Date: 21 Apr 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 4:00-5:30 pm
Venue: LI-2413, 2/F, Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building, City University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Prof. Vincent Durand-Dastès
Language: English

Abstract

The somewhat mysterious story of “Liu Quan bringing the melons to Hell” appears in literary history as a very short and ancillary episode of the Xiyou ji cycle: when resurrected Emperor Taizong looks for a messenger to deliver to Hell the melons he promised to give the Judges of Hades, a man named Liu Quan volunteers: after a quarrel, his wife Cuilian has committed suicide, and he longs to see her again, dead or alive. Both spouses will be eventually resurrected as a reward for Liu Quan’s successful mission. As all the episodes directly or indirectly linked with Tang Taizong’s descent to Hell, the story has been developed and replicated in many format of the performing genres (plays, prosimetric texts, ballads), especially the ones linked to religious celebrations. It is also a common theme in religious art. While some of the expanded versions retain and develop the comic tone of the original tale, other performative versions displace the focus towards depiction of female suicide, and may have been used in rituals for the salute of dead women. Our talk will depict the various versions of this story, thus trying to explore further the many faces of the influence of Xiyou ji narrative in late imperial Chinese society.

Biography

Vincent Durand-Dastès is professor of premodern Chinese literature at the INALCO (Paris) and was visiting professor at the University of Geneva. His research interests dwell on late imperial narrative literature in its relationship with religion and the supernatural. He has studied such topics as vernacular hagiographies, descents to Hell, ghost stories and dream narratives.  He has mainly published in French, but has also a few English pieces :  « A late Qing Blossoming of the Seven Lotus: Hagiographic Novels about the Qizhen 七真 » (2013) ; « Divination, Fate Manipulation, and Protective Knowledge in and around The Wedding of the Duke of Zhou and Peach Blossom Girl, a Popular Myth of Late Imperial China », (in Coping with the Future: Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia, Brill, 2018) and « Metamorphosis of the Snake Empress: Emperor Wu of the Liang’s Wife from Classical and Vernacular Narratives to Rituals and Religious Art » (in Religion & literature, forthcoming). He has edited Empreintes du tantrisme en Chine et en Asie orientale : imaginaires, rituels, influences (2016) and co-edited Fantômes dans l’Extrême-Orient d’hier et d’aujourd’hui »(2017 with Marie Laureillard) and Récits de rêve en Asie Orientale (2018, with Rainier Lanselle).