Gong Kai’s Life in the Twilight of the Southern Song

Gong Kai’s life spanned the last five reigns of the Song dynasty into the first thirty years of the Mongol rule of China (1276–1368). His nationalist devotion began with active affiliation with anti-Mongol forces in the 1260s and 1270s and ended with literary and pictorial expressions of loyalist sorrow after the demise of the Song in 1279. The historical context is essential to understanding his complex and multivalent Zhong Kui scroll.

The Southern Song (1127–79) experienced a dramatic decline under the reigns of the emperors Lizong 理宗 (1205–1264, r. 1224–1264) and Duzong 度宗 (1240–1274, r. 1264–1274). With the capital Lin’an (modern Hangzhou) under siege by the Mongols at the beginning of 1276, the Song court, led by Empress Dowager Xie 謝太皇太后 and four-year-old Emperor Gongdi 恭帝 (1271–1323, r. 1274–1276), considered establishing an exiled government in Fujian or Guangdong. They appointed Gongdi’s two half-brothers, seven-year-old Zhao Shi (趙昰, 1269–1278, r. 1276–1278) and four-year-old Zhao Bing (趙昺, 1272–1279, r. 1278–1279) to oversee Fuzhou and Quanzhou, respectively.¹⁸ After Gongdi officially surrendered to the Mongols on the eighteenth of the first month (February 4, 1276) and was taken prisoner,¹⁹ the two child-princes and their clan, escorted by a group of officials and military commanders including Chen Yizhong 陳 宜中 (1218 or 1234–1283), Zhang Shijie 張世傑 (d. 1279), and Lu Xiufu 陸秀夫 (1236–1279) arrived in Wenzhou 溫州 in southern Zhejiang and then moved to Fuzhou, where Zhao Shi ascended the throne as Emperor Duanzong 端宗 on the first of the fifth month. After the fall of Fuzhou in the tenth month, the exiled Song court moved to Quanzhou in the eleventh month of 1276. Unable to make this port city their base of resistance, they left after a short stay and went farther south to Guangdong. Upon Duanzong’s death in Guangzhou in 1278, Zhao Bing was enthroned. In the spring of 1279, Mongol forces intensified their attack at Yashan 崖山 on the coast of Xinhui 新會, Guangdong, and vanquished the entire Song defense on the sixth of the second month (March 19, 1279). Determined not to be taken captive by the Mongols, Lu Xiufu took the young emperor with him and jumped into the sea, marking the end of the dynasty. Lu Xiufu’s heroic act made him one of the most revered martyrs in the Song revivalist campaign.²⁰

Information about Gong Kai’s early life is scarce. The few sources are all closely related to Lu Xiufu. Both men were on the staff of Li Tingzhi 李庭芝 (1219–1276), military commissioner (Zhizhi shi 制置使) of the Huai River region based in Yangzhou, in the 1260s and got along well. Gong Kai handled taxes on salt, tea, and wine. When Li and Lu went to relieve Xiangyang, Hubei province, from the Mongols’ siege in the spring of 1270, Gong Kai was left idling in Yangzhou for three or four years. After the fall of Hangzhou in early 1276, Lu Xiufu and other officials escorted the two imperial child heirs to Fujian. According to Wu Lai’s 吴莱 (1297–1340) poem “Guan Huaiyin Gong Cuiyan suo xiu Guqi jing” 觀淮隂龔翠巗所脩古棋經 (On the ancient classic on chess edited by Gong Kai of Huaiyin), Gong Kai joined the Song troops in exile.²¹ The poem begins with Gong Kai in the Yangzhou camp playing chess at leisure while the battle in Xiangyang rages on. After the Southern Song loses the war, Gong Kai is with the military escorting the exiled court south. The poem relates the eventual ending of the Song with the deaths of Lu Xiufu and the last Song emperor, followed by the Mongol unification of the empire.²² The last lines of the poem read:

In the mountains of Sichuan, the mistress and her sister-in-law played chess [verbally] in thirty-six moves
In a shabby house with dark rooms unlit by candles.
Overnight they transmitted their craft to Wang Jixin.
Back in Chang’an [the capital], the dust from the barbarians’ horses was everywhere.

蜀山婦姑三十六，破屋數間昏不燭。
夜來教得王積薪，滿眼長安胡馬塵。

As Yuan Shishuo and Abe Shin’ichirō have noted, these lines allude to a tale in the Jiyi ji 集異記 (Collected records of the extraordinary) from the Tang dynasty. During the An Lushan rebellion, Wang Jixin, a court chess player, followed Tang Xuanzong into exile to Sichuan. While staying overnight at a commoner’s home, he was taught the art of the game by two women and became the preeminent chess player. Through this classical allusion, Wu Lai relates Gong Kai’s whereabouts after the fall of Lin’an. Like Wang Jixin, Gong Kai was an advanced chess player who followed the emperor into exile to remote provinces and later returned to the capital, where traces of alien occupation were everywhere.

In the late 1280s and early 1290s, Gong Kai invited twelve friends to compose elegies for Lu Xiufu and received eighteen in addition to the one by himself.²³ In his preface to this collection, composed in the third month of 1292, he states, “In the past when I returned from southern Quanzhou 泉南 to western Zhejiang 浙西, I heard the news of his death and was saddened beyond myself.”²⁴ Quanzhou was a stop on the exile route of the Song court, and Hangzhou was one of the three counties of western Zhejiang. Gong Kai’s statement corroborates Wu Lai’s poem regarding his participation in the Song revivalist campaign in Quanzhou and his return to Hangzhou afterward. The news of Lu Xiufu’s martyrdom in the second month of 1279 must have reached Hangzhou no later than the winter.²⁵ Gong Kai therefore might have returned to Hangzhou in late 1279. His activities in later years were concentrated in Hangzhou,²⁶ and the Zhong Kui scroll was most likely created there.

Maids in Exotic Attire: Anti-Muslim Xenophobia

In the middle section of the Freer scroll are five attendants to a lady seated in a sedan chair (fig. 3). While one attendant holding a cat wears Chinese-style clothing and her hair is arranged in the Chinese style, the attire of the other four exhibits prominent sartorial characteristics of the peoples of Central, West, and South Asia, whom medieval Chinese generalized as Muslims (Huihui 回回), lacking the knowledge to distinguish their ethnic and religious identities. The four figures consist of two sedan-chair carriers, a pigtailed girl carrying a large parcel with her left hand, and a tall figure who sports a knotted headwrap and holds a bundle. Strikingly exotic, this headwrap features layered bands of cloth crisscrossing diagonally from the temples upward to form an angle at their intersection on the forehead (fig. 4). It differs from the traditional Chinese headwrap, which covers the hair and is fixed with a knot either to the side (fig. 5) or at the back of the head (fig. 6). Instead, it echoes a type of turban worn by people from the Arab world as seen on a terracotta figurine of a Central or West Asian male excavated from an early Yuan tomb in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, in northern China (fig. 7).²⁷ In that work, the cloth strips are twisted into ropes before crisscrossing diagonally and framing the extra cloth on top. The figurine, created by Chinese craftsmen, credibly represents a Muslim laborer active in China in Gong Kai’s time.

FIGURE 3. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

FIGURE 4. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

FIGURE 5. Wang Juzheng, attributed, Woman at the Spinning Wheel (detail), China, Northern Song dynasty, 11th–12th century. Handscroll; ink and color on silk, H. 26.1, W. 69.2 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. From Palace Museum, comp., Gugong Bowuyuan cangpin daxi: Huihua bian 2, Song (Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2008), 35, no. 4

FIGURE 6. Unidentified artist, Return at Dusk from a Spring Outing (detail), China, Southern Song dynasty, 12th–13th century. Album leaf; ink and color on silk, H. 24.2, W. 25.3 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. From Gugong Bowuyuan cangpin daxi: Huihua bian 4, Song Liao Jin, 95, no. 38

FIGURE 7. Figurine of a West or Central Asian from an early Yuan tomb, China, late 13th century. From Shaanxi Sheng kaogu yanjiusuo, “Xi’an Shi Qujiang Xiang Mengcun Yuan mu qingli jianbao,” Kaogu yu wenwu, 2006, no. 2, color pl. 3

All four maids wear the same narrow fitted shoes with pointed tips that generously expose the tops of the feet. Their distinctive shape does not seem to have counterparts in extant pictorial representations or archaeological finds in Chinese culture.²⁸ Instead, shoes of this type were worn by men and women in the Islamic world for centuries, as seen, for instance, on the old man and the child in an illustration from a thirteenth-century manuscript of the Maqâmât (Assemblies) by the Arab poet al-Hariri (1054–1122) (fig. 8), and on the female figure painted on the interior of a bowl from twelfth- or thirteenth-century Iran (fig. 9).

FIGURE 8. Detail of an illumination from the Arab manuscript Maqâmât d’Aboû Moḥam-mad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, 13th century. Ink and color on paper, H. 27, W. 21 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 3929, fol. 144r

FIGURE 9. Detail of a female painted on a bowl, attributed to Iran, 12th–13th century. Stonepaste; overglaze painted, mina’i ware, H. 9.2 cm, Diam. 21.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Rogers Fund, and Gift of The Schiff Foundation, 1957, 57.36.14

As to clothing, the two sedan-chair carriers and the turbaned attendant each wear a knee-length garment known as a beizi 背子 or 褙子, with narrow sleeves, a straight collar leading to a bordered open front, and high side slits, that was popular among women across social strata in the Song dynasty (fig. 3).²⁹ Underneath it, they wear a breast cover known as a moxiong 抹胸, tied at the waist in the back and behind the neck.³⁰ A typical example of this combination is the attire of the house maids carved on the walls of a Song tomb in Luxian, Sichuan (fig. 10).³¹ Even the extended right sleeve of the turbaned attendant has a Song prototype in the Luxian stone relief (fig. 11).

FIGURE 10. Line drawing of maids on a panel of stone carving in a Song-dynasty tomb, China, Luxian, Sichuan Province. H. 76, W. 76 cm. From Luxian Song mu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2004), 151, fig. 158

FIGURE 11. Line drawing of a maid on a panel of stone carving in a Song-dynasty tomb, China, Luxian, Sichuan Province. H. 66, W. 58 cm. From Luxian Song mu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2004), 149, fig. 155

Turning to the lower body, the trousers on Gong Kai’s demonic maids are not in the Chinese tradition. The trousers worn by working-class women in Song China, either under a garment (fig. 12) or a tucked-up skirt, or alone (fig. 13), had voluminous legs that ended in rumpled pleats gathered around the ankles and partially concealing the feet, while their shoes were of a sturdy type with rounded toes.³² All four demonic maids, on the other hand, wear the same straight, loosely flowing trousers with the hems suspended from the ankles, which enables a full view of their feet clad in non-Chinese pointed shoes. The trousers, clearly displayed in the image of the turbaned attendant (fig. 14), resonate with a type of pants known as shalwar and fairly common in West and South Asia, which features straight legs and usually ends above the ankles. Although normally worn underneath a calf-length tunic, the wraparound skirt of a yogini in a painting from the Jami’ al-tawarikh (Compendium of chronicles), created in Tabriz, Iran, in 1314–15, reveals a more complete view of the shalwar through its open front (fig. 15). Gong Kai’s demonic maids appear to be wearing similar pants. Many sartorial items worn by men and women were identical across the Islamic world from the time of the prophet Muhammad (d. 632) through the centuries.³³ As suggested by decoration on medieval works of art, both men and women wore this type of trousers and narrow pointed shoes (figs. 8, 9).

FIGURE 12. Liang Kai, Eight Eminent Monks (detail), China, 12th–13th century. Ink and color on silk, H. 26.6 cm. Shanghai Museum. Courtesy of the Shanghai Museum

FIGURE 13a,b. Wang Juzheng, attributed, Woman at the Spinning Wheel (two details), China, Northern Song dynasty, 11th–12th century. Handscroll; ink and color on silk, H. 26.1, W. 69.2 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. From Gugong Bowuyuan cangpin daxi: Huihua bian 2, Song, 32–33, 35, no. 4

FIGURE 14. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

FIGURE 15. Detail of a woman in Mountain between Tibet and India, from the Jami’ al-tawarikh (Compendium of Chronicles) by Rashid al-Din, Iran (Tabriz), 1314–15. Ink, colors, and gold on paper, H. 43.5, W. 30 cm. The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London, MSS 727, folio 22a (262a of reconstructed manuscript). Courtesy of the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art

It is also noteworthy that the trousers worn by Chinese working-class women were rustic and usually plain, while those of the four demonic maids are decorated with allover patterns, more characteristic of Indian or Persian aesthetics as exemplified by the yogini’s trousers in figure 15. Specifically, the paired wavy lines on the fabric of her trousers closely resemble those worn by the pigtailed girl in Gong Kai’s painting (fig. 16). This design became common under the Ottomans, who ascended to power in 1299 and expanded territorial control from their base in West Asia to southeastern Europe and North Africa in the ensuing centuries.³⁴ In the late thirteenth century, the motif, despite its possible origin in East Asia, may have been already popular in West Asia when the region was under Mongol rule. Since its application to clothing does not seem to have examples in China, whereas the image of the yogini witnesses its integration in female costume design in thirteenth- to early fourteenth-century West Asia, Gong Kai’s unprecedented decoration of the pigtailed girl’s trousers with paired wavy lines was most likely inspired by the sight of Muslim women on the streets of early Yuan Hangzhou.

FIGURE 16. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

Most exotic is the dark coat with a Y-shaped opening at the front and long narrow sleeves, also worn by the pigtailed girl (fig. 16), which recalls a type of Muslim outer garment broadly known as a kaftan with varied forms across regions and through time. In its typical design, “the garment is open down the center front. . . . Buttons and loops typically close the kaftan at the center front to the waist. Sleeve styles vary. . . . Long, narrow sleeves would extend beyond the wrist, but they are designed to be worn pushed back, so that the fabric gathers in pleats on the lower arm.”³⁵ The right sleeve of the pigtailed girl is very long, while the left one is pushed back to gather near her wrist. Unlike the front opening of the Chinese beizi, which was either unfastened or tied with ribbons, the right and left front panels of her coat overlap at the straight borders under the V-shaped collar, which suggests the use of buttons and loops. Unseen in Chinese costume of this time, the coat compares well with the gray coat with light blue borders along the overlapping front panels of a seated girl painted on the interior of a bowl from twelfth- or thirteenth-century Iran (fig. 17) and a lady’s yellow coat in a Persian miniature from around 1430 (fig. 18), demonstrating the continuity of this design in female Muslim clothing.

FIGURE 17. Detail of a girl painted on the interior of a bowl, attributed to Iran, 12th–13th century. Stonepaste; overglaze painted, mina’i ware, Diam. 21.6 cm, H. 8.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Grinnell Collection, Bequest of William Milne Grinnell, 1920, 20.120.99

FIGURE 18. Woman in a yellow coat. Detail of the illumination of Layli and Majnun, from “Lailá u Majnún” in the Xamsa of Nizámí (active 12th century). Iran, Persian School/Style, ca. 1430. Ink, opaque watercolor and gold on paper, 16.1 × 11.1 cm. Photograph © The Trustees of the British Museum, 1934,1013,0.2

Gong Kai’s references to Central and West Asian sartorial elements in his portrayal of female demons are unprecedented and raise questions regarding, first of all, his imagistic sources. By the early Yuan, Muslims had been in Hangzhou for almost four centuries.³⁶ While Guangzhou remained the major port for maritime trade in the Northern Song, Hangzhou, located at the southern end of the Grand Canal, played an increasingly important role. In 978 a Maritime Trade Superintendency (Shibosi 市舶司) was established there to oversee foreign trade at all the ports in the Zhejiang region, making it a cosmopolitan center of commerce on a par with Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Mingzhou (Ningbo). As Hangzhou became the capital of the Southern Song, the new arrivals of foreign envoys with their families, in addition to traders, further enhanced its demographic diversity. The majority of its wealthy residents were non-local merchants engaged in the maritime trade. They included many Arabs and Persians who were Muslims living in closely knit communities.³⁷

Zhou Mi 周密 (1232–1298), a key figure in the cultural sphere of early Yuan Hangzhou, once stated: “Nowadays Muslims make China their home, especially in the Jiangnan region. It’s natural that they no longer look back at their homeland.”³⁸ Their sojourn in China, as noted by Xu Youren 許有壬 (1286–1364), hardly changed their Muslim way of life.³⁹ Xu’s observations are borne out by Zhou Mi’s account of the burial practice of a local Muslim community that he witnessed outside his residence in the spring of 1291.⁴⁰ At the end of a vivid description of the hectic procedures, he continued: “On a suitable day the coffin is taken out and interred in the Jujing Yuan 聚景園. This garden is in the charge of a Muslim. The rent of every plot of land has a regular price, and the overseer of the garden has all the bricks, mortar and labour used, which he sells for money.”⁴¹ The Jujing Yuan was originally an imperial garden of the Southern Song.⁴² Its gradual conversion to a professionally managed, full-scale Muslim cemetery as described by Zhou Mi must have taken decades, attesting to a substantial Muslim population at the time.⁴³ The non-Chinese sartorial traits in Gong Kai’s painting all but certainly derived from direct observation.

Gong Kai left no verbal comments on Muslims or their customs. The prominent Central and West Asian elements in the attire of the demonic maids in his painting, however, reveal his knowledge of this ethnic group, and his curious portrayal of these figures may shed light on his impressions of Muslims. Unlike the preceding Tang dynasty, when “barbarians’ costumes” (hufu 胡服) were openly embraced across social strata, during the Song edicts that banned hufu may have begun with Huizong (r. 1100–1126) in 1119 and lasted until 1185, during Xiaozong’s reign (1162–1189), if not later.⁴⁴ At the time, the sartorial infiltration came primarily from the northern nomadic minorities, the Khitans and the Jurchens who occupied northern China in particular.⁴⁵ There seem to be no textual or pictorial references to the naturalization of Central and West Asian costumes in the Song or early Yuan. Random adoptions, however, may have existed in interethnic households. Zhou Mi’s remark that many Muslims of his time made China their permanent home suggests their marrying local Chinese women to start families. In 1271 Khubilai Khan (r. 1260–1294) decreed that in interethnic marriages the customs of the male be prioritized.⁴⁶ Muslim attire, therefore, might have been more common than Chinese dress in these households, worn either alone or in hybrids. Muslim attire might have been notable in public, but as daily wear was probably limited to interethnic households, it did not form a trend, which may explain the lack of textual and pictorial records.

Gong Kai may have taken inspiration from this social phenomenon in creating the demonic maids in his painting. Female demons are rare in Chinese pictorial art. Without any established prototype, he was free to represent them at will. His references to Muslim customs step beyond Chinese conventions of ghostly imagery. Thoroughly original, the new images of the maids could be amusing, spicing up the painting with humorous touches like the two mischievously grinning male demons walking right in front of them. The rear sedan-chair carrier grimaces, with her tongue hanging out of the left corner of her mouth below a conspicuous flaring nostril, while the bridgeless nose and the mouth of the maid at the front merge into a pointed snout like a bird’s muzzle (figs. 19a,b). Gong Kai’s professed goal to rectify the frivolous vulgarity of earlier Zhong Kui paintings with serious new meanings, however, prompts a moral perspective on their humorous bestial features that connotes aberration from humanity. More directly, his idiosyncratic characterization of the pigtailed girl and the turbaned maid invites scrutiny.

FIGURE 19a,b. Two details of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

Like Zhong Kui’s wife and her human maid, the cheeks, chin, neck, and upper chest of the pigtailed girl are painted black, which could refer to her identity as a member of Zhong Kui’s household, since heavy makeup was employed by practitioners of the exorcist nuo 儺 ritual.⁴⁷ But peculiar to her, the only figure in exclusively Muslim attire in the painting, her forehead is marked with two Chinese characters “ba 八” (eight) and “shi 十” (ten) (fig. 20). As a phrase with meaning and executed with modulated calligraphic strokes, it is not a decorative pattern of facial makeup but a traditional form of penal face tattoo known as qingmian 黥面 or mo xing 墨刑 (corporal punishment with ink) practiced since the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1050–221 BCE).⁴⁸ During the Song, the number of applicable transgressions reached 570 by the year 1187.⁴⁹ Runaway servants were among the inflicted multitude as early as the Jin 晉 dynasty (266–420).⁵⁰ The tattooed texts for minor offenses are rarely recorded. There is no way to tell whether the two characters for bashi meant anything or were randomly selected by Gong Kai to approximate a punitive tattoo. In any case, it was a simple but effective way to project the girl dressed in purely Muslim style as a former criminal.

FIGURE 20. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

The uninhibited facial expression of the lanky attendant in a distinctive Muslim-style turban sets her apart from her fellow maids (fig. 4). Her wild eyes and widely gaping mouth on a long, protruding jaw are typical of the unruly, defiant goblins that struggle against subjugation by celestial Guardian Kings in the Wu Daozi tradition, as seen, for instance, in the Tang mural in the Foguang Si Monastery 佛光寺 on Mt. Wutai in Shanxi Province 五臺山 (fig. 21) and on leaf 41 of the Album of Daoist and Buddhist Themes (Fo Dao zhuti huace 佛道主題畫冊), a collection of model drawings from around the 1200s in the Cleveland Museum of Art.⁵¹ The grotesque face also recalls Buddhist Guardian Kings’ demonic attendants that are cannibalistic creatures or hungry ghosts condemned to eternal starvation.⁵² Through iconographical appropriation, the maid in Muslim turban and trousers is associated with evil spirits.

FIGURE 21. Guardian King subduing goblins. Detail from a mural in Foguang Si Monastery, Mt. Wutai, Shanxi Province, China, Tang dynasty, 9th century. From Shanxi wenwu jingpin diancang: siguan bihua juan, ed. Zhang Xishun and Cheng Lasheng (Taiyuan Shi: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2006), 16

As if to externalize her wicked nature, Gong Kai strewed abundant images of poisonous scorpions and disease-transmitting mice across the maid’s beizi and, below a waist wrap, across her trousers (fig. 14). By the middle of the Qing period (1644–1911), Zhong Kui would have expanded his exorcist practice to include actual noxious vermin during the Duanwu Festival on the fifth day of the fifth month, in addition to demons on New Year’s Eve.⁵³ In Gong Kai’s time, however, it seems that Zhong Kui applied his power to supernatural evils only, and mundane pests were not his concerns. Gong Kai’s images of scorpions and mice are therefore best understood as emblems of vileness in a moral sense. In the painting, the Chinese practice of applying black makeup is adopted by the pigtailed girl in Muslim attire, while snakes and centipedes—vermin akin to the scorpions and mice on the turbaned maid’s clothes—appear to have spread onto the garment of the Chinese maid (fig. 22). These depictions demonstrate fluid cultural interaction and the blurring of ethnic identities, the “barbarian” adulteration of Chinese culture that dismayed many Confucian scholars in the Song and early Yuan periods. Under almost constant threat by the powerful nomadic states to their north and northwest, the Song government and educated class became self-conscious of their “Chineseness” and wary of the infiltration of “barbarian” customs, as culture became increasingly intertwined with nationalist ideology.⁵⁴ Although xenophobia in the Song targeted primarily the Khitans and the Jurchens, all non-Han ethnic peoples were implicated. In the context of entrenched national chauvinism, although brutally diminished by political setbacks especially after the Mongol conquest, the imagery of vermin shared by Chinese and Muslim costumes suggests that Gong Kai viewed the Chinese assimilation of Muslim customs as pernicious.

FIGURE 22. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

In his new biography of Zhong Kui, Gong Kai relates that Zhong Kui had one creature wearing “a red headwrap” and the other “a black garment” cooked for food (line 9). In the original source of this phrase, the two were men-killing rooster and sow spirits that were eventually executed by a scholar.⁵⁵ As Peter Charles Sturman has noted, the two creatures described in this line may allude to the turbaned attendant and the pigtailed girl in a black coat in the painting.⁵⁶ Thus, Gong Kai not only visually villainizes the two figures dressed in Muslim style but also appears to call for their extermination. While most people in early Yuan Hangzhou might not have harbored animosity toward Muslims, Gong Kai had a bitter experience living among them for nearly three years in Quanzhou as a member of the Song resistance campaign during the final years of the dynasty, which may have left him prejudiced against them.⁵⁷

While in Quanzhou, Gong Kai lived in Quannan泉南.⁵⁸ A highly commercial southern quarter of the city immediately south of the city wall on the north shore of the Jin River 晉 江 at its entrance to the Quanzhou Bay, Quannan boasted vibrant demographic and cultural diversity. After the establishment of the Maritime Trade Superintendency in 1087, Quanzhou gradually became one of the three preeminent ports in China by the mid-twelfth century and probably topped even Guangzhou.⁵⁹ The foreign communities concentrated in Quannan,⁶⁰ and prominent among the foreigners were Arabs and Persians from West Asia.⁶¹ In addition to economic advantages, the harbor’s capacity to accommodate the needs of the still formidable Song navy and the anticipated support of over three thousand imperial clan members in residence made the port city an ideal base for the revivalist cause.⁶²

The plan for the Song dynastic revival, however, was thwarted before it even started due primarily to the intervention of Pu Shougeng 蒲壽庚 (fl. 1245–1286), a wealthy merchant of Arab descent and a practicing Muslim.⁶³ By profiting prodigiously from the maritime trade and eventually becoming Quanzhou’s superintendent of maritime trade (Tiju shibo shi 提舉市舶使) in the final years of the Southern Song, he wielded tremendous influence on the city’s politics.⁶⁴ Upon the arrival of the exiled Song court at the Quanzhou harbor in the eleventh month of 1276, Pu Shougeng came for an audience and invited the emperor to remain. Doubtful of Pu Shougeng’s loyalty, General Zhang Shijie turned down the offer and later robbed Pu of his fleet and goods to sustain the Song navy. In retaliation, Pu Shougeng had many members of the Song royal house as well as soldiers of the revivalist camp executed. Emperor Duanzong and his court left for Chaozhou in Guangdong in the aftermath. Pu Shougeng then surrendered the city to the Mongols on the eighth day of the twelfth month.⁶⁵ In the seventh month of 1277, Zhang Shijie led his troops back to take Quanzhou but was defeated by Pu Shougeng after a three-month siege.⁶⁶ Repulsing Song loyalists even further, when the Song court retreated farther south by sea, Pu Shougeng and his colleagues chased them all the way down to Guangzhou and beat them in three battles in the Chaozhou region.⁶⁷ The Song never recovered its military might or morale.

Gong Kai did not follow the Song court to Guangdong but stayed in Quanzhou, probably in anticipation of a loyalist comeback. During his nearly three-year sojourn there, until late 1279, he twice witnessed the Song clashing with the Muslim strongman, doubtless heard about Pu’s triumphant pursuit of the Song fleet, and managed to escape the massacre of Song-affiliated soldiers ordered by Pu Shougeng. Although Pu Shougeng’s defection was supported by local Han-Chinese elite who prioritized community and personal interests over dynastic loyalty, he was the one who dealt with the exiled Song court and was justifiably the face of pro-Mongol traitors.⁶⁸ His act critically crippled the Song revivalist cause to which Gong Kai devoted himself, and his persecution of the exiled Song troops posed a direct threat to Gong Kai’s life. Gong Kai’s chance encounters with Muslims later in Hangzhou might have kept his wrenching memories fresh and spurred his creation and demeaning of the maids who assert Muslim identity.

Squat Black Demon: Anti-Tibetan Xenophobia

The tall male demons in Zhongshan Going on Excursion all but surely derive from the Wu Daozi tradition that thrived in temple murals and scroll paintings, despite an earlier suggestion of their iconographical origin in Central Asian art.⁶⁹ A Tang mural exemplary of this motif, as Sherman E. Lee noted, is the one in the Foguang-si Monastery on Mt. Wutai.⁷⁰ The agile bare-chested demon at the beginning of the Freer scroll, with its partly skeletal yet muscular physique rendered with coarse brushwork and vivid chiaroscuro, compares closely with a demonic assistant of the Guardian King in the Foguang-si mural (figs. 23, 24). In addition to the comparable drawing and modeling techniques, both wear short leopard-skin pants and their kneecaps are similarly depicted with short horizontal lines flanked by symmetrical long curves. The other male demons in Zhong Kui’s retinue, except the black dwarf below him, are variations on the first demon. Their tall, long-limbed physiques range from muscular to skeletal and are modeled with a full spectrum of ink tonality, from the lightest gray to pitch black (fig. 25). Individualized facial expressions enhance the restless energy of the bodies.

FIGURE 23. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

FIGURE 24. Demonic assistant of Guardian King. Detail from a mural in Foguang Si Monastery, Mt. Wutai, China, Tang dynasty, 9th century. From Wutai Shan siyuan bihua tuhui, ed. Cui Yuanhe (Taiyuan: Sanjin chubanshe, 2019), 1:32

FIGURE 25. Last section of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938

The dwarfish demon looks entirely different. Its stocky body is rendered in solid black ink with thin unpainted gaps marking the contours of the face, chest, and joints on arms and legs. Instead of moving rightward within the procession, it turns its back toward the others and pauses to strike a frontal pose, with its left knee bent forward and its right leg extended diagonally with frontally foreshortened feet (fig. 26). This “marionette-like” figure, in Lee’s words, contrasts sharply with the boisterous group of naturalistic demons in sidewise motion, and positioned very low in the picture, it is distanced from the procession of Zhong Kui’s household.⁷¹

FIGURE 26. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

The peculiar stance of this squat demon and its position near the beginning of the painting recall the small figure that leads a procession carved on the stone ground base of the Six Harmonies Pagoda (Liuhe Ta 六和塔) in Hangzhou from the mid-twelfth century (fig. 27). Lee regarded the procession as a representation of Zhong Kui with his entourage and as “a typological and stylistic precedent” for the demon processions depicted by Gong Kai, Yan Hui, and Yan Geng.⁷² The stone relief extends horizontally, like a short handscroll. Beginning from the right, a small figure holds a rock on a tray over his head in a frontal view, with its left knee bent and his right leg extended diagonally, in a stance similar to that of the black demon in the Freer painting, although more angular and mannered. His fleshy belly likewise hangs above a skirt-like wrap over his crotch and thighs (fig. 28). A long scarf hangs from his neck, with the left end crossing his left thigh and the right end trailing from his right shoulder down the back of his right leg and curling up from the ground. He is followed by two officials with a skimpily clothed retinue carrying banners and precious objects and moving rightward. While Chun-yi Joyce Tsai has convincingly argued that this scene may depict foreigners bringing tribute rather than Zhong Kui with his entourage, its iconographical connection with the Freer painting holds.⁷³ Both compositions belong to the genre of group travel at a leisurely pace and with random spacing, and both begin by juxtaposing an official in a sidewise movement with a static dwarfish figure in frontal view. In each case, behind them is a procession of odd-looking subordinates that are also comparable in physique, sparse costume (loincloths), and naturalistic movement against a profusion of long poles. Whether people of the early Yuan associated the stone relief with Zhong Kui or not, chances are high that Gong Kai knew and drew inspiration from this public art at a scenic site. If he was aware of the carving, his radical transformation of it is revelatory of the “new meanings” he intended for his representation of Zhong Kui.

FIGURE 27. Stone relief on the ground-floor base of the Six-Harmonies Pagoda, Hangzhou, China, Southern Song dynasty, 12th century. From Sherman E. Lee, “Yan Hui, Zhong Kui, and the New Year,” Artibus Asiae 53.1/2 (1993): 221, fig. 1

FIGURE 28. Small figure holding up a rock. Detail of fig. 27. From Lee, “Yan Hui, Zhong Kui, and the New Year,” fig. 1

Although the squat demon may have been modified from the figure who holds a rock above his head in the stone relief, its solid blackness, short but heavy limbs, and especially the glaring eyes are not features of this model and suggest another iconographical source. A category of deities that could be visually associated with the rock holder for their fleshy bellies and iconic angular stances, and may have provided the direct prototype for Gong Kai’s squat demon, is the wrathful type of Protective Deities in Tibetan Buddhism that arrived in southeastern China with the Mongol conquest. Ubiquitous in Tibetan art, they developed out of the dwarfish, big-bellied, and grotesque type of Yaksa spirits and Śiva’s dwarf attendants, Śiva-Gaṇa, in sixth-century Indian folk religion.⁷⁴ Other origins may include the Raksha (or Rākṣasa) demons who serve as protectors of the Dharma after being converted to Buddhism. Black or dark skinned and thick limbed, they have squat bodies with a large belly, round bulbous red eyes staring from an angry face, and a gaping mouth that bares canine teeth.⁷⁵ In the later phase of their evolution, these wrathful deities increasingly stand in an iconic pose known as pratyālīḍha (right leg bent at the knee and left leg extended) or ālidha (the opposite stance).⁷⁶ A typical pictorial representation of them is the image of Achala on an early thirteenth-century Tangut Xia (1038–1227) thangka from Khara Khoto in western Inner Mongolia now in the Cleveland Museum of Art (fig. 29). Its dark body is conventionally rendered in opaque pigments with barely any tonal gradations for illusionistic plasticity. The contours of its face, chin, ears, tip of the nose, and fleshy chest and the concentric folds on the neck are indicated by unpainted gaps between solid fields of deep blue. This employment of negative outlines for the human body, sometimes as pale painted contours, was not in the Chinese figure painting tradition but appeared prevalent in contemporary Tibetan art regardless of the location of production. There can be little doubt that Gong Kai’s image of the squat black demon with glaring eyes on a masklike face and standing in an approximated ālidha posture was indebted, in technique as well as iconography, to that of Tibetan wrathful deities. If he indeed took initial inspiration from the rock upholder in the Liuhe Ta stone relief, he transformed it to evoke the Tibetan gods while modifying their fierce expressions and mannered posture to render the black demon a better fit in a Chinese-style narrative painting without losing its distinctiveness.

FIGURE 29. Achala, King of the Wrathful Ones (previously identified as Vighnantaka), Mongolia, Tangut Xia, Khara Khoto (1032–1227), early 13th century. Detail of a thangka; silk tapestry, overall: H. 100.6, W. 74.3 cm, mounted: H. 111.1, W. 83.8, D. 7 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1992.72

Living in Hangzhou after returning from Quanzhou around late 1279, Gong Kai had ample opportunities to encounter representations of Tibetan wrathful deities. Tibetan Buddhism grew quickly in Hangzhou following the launch of the Buddhist Affairs Bureau for the Jiangnan region in the second month of 1277.⁷⁷ It underwent substantial development under the leadership of Yang Lianzhenjia 楊璉真加 (or 楊璉真伽、楊璉真珈, fl. 1277–1291/92), a monk from Hexi 河西 (in modern Gansu region) of Tangut origin. A joint director of the bureau in 1277, he assumed ultimate power from early 1287 until the fifth month in 1291, when he was arrested under charges of multiple misconduct. Pardoned by Khubilai Khan the next spring, he probably resumed his position until mid-autumn.⁷⁸ A prominent concentration of Tibetan art in Hangzhou was on Feilaifeng 飛來峰, a low mountain peak near the West Lake with dozens of caves decorated with Buddhist sculptures in both Chinese and Tibetan styles. Niche 84, for instance, created when Yang Lianzhenjia was at the height of his power, features the seated Buddha Mother flanked by four wrathful deities in pratyālīḍha (fig. 30).⁷⁹ Between 1285 and 1288, he also oversaw the construction of five monasteries on the site of the former Southern Song palace on Mt. Fenghuang 鳳凰山, which had been destroyed by fire.⁸⁰ Among them only the Tibetan Buddhist Zunsheng-si 尊勝寺 was honored with an auxiliary pagoda. Shaped like a bottle and plastered in white in the Tibetan style, it has been commonly known as the White Pagoda 白塔.⁸¹

FIGURE 30. Tibetan Buddhist deities, China, Yuan dynasty, ca. 1287–92. Relief sculpture on the cliff wall of Feilaifeng, Hangzhou. From Lai Tianbing, Han Zang guibao: Hangzhou Feilaifeng zaoxiang yanjiu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2015), 242–43

The new monasteries standing on the former Song palatial complex were visited by Chinese scholars who mixed sightseeing with dynastic mourning. Qiu Yuan 仇遠 (1247–1326), for example, a contributor to Gong Kai’s anthology commemorating Lu Xiufu, composed a poem titled “Fenghuang Shan gugong” 鳳皇山故宮 (The former palace on Mt. Fenghuang) on such an excursion.⁸² Guo Bi 郭畀 (1280–1335), while visiting the site in 1308, ventured into the Tibetan compound and noted that all the deities in the Zunsheng-si Monastery’s main hall were represented in terms of Tibetan iconography, and those standing in attendance were naked.⁸³ The latter presumably referred to the wrathful deities. Gong Kai likewise might have visited the site out of loyalist nostalgia and, drawn to grotesque otherworldly imagery by nature, checked out the alien art opulently displayed in the Zunsheng-si and the White Pagoda.

Besides the holdings of the monastery, the White Pagoda is known to have housed ten thousand (wan 萬) representations of deities.⁸⁴ Although these two structures no longer exist, the decoration of contemporary temples in Tibet and the Dunhuang caves, which conventionally consists of monumental multi-panel murals and statues, may help envision the lavish decoration of the monastery and the White Pagoda. The west wall of the Pargarbu Grotto at Tsada, Ali region, in western Tibet, for instance, was densely painted with deities in varying sizes and ensembles during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The mural on its south wall features four wrathful deities flanking the entrance gate (fig. 31), three standing in pratyālīḍha, and at least one clearly depicted in solid color fields with negative outlines, although its facial features are partially damaged and the originally dark pigments on its body have faded to bluish gray (fig. 32). Even more impressive is the nearly life-size image of a wrathful deity standing in pratyālīḍha to the right of the cave entrance on the east wall of Mogao Cave 465 in Dunhuang, completed before 1309 (figs. 33, 34). These murals attest to the prominence of the wrathful deities in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon and their widespread representation across mediums. The newly constructed Zunsheng-si Monastery and White Pagoda in Hangzhou would have featured decorative programs similar to contemporaneous Tibetan-style temples. Visitors such as Gong Kai could easily have observed the wrathful deities in their iconic forms and postures.

FIGURE 31. South wall of Pargarbu Grotto at Tsada, Ali region, Tibet, 13th–14th century. Courtesy of Professor Xie Jisheng

FIGURE 32. Detail of fig. 31. Courtesy of Professor Xie Jisheng

FIGURE 33. East wall of Mogao Cave 465, Dunhuang, China, Yuan dynasty, before 1309. From Dunhuang shiku yishu: Mogao Ku di 465 ku (Yuan), ed. Yang Xiong (Nanjing: Jiangsu meishu chubanshe, 1996), 142–43, pl. 114

FIGURE 34. Detail of fig. 33. From Dunhuang shiku yishu, 154, pl. 127

It is curious why Gong Kai engaged with the newly arrived alien religion, which he could not possibly have known or cared much about, in creating the Zhong Kui scroll. More intriguingly, the squat demon inherited from the Tibetan wrathful deities the power to project confrontation and intimidation through facial expressions and body language (fig. 26). Its stance of leaning slightly forward intensifies its provocative stare. Raising its shoulders and curving its arms sidewise magnifies the potency of its bulging muscles. Compared with the jovial household demons behind, it exudes threat. Zhong Kui’s demeanor appears to be directly opposite that of the black demon (fig. 35). Subdued and wary, he sits in a seemingly restrictive carrier with hunched shoulders while looking back with an almost furtive sidewise gaze.⁸⁵ It is a radical departure from the wildly energetic figure described in historical texts and seen, for instance, in the foreground of Daoist Deity of Earth, one part of a twelfth-century triptych in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig. 36). By way of juxtaposition, the uncharacteristically withdrawn Zhong Kui and the darkly imposing demon of Tibetan origin reinforce each other’s peculiarity.

FIGURE 35. Detail of fig. 1. National Museum of Asian Art, Freer Collection, Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F1938.4

FIGURE 36. (Bottom right) Zhong Kui in Daoist Deity of Earth, formerly attributed to Wu Daozi, China, Song dynasty, first half of 12th century. Detail of a hanging scroll, one of a triptych; ink, color, and gold on silk, H. 125.5, W. 55.9 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Chinese and Japanese Special Fund, 12.880. Photograph © 2023 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

What prompted Gong Kai’s allusion to Tibetan Buddhism may have been the blasphemous desecration of the Song imperial tombs in 1285 orchestrated by Yang Lianzhenjia, the Tibetan Buddhist leader, which set off bitter condemnation from Han Chinese in the early Yuan. Twice in 1285 he organized the excavation of a series of Song imperial tombs in Shaoxing, about thirty miles to the southeast of Hangzhou.⁸⁶ The vandals were recorded in horrific detail by Zhou Mi, who lived in Hangzhou at the time but maintained close ties to a group of Song loyalists in Shaoxing. According to Zhou Mi, in the eighth month of 1285, a group of Tibetan or Tangut monks led an excavation of the tombs of Emperors Ningzong, Lizong, and Duzong and Empress Yang with the approval of Yang Lianzhenjia. In addition to taking countless treasures, they hung Lizong’s corpse upside down from a tree to drain the mercury used in embalming, in order to obtain the pearl held in his mouth—causing the head to fall off the body after three days. Then, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, they returned to ransack the tombs of Emperors Huizong, Gaozong, Xiaozong, and Guangzong and Empresses Meng, Zheng, Wu, and Xie, leaving the imperial relics scattered on the ground.⁸⁷ Although Zhou Mi did not mention it, the academician Song Lian 宋濂 (1310–1381) stated decades later that, as organized by Yang Lianzhenjia, Lizong’s skull was converted to a drinking vessel and the exhumed royal relics were mixed with those of cattle and buried underneath the White Pagoda.⁸⁸

Zhou Mi made no mention of the relics buried under the pagoda, probably because he knew they were actually not those of the Song royalty. As Yang Lianzhenjia left the exhumed bones scattered, a group of enraged Shaoxing locals, led by Wang Yingsun 王英孫 (1238–1312), a younger cousin (biaodi 表弟) of Zhou Mi from an eminent family who was known for helping displaced Song loyalists,⁸⁹ and Tang Jue 唐珏 (b. 1247), a member of Wang’s coterie,⁹⁰ risked their lives to gather the relics and rebury them on a hill in nearby Lanting 蘭亭, a scenic site in the outskirts of Shaoxing, where the preeminent calligrapher Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303–361) hosted his legendary gathering on the Spring Cleansing Festival in 353.⁹¹

While the fury at Yang Lianzhenjia spread widely among Han Chinese, Gong Kai’s ire might have been deeper than most locals because, thanks to his association with Zhou Mi from the late 1280s onward, he very likely knew the Shaoxing loyalists’ heroism through their personal accounts. Centered around the cousins Zhou Mi and Wang Yingsun, the loyalists in Hangzhou and Shaoxing were familiar with each other. Zhou Mi acquired a precious rubbing of Wang Xianzhi’s 王獻之 (344–388) Baomu zhi 保母志 (Epitaph for my nanny) with a long colophon by Jiang Kui 姜夔 (ca.1155–ca.1235) in the spring of 1287. After adding his own colophon to the rubbing, Zhou Mi invited more than twenty friends to do the same in the years that followed, until 1296.⁹² Gong Kai’s undated colophon, now lost, appears to have been written sometime between 1288 and 1292, detailing the work’s importance and his viewing experience.⁹³ Wang Yingsun’s colophon appears right after Xianyu Shu’s 鮮于樞 (1246–1302), which is dated 1288, and is followed by that of a group of seven viewers, three of whom also contributed to Gong Kai’s collection of elegies for Lu Xiufu.⁹⁴ Apparently Wang and Gong Kai were moving in the same circle during those few years. Tang Jue, another leader of the bone-switching operation, is recorded as with Zhou Mi and Qiu Yuan in a loyalist group that met regularly to compose ci-poems after the Mongol conquest.⁹⁵ Zhou Mi and Qiu Yuan doubtless heard of the risky bone-retrieval expedition firsthand from Tang Jue. And Gong Kai, in turn, might have learned of Wang Yingsun’s and Tang Jue’s personal experiences of the event and shared the intensity of their emotions.

As stated earlier, of all the Buddhist images in the main hall of the Zunsheng-si Monastery, Guo Bi described only the attendant deities who appeared naked.⁹⁶ In his travelogue, Tian Rucheng 田汝成 (1503–1557) condemns the Feilaifeng sculptures created under Yang Lianzhenjia’s supervision (fig. 30, for instance) as “so ugly and grotesque as to sting the eyes” (chou guai cimu 醜怪刺目).⁹⁷ As Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in Tibetan art share considerable iconographic traits with their Chinese counterparts, his unusually acerbic remarks were most likely directed at the wrathful deities, whose squat form, accessories of skulls and snakes, and ferocious expressions and gestures contradict the Chinese vision of the divine.

In addition, a deity represented in this pose often appears in a sexual embrace, with his consort sitting on his lap in yab-yum (lit., “father-mother”), a common tantric symbol of the union of compassion and wisdom.⁹⁸ As seen on the south wall of Maogao Cave 465 in Dunhuang, the naked central deities in all three panels are in yab-yum (fig. 37). Ignorant of the symbolic sacred union, Chinese scholars found such overtly sexual imagery offensive. The loyalist scholar-artist Zheng Sixiao 鄭思肖 (1241–1318) noted that in the Fomu Dian 佛母殿 (Buddha Mother Hall) of the Zhenguo-si Temple 鎮國寺 in Youzhou 幽州 (modern Beijing region) stood gilt Buddhist deities and evil females (yaonü 妖女), all in naked form. He continued:

To their sides were rows of obscene representations of naked deities and evil females engaged in sexual intercourse circling the pillars and the walls. . . . The evil monks of this religion … are Tibetan, who spread the evil ways of the alien religion and are bestowed with the honorific title of Imperial Preceptor by their barbaric lords.⁹⁹

旁別塑佛與妖女裸合，種種淫狀，環列梁壁間。… 傳此教妖僧. . . .乃西蕃人，傳西蕃外道邪法，韃

主僭加之曰「帝師」。

FIGURE 37. Double-bodied Tibetan Buddhist deities. Mural on the south wall of Mogao Cave 465 in Dunhuang, Yuan dynasty, before 1309. From Dunhuang shiku yishu, 90–91, pl. 60

Whether alone or coupled, the deities in this posture that is exclusively associated with the Himalayan culture may have left indelible impressions on Han Chinese at their initial encounter with the alien religion. Gong Kai, Zheng Sixiao’s contemporary and fellow loyalist, might have felt the same revulsion as Zheng upon seeing the esoteric imagery at Tibetan religious sites in Hangzhou. It seems only natural that, triggered by the brutality of the powerful Tibetans, he would have embedded his indignation and dread in the painting through an allusion to the intimidating wrathful deities, the most alien and offensive in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon.

The Approximate Date of the Zhong Kui Scroll

With only two undated paintings accepted as doubtless from Gong Kai’s hand, it is impossible to date the Zhong Kui scroll on stylistic grounds.¹⁰⁰ Circumstantial factors, however, may help establish an approximate period of its creation. The late 1280s and early 1290s marked a new peak of Song loyalists’ xenophobic and nationalist sentiments after the fall of Hangzhou in 1276. In the case of Gong Kai, his colophon on the Baomu zhi rubbing, presumably written between 1288 and 1292, attests to his association with Zhou Mi’s circle, which included the heroic retrievers of the imperial relics in defiance of Yang Lianzhenjia’s power. As recorded by Zhou Mi between 1288 and 1292, Gong Kai composed a set of thirty-six eulogies on the outlaws led by Song Jiang 宋江 (act. early 12th century), who allegedly became brave patriots and contributed to suppressing rebellions.¹⁰¹ A group of farewell poems by multiple authors to the Song troops dispatched to defend Xiangyang against the Mongols in early 1270 was collected by Gong Kai at the time, and Fang Hui 方回 (1227–1305) added a preface in 1289, presumably for the upcoming publication.¹⁰² And in the third month of 1292, Gong Kai wrote the preface to his collection of nineteen elegies by thirteen poets for Lu Xiufu, a project that probably began in the late 1280s.¹⁰³

The imagistic allusion to Tibetan Buddhism in Gong Kai’s painting places its creation after Yang Lianzhenjia’s desecration of Song mausoleums in 1285. Zhong Kui’s subdued yet vigilant appearance, juxtaposed with the intimidating black demon of Tibetan origin, suggests Song loyalists’ wariness of the monk’s savage power, which relaxed after his dismissal from office in the summer of 1291. On the other hand, by the mid-1290s xenophobia among Chinese scholars in Hangzhou had softened, for which the arrival of Gao Kegong 高克恭 (1248–1310), a Muslim Uighur, might have been catalytic. Gao Kegong served in the Hangzhou region briefly from 1289 to 1290 and became acquainted with certain members of Zhou Mi’s circle such as Xianyu Shu. When he held office there the second time, from 1291 to 1293 or 1294, he initiated several consequential policies to ease the suffering of the people, which conceivably endeared him to local intelligentsia.¹⁰⁴ An avid painter, he might have expanded his social life into the art sphere. As the recognition of the cultural benefits from political unification and the need to preserve native heritage deepened, Chinese scholars’ antipathy to the powerful ethnic others softened. Gong Kai too might have felt his xenophobia mellowing after the early 1290s, as nationalist anguish in his writings gave way to melancholy nostalgia toward the final phase of his life. The Zhong Kui scroll, therefore, may have been created no later than the early 1290s.

The late dates of the extant colophons for the Zhong Kui scroll may explain their lack of references to Gong Kai’s topical allusions. The first of the sixteen existing Yuan colophons was written by Li Mingfeng 李鳴鳳 (late 13th–early 14th century), in which he says, “Lao Yan qu wo jiu” 老嵓去我久 (Old Yan [Gong Kai] passed away a long time ago). Gong Kai died in 1307. If “long” means ten years, this colophon might have been written in 1317 or later, more than forty years after Pu Shougeng’s betrayal and thirty years after Yang Lianzhenjia’s sacrilege. In the general practice of colophon writing, the most active period comes shortly after an artwork’s creation, as attested by the eleven colophons for the Baomu zhi rubbing written within the first year of Zhou Mi’s acquisition of it in the spring of 1287. Likewise, Gong Kai’s circle of friends may have contributed colophons to the Zhong Kui scroll soon after its completion and touched upon its topical references. These early colophons, if they once existed, no longer do, either lost by accident or probably removed by the Yuan collectors concerned with explicit xenophobic expressions. A few peaceful decades later, as the alien atrocities in the early Yuan became blurred memories or conflicting hearsay, writers of the extant colophons might no longer have been able to empathize with Gong Kai’s anti-Muslim/Tibetan sentiment rooted in personal experience.

The Meaning of the Freer Scroll

Zhong Kui’s subdued demeanor, closely associated with the topical allusions to Pu Shougeng’s fatal blow to the Song revivalist cause and Yang Lianzhenjia’s desecration of Song mausoleums as proposed here, makes Gong Kai’s work unique among all Zhong Kui representations known to have existed. The “new meanings” with which he professed to endow the old subject hinge on his new construct of the demon queller in both text and image. In Gong Kai’s colophon to the painting (fig. 2), the new Zhong Kui was a native of Zhongshan, the fabled wine country in modern Hebei, and renamed “the bearded gentleman” (ran jun 髯君). While traveling with his household, he rested at a roadside postal-relay station and had the petty demons that haunted the place cooked for food. Despondent over his inability to obtain the blood of the beauty (Yang Guifei) for drink, he returned home and drank himself to near oblivion for three years, still worried about the prospective usurper of the throne (An Lushan, of Central Asian, probably Sogdian, origin) and the toxic influence of the Yang siblings (Ba yi 八姨). By the time he sobered up and was expected to expel evil forces, Yang Guifei had passed away.

In this new biography of Zhong Kui, his greatest feat in the legend—devouring the palace goblin—is ignored. Instead, Gong Kai invents a three-year withdrawal from his regular exorcist duties and, as a few colophon writers note, associates him with two evils in national politics: corruptive court women and rebellious alien generals.¹⁰⁵ Significantly, these new narratives resonate with Gong Kai’s own service during Song Duzong’s reign. Duzong was comparable to Tang Xuanzong in negative ways. Chen Fang 陳方 (d. 1367?), for instance, states in his colophon to the Freer painting,

Alas! People of the Xianchun era [Duzong’s reign] failed to see
Jade flutes were played in the palace night after night [as in Tang Xuanzong’s court].106

嗟哉咸淳人不識，
夜夜宮中吹玉笛.

Duzong’s sensual indulgence has been considered a major factor in the dynastic demise at the hands of alien powers.¹⁰⁷ Marco Polo (1254–1324), the Venetian explorer who traveled to China in the early Yuan, provided a cautionary description of Duzong’s court life in his travelogue:

Here [in the imperial gardens] the King [Emperor Duzong] used to take his pleasure in company with those damsels of his; some in carriages, some on horseback, whilst no man was permitted to enter. Sometimes the King would set the girls a-coursing after the game with dogs, and when they were tired they would hie to the groves that overhung the lakes, and leaving their clothes there they would come forth naked and enter the water and swim about hither and thither, whilst it was the King’s delight to watch them; and then all would return home. Sometimes the King would have his dinner carried to those groves, which were dense with lofty trees, and there would be waited on by those young ladies. And thus he passed his life in this constant dalliance with women, without so much as knowing what arms meant!¹⁰⁸

This account, Polo states, was related to him during his visit to Hangzhou by a wealthy local merchant familiar with Duzong. Word of the emperor’s decadence apparently circulated well beyond palace walls.

Unable to openly criticize his former emperor or lament his own unfulfilled loyalism, Gong Kai did both obliquely by identifying himself with Zhong Kui and evoking Tang Xuanzong, who prefigured Song Duzong in his weakness for women and struggle with alien aggression. Zhong Kui’s new name, “ran jun” (the bearded gentleman), echoes his well-known nickname “ran Gong 髯龔” (the bearded Gong).¹⁰⁹ Like Zhong Kui’s new hometown of Zhongshan, famous for strong wine, Yangzhou, the metropolis near Gong Kai’s hometown of Huaiyin, where he served in office through Duzong’s reign in the 1260s and early 1270s, had a long and vibrant wine culture.¹¹⁰ Just as Zhong Kui could not expel the two evils embodied by Yang Guifei and An Lushan, Gong Kai was unable to ease Song Duzong’s crises brought about by court women and the invading Mongols.

Gong Kai too underwent a career disruption of three to four years. In the winter of 1269, Li Tingzhi’s camp, with which he was affiliated, was dispatched to relieve the Mongol siege of Xiangyang. While Lu Xiufu participated, Gong Kai followed the troops all the way to Wankou 皖口 (modern Anqing, Anhui) but returned to Yangzhou alone.¹¹¹ It seems that he was turned down from joining despite his zeal to serve. In Yangzhou he idled, like Zhong Kui in a three-year drunken stupor. After the fall of Xiangyang in early 1273, Li Tingzhi and Lu Xiufu returned to Jiangsu.¹¹² Gong Kai rejoined them probably not long afterward. With Duzong’s death in the seventh month of 1274, court women ceased to be a threat although the ambitious Mongols remained so. Gong Kai continued to be apprehensive, just as Zhong Kui had when Yang Guifei’s death did not end alien aggression.

Gong Kai not only conflates Zhong Kui with himself verbally in the colophon, but also fashions Zhong Kui’s image to reflect his own in the post-conquest society (fig. 35). Although the distorted extensions of Zhong Kui’s official hat and his ill-fitting boots correspond to his unkempt appearance in the myth, it is unprecedented in the portrayal of scholarly figures that his official robe is pulled up, leaving his knees and calves exposed. The short horizontal lines on his left kneecap are of the same type as the markings on those of his servant shouldering the sedan chair in front (fig. 23). A breach of scholarly decorum, this idiosyncratic detail befits an uncouth laborer. The depiction might be intended to epitomize Gong Kai’s plight in the early Yuan. The drastic decline of the socioeconomic status of Confucian scholars at the time is summed up in Xie Fangde’s 謝枋得 (1226–1289) citation of his contemporaries’ pungent wisecrack that scholars ranked ninth in a hierarchy of ten professions, “right below prostitutes and above beggars 介乎娼之下、丐之上者，今之儒也.”¹¹³ The divide between the well educated and the illiterate virtually dissolved. The scholar-official with publicly exposed calves in Gong Kai’s painting is no longer in the civilized Song society but navigates the new world ruled by nomads from the steppes, in which he is relegated to a status near the bottom in popular perception. With a sense of humor in tune with his characterization of the household demons, Gong Kai mocks himself as a disenfranchised scholar with little dignity left.

As the definition of demons to be expelled shifted from petty goblins in the Zhong Kui myth to the powerful aliens in early Yuan, xenophobia became the central theme of Gong Kai’s representation of Zhong Kui. In the painting, Gong Kai, in the guise of Zhong Kui, appears to take his household as he flees home for a better place. Instead of charging forward, however, he looks back with apprehension and his huddled posture signals wary passivity. Although he seems at a loss as to where he might go, his wide-open eyes beam with penetrating intelligence that leaves no room for delusion. Alien dominance is absolute and everywhere. The jarring presence of the exotic black dwarf alongside his household retinue makes it clear that foreigners cannot be kept out of his immediate orbit. Even more disturbing, in Gong Kai’s view, may be the inevitable infiltration of aliens and their customs into the daily life of native Chinese, as implied by the interethnic elements in the maids’ attire. Probably created when Yang Lianzhenjia was in full power and Hangzhou had warmed up to its Muslim population, the Freer painting of Zhong Kui may be best understood as Gong Kai’s fantasy of fleeing Mongol dominance while reckoning with its futility and his ultimate resignation to the status quo with self-mockery. Unable to eradicate the metaphorical demons, a scholar in the early Yuan had to accommodate them in compromised coexistence. By conflating Zhong Kui with himself, Gong Kai transforms the mundane episode of a legendary figure’s life into a manifestation of his own xenophobia, misgivings, and reluctant reconciliation with the new realities. Though deeply personal, the scroll speaks for many of his generation as well. The motley figures characterized with distinctive ethnocultural properties add poignant critique to a genre painting as they epitomize early Yuan society in ethnic tension and mutual assimilation.