On Not Being Shallow : Examination Essays, Songbooks, and the Translational Nature of Mixed-Register Literature in Early Modern China

Abstract

This essay treats ‘mixed-register writing’ (typically called ‘vernacular Chinese’, ‘plain Chinese writing’, baihua 白話) as a hybrid medium that self-consciously incorporates linguistic elements from different strata of Literary Sinitic, vernacularized Sinitic, and textualized topolect. The chapter examines how a commentaried version of the Qing-dynasty songbook Huajian ji 花箋記 (The Flowery Notepaper, 1713) mediates between the broadly conceived genre of examination essays written in Literary Sinitic and popular songbooks written in Literary Cantonese. In reframing such a compositional process as ‘translation’ subject to different kinds of norms and purposes, the chapter shows how the deliberately polyvocal nature of such texts opened a space for literary innovation in China proper as well as in the broader Sinographic sphere.