[15] By the 20th century, the legend had been adapted in every type of regional drama and ballad or song, developing variety in the characters, their actions, and in the attitude expected from the audience.
Gu Jiegang, the founder of Chinese folklore studies, used the western concept "myth" to reinterpret China's ancient history as a mythology to match the Greeks.
Qi Liang's wife's unashamed weeping over her husband’s corpse in full public view was something the woman in the earlier anecdote would never have done – it defied Li, or ritual propriety.
That is, Gu and his students saw Lady Meng Jiang as a tale of protest against state power which Confucian literati could not see because they were too oblivious of the common people.
For these New Culture intellectuals "The Story of Lady Meng Jiang" was an act of long-term popular collective creativity, particularly on the part of women, who had the least power and the most to grieve about.
[22] For the folklorists of the New Culture Movement, the Great Wall stood for tyrannical rule and Lady Meng Jiang embodied the resentment of the common people against inhuman feudal China.
In the Tang dynasty version, because only a husband is allowed to see the body of his wife, Lady Meng Jiang marries an escaped prisoner who saw her while she was bathing.
Modern readers see love as the only explanation for her actions, but Idema argues that a more traditional audience would condemn her if she acted out of passion rather than a moral feeling of shame.
[25] During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), in which Confucius became a symbol of feudal oppression, Lady Meng was attacked as an enemy of the First Emperor and denounced as a "pro-Confucian, anti-Legalist Great Poisonous Weed.
