Death of Woman Wong

Sophie Aultman

HIST 121

10/03/12

Word Count: 1239

Death of Woman Wang

Jonathan Spence's The Death of Woman Wang is a historical novel based on several primary sources from a rural Chinese town. Spence's novel gives a bleak picture of what life was like living in 16th century China. Spence's description of China differs from the description of Robert Van Gulik China. In Robert Van Gulik's book, The Chinese Bell Murders, Judge Dee, the new magistrate in the town of Poo-Yang likened his district to being blessed. He believes this because he has read from files kept in the town. Poo-Yang is beautiful and prosperous. Poo-yang is the beauty of China. The lands are fertile, making for prosperous farmers. Poo-Yang is lucky to have remained untouched by natural disasters. He reads that the Grand Canal has profited from busy trafficking of goods, services and travelers. The rivers in Poo-Yang run abundant with fish, efficiently feeding the poor. Judge Dee believes that the people of Poo-Yang are contented and taxes are paid on time. According to Jonathan Spence's The Death of Woman Wang, living in Chinese society was rarely so easy. While Van Gulik's novel is fictional, Spence's novel is based on historical account of a town called T'an ch' eng. Historically, China was a place of constant warfare, disasters, poverty and beurocratic inadequacies. T'an-ch'eng is regularly attacked by outside invaders and the government officials are never there to help the civilian population. They suffer numerous natural disasters and famines. The population in T'an-ch'eng experienced much difficulty bouncing back and miserable. The wide range for the standard of living in China reflected both the quality of government and the local hardships that people faced during these times.

One of the sources that Spence uses in his novel is the Local History, a compilation of the history of T'an ch'eng in the 1600's that was written by Feng K'o-ts'an. In the Local History, Feng K'o-ts'an likens T'an ch'eng to a man being beaten on by fate (Spence, 2). Feng K'o-ts'an also makes a notation of a lack of balance between what he calls "catastrophes and blessings" (Spence, 2). Van Gulik's town of Poo-yang is a place that has experienced a time of great prosperity and wealth compared to T'an ch'eng. In Gulik's book, Judge Dee describes the town as having fertile lands that haven't seen the same devastation as T'an-ch'eng. This has allowed Poo-Yang's farmers to gain an abundance of money to help with the rising cost of living (Gulik, 1). Van Gulik's town of Poo-yang has an "excellent harbor outside the western city gate" that allows for fishing, travel and commerce (Gulik, 1).

While Poo-yang had been lucky to not have been hit by natural disasters (Gulik, 1), T'an ch'eng sees natural disasters as a frequent aspect of life. The opening the dialogue of Death of Woman Wang instantly pulls the reader in with a description of a horrific earthquake that strikes on July 25, 1668 (Spence, 1). A few years following the earthquake, T'an ch'eng is hit with another disaster in the form of a blizzard (Spence, 33). The significance of these disasters is that they kill off able bodied men (Spence, 38) and potentially kill of any kind of food supply that would come in through trade, agriculture, hunting, and animal husbandry (Spence, 33). A large swarm of locusts that entered the town in 1640 (Spence, 4) ate the wheat crops that had been left from the previous summer drought left many dying of starvation. Feng K'o-ts'an, the writer of the Local History of T'an-ch'eng, wrote that the locusts made it so "the closest friends no longer dared walk out to the fields