DOCENTE JULIA MARGARITA BARCO

Although Confucian ethics preached the virtues of monogamy, the practice of having a concubine was allowed in a pre-modern Chinese household. The relation between

husband and wife was interpreted through the classics as akin to that between the sun and

moon.108 As there is only one sun and one moon, there should be only one husband and

one wife in one marriage. Only a wife could officially be married to a husband. Thus,

the formal term used in the taking of a concubine was “to buy”. Liji distinguished

between wife and concubine with the betrothal process: “if there were the betrothal rites,

she became a wife; and if she went without these, a concubine.”109 Zheng Xuan explained

“why use the word ‘buy’ when a man is taking a concubine? Because a concubine is as humble (priced) as any other thing”.110

In both the domestic and public spheres, a wife and a concubine were in legally divided social roles which one was not allowed to confuse. The Qing Code specified: “wife

means [husband’s] equal. Honored[gui贵]as she is, she should be treated equally to her

husband. Concubine, however, is only a sex servant whose status should be humble.”111

Within the inner chamber, if a concubine arrogated the wife’s role in managing the household or performing ancestor worship without the family head’s or the wife’s

authorization, she would possibly be charged with disordering the house.112 As only one

wife was allowed to one husband at one time, both in custom and in law, when a man married two wives, the later married one was automatically degraded a level to a concubine. 108 Liji, 2: 433. 109 Liji, 2: 479. 110

Zheng Xuan, Liji Zhengyi, juan.51, 1418.

111

Shen Zhiqi沈之奇, Da Qing Lü ji zhu 大清律辑注[Collected Notes of the Great Qing Code](Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 2000), 258

112

In the official discourse, this disorder broke the marriage contract, damaged the right way of the couple, insulted human ethics, overturned the cap and shoe and violated the ritual teachings. In the Ming and Qing code, the penalty towards disordering a wife and concubine was strengthened to 100 strokes of the heavy staff for the offenders.(see Shen Zhiqi, Da Qing Lü Ji Zhu, 258)

While taking a concubine was never favored in the Confucian orthodoxy, few dynasties actually legally banned this tradition. In China’s literature and historical records, it is actually not uncommon to see cases where a husband took two wives at the same time in different places, especially for those who held distant posts or traveling merchants.The

only exception was The Great Ming Code, in which commoners were not allowed to take

concubines, excepting only those who were 40 years of age or older and had no sons. Any violation of this law was punishable by 40 strokes of beating with the light stick.113 Still, neither ethical teachings nor legal bans efficiently prevented poor families from selling their daughters for money or rich people from buying concubines. It had been so popular a practice in the Qing period that the lawmakers had to abolish this article from the legal code. At the end of the imperial era, taking concubines had become a fixed

social custom in some areas of China. Hu Puan, a contemporary writing at the end of 19th

century commented on this:

“…polygamy is prevalent in Guangdong, people’s wealth was judged through counting how many wives and concubines he has. For many, taking concubine is only a way to earn reputation. It is said one plutocrat owned one hundred and eight pepper trees, which provided him with great annual fortune. So he took one hundred and eight concubines and supported each with the profit of one pepper tree. And those who had three wives and four concubines were more common. Only in this way did the middle class feel capable of maintaining their dignity”.114 The case of concubinage illustrates the distant gap between law and custom in pre- modern China, which existed because much about people’s real lives was dominated by survival logic quite different from, and often at odds with, the priorities and pretensions of the state. When a law was proved unacceptable to people, it was either deliberately or unconsciously neglected, compromised through judicatory flexibility or simply deleted from the code altogether. As Sommer perceived, the laws of imperial China were made in order to regulate people’s performance according to their social status and roles. When certain customary practices ran across the status boundaries and were performed by the

113

The Great Ming Code: Article 109, 84.

114

Originally in Cheng Dong, Liu Shuyong ed., “Jiu Zhongguo Da Bolan, 1900-1949”旧中国大博览[The old China Expo, 1900-1949],1996. Quoted in Gao Xinwei高新伟, Qiyan de suiyue: zhongguo gudai funü de fei zhengchang shenghuo凄艳的岁月：中国古代妇女的非正常生活[The Abnormal Life of Women in Pre-modern

people from upper to lower strata, the related law lost its regulating strength and thus

became subject to abolishment.115