Dancing the Guanyin: The Contradictions of Courtesan Religiosity in Late Imperial China

• In Event: The Changing Faces (and Bodies) of Guanyin: Crossing the Boundaries between Religion, Literature, and Performance

Abstract

Scholars have recognized courtesans as a significant social category in late Ming literati culture and women’s artistic production. Simultaneously, in the discussion of gender and Buddhism, people have shown the profane and the sacred are combined. However, because they consider courtesans and religion as mutually exclusive, they have overlooked courtesans’ religious practices. Consequently, scholars have not grasped how the cult of Guanyin influenced women from different social strata. I will investigate a leading late Ming courtesan Xu Pianpian who was a sincere Buddhist throughout her career. Whereas other lay Buddhist women produced images of Guanyin through painting and embroidery, Xu invented a Guanyin dance and performed before her clients. On the one hand, she expressed her religiosity by personifying Guanyin; on the other hand, since she was a courtesan performing before male audiences, her bodily portrayal of Guanyin may have been sensually enticing. Furthermore, her spirituality was highly promoted by a group of literati and she was imagined as a heavenly being in the Buddha land. Courtesan practices relating to Guanyin, including Xu’s dance at once combine the super-sensuous dimension with a sensual one. Given that she represents Guanyin through bodily movement, she is supposed to transcend the sensuous world and point to a pure existence. However, as a courtesan performing a dance, she could also express the opposite extreme of sensuality. Xu’s case reveals how courtesan’s religiosity was multiply mediated through the gendered transformation of Guanyin, the female body of courtesan, the gendered relation between literati and courtesan.

Author

• Yuhang Li, University of Wisconsin-Madison