Yao Ping, (Professor, Harvard Divinity School, USA)
Abstract: “The intercourse of Heaven and Earth balances the universe; intercourse of a man and a woman results in the proper order of yin and yang”. This passage from Bai Xiangjian’s白行簡 (776-826) “Tiandi yinyang jiaohuan dale fu 天地陰陽交歡大樂賦” (Poetic essay on supreme bliss of the sexual union of heaven and earth and yin and yang), as well as the essay’s graphic descriptions of various sexual acts, have convinced scholars to render the text as a product of Daoist inner alchemy, and part of the so-called fangzhongshu 房中術 (the art of the bedchamber) tradition. The title of the essay, which the author would later shorten to “Dale fu大樂賦” (Poetic essay on supreme bliss), however, points to a much more complex formulation of Tang erotica. For example, the term dale 大樂, while rarely appeared in earlier Daoist writings, is a core concept in Tantric Buddhism, which advocates that such a stage of nirvana can be achieved through sexual union. In a close reading of Dale fu, my paper intends to investigate the rivalry and mingling of Daoism and Buddhism in Medieval China, and to assess the impact of such process on the Tang perception of sexuality and gender. In addition, I argue that the rise of the literati elite played a key role in the shaping of China’s first wave of erotica. In stressing poetic expression, aesthetic, manner, and romance, Tang erotica signified the end of vampirism, a recurring theme in pre-Tang fangzhongshu writings.