Sexual vampire
These texts are predominantly written for a male audience, guiding men to defeat their female enemy in a "sexual battle" by mastering Daoist ejaculation control.
The arcane term cǎizhàn (採戰), first recorded in the Song dynasty (960–1279), describes the practice of sexual vampirism in which one partner tries to obtain energies at the loss of the other (Despeux 2000: 405).
This word combines cai (採 or 采) translatable as "pick, pluck, gather; cull, select, choose, adopt; extract, exploit; collect, cluster; bunch up, assemble" and zhan (戰) "battle, combat; fight with weapons; clash of arms; war; struggle, contend for" (Kroll 2017: 30, 591).
The unabridged monolingual Hanyu Da Cidian (Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary), which is lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary, defines cǎizhàn (采战 / 採戰) as yóu cǎibǔ (犹采补 / 猶採補) "similar to caibu (采补 / 採補)", with bu "mend or patch clothing; repair, restore; remedy, redress; improve, ameliorate; add to, supplement; supplete, supply (a deficiency); replenish …" (Kroll 2017: 29), which in turn is defined as 谓汲取他人元气, 精血以补益己身 ("capturing/absorbing the energy, essence, and blood of others to nourish oneself") (Luo 1994; 6: 691–692, 10: 1307).
Both sexological classics, along with several others such as the Sunü Jing above, were lost in China by the end of the Tang dynasty in 907, but fortunately, they were preserved in Japan as part of Tambo Yasunori's (丹波康頼) 984 Chinese medical chrestomathy Ishinpō (医心方), and those recovered textual fragments were reconstructed in the early 20th century.
The Yufang zhiyao (Essentials of the Jade Chamber) emphasizes male sexual practices, and begins by quoting the mythical Chinese Methuselah Peng Zu, The Yellow Emperor mounted 1,200 women and thus achieved immortality, whereas the ordinary man cuts down his life with just one.
It is amoral because there is no suggestion that she "attained her divinity on account of moral excellence or virtuous conduct", and she was originally an ordinary woman, but was able to harness the "extraordinary power" afforded by Daoist sexual practices (2006: 289).
In the present generation there are those who practice counterfeit arts and slyly call them the Way, teaching by means of the texts of the Yellow Emperor, the Dark Maiden, Master Gong, and Rongcheng.
For instance, the Xi jing fu (西京賦, "Western Metropolis Rhapsody" by Zhang Heng (78–139 CE): "They snuggled together on a narrow mat in the center of the hall, And feathered goblets made the rounds countless times.
The c. 1610-1620 Zhulin yeshi (Unofficial History of the Bamboo Grove) portrayed her as using esoteric sexual vampirism to kill her lovers, each of whom she gradually sucked dry of vital energy, to maintain her eternal youth and become a Daoist transcendent.
The Zuozhuan entry for 600 BCE (Xuan 9) describes Xia Ji's infamous orgy in the court of Duke Ling of Chen (陳靈公, 613-599) with his officials Kong Ning (孔寧) and Yi Xingfu/Hangfu (儀行父).
Lord Ling of Chen together with Kong Ning and Yi Xingfu engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with Lady Xia Ji and they all wore her underwear in order to make a joke at court.
After Chu conquered Chen, King Zhuang sentenced Duke Ling's murderer Xia Zhengshu to death by julie (車裂, "attaching five chariots to a convict's head and four limbs and tearing him to pieces").
Yang Bojun hypothesized that Man was Xia Ji's previously unknown first husband, making Lord Yushu (御叔) her second, despite the absence of corroborating textual references to him (Milburn 2017: 5).
The original Chinese reads: nei xie jishu, gai lao er fu zhuang zhe, (內挾伎術 蓋老而復壯者, "[Lady Xia Ji] was someone who [had mastered] the techniques of internal compression, whereby even though she was old she could restore her youth."
First using her newfound sexual techniques to retain her youthful appearance throughout her life (Milburn 2017: 10); she then seduced multiple men until she was stopped by a rival Daoist master who became her lover and joined her in their quest for spiritual transcendence (Mair 2010: 665).
"Such themes were a staple of early Chinese erotic literature, and were closely related to a heterodox tradition in which the achievement of transcendency was completely divorced from moral cultivation."
In the novel's conclusion, Lady Xia Ji has acquired a disciple, a young woman of high social status like herself; the wife of the minister Luan Shu.
Van Gulik's criteria here are those of Freudian discourse: what is repressive is abstinence, while perversions divert libido away from its proper genital outlets or channel it into sadomasochistic cruelties."
Van Gulik's interest in this field began during his posting to the Netherlands Embassy in Tokyo in 1949, when he obtained a set of Chinese original printing woodblocks for a rare Ming dynasty erotic picture album.
The materials van Gulik assembled and examined convinced him that "the current foreign conception of the depraved and abnormal sexual habits of the ancient Chinese was completely wrong."
In 1951, he privately published Erotic Colour Prints in a limited edition, distributing copies to academic institutions worldwide to ensure the content remained accessible only to qualified readers.
Due to his concerns about limiting readership, van Gulik's English translations of sexually explicit Chinese passages were rendered in Latin; an attitude that Goldin says "smacks of elitism and is clearly outmoded today" (2003: xvi).
The first described the metaphorical "battle" of the sexes: These alchemists considered woman as the "enemy" because through her causing the man to emit semen, she robs him of his precious Yang essence.
They believed not only that absorbing large quantities of Yin essence from the women they copulated with could lengthen their years and rejuvenate them, but also that the Elixir of Immortality resided in the "Original Femininity" [yuanpin] 元牝.
For instance, Arthur Eustace Morgan wrote, "Her heart has yearned for maternal love; but suddenly the idealized picture has dissolved and clearly and unmistakably there stands out the figure of a sexual vampire, Mrs.
The two scholars subsequently corresponded, as described in the second volume of Science and Civilisation in China, which praises van Gulik's Erotic Colour Prints as an "excellent book".
Although when studying these matters as a layman it is difficult to maintain always the proper detached attitude of mind, I went much too far in stating that Taoist thought had exercised a detrimental influence on the treatment and position of women in ancient China.
(2003: xxxiii) Needham was already a world-famous scholar, while van Gulik was a diplomat who collected art and wrote books, for example, the Judge Dee historical mysteries (Goldin 2001: 1270).
Robert van Gulik's pioneering studies opened a window into the complex sexual culture of ancient China, challenging stereotypes and offering a nuanced perspective that continues to influence modern sinology.
