海桑集

Hǎisāng jí 海桑集

The Sea-Mulberry Collection by 陳謨 (撰)

About the work

Hǎisāng jí 海桑集 in ten juǎn is the literary collection of Chén Mó 陳謨 (1305–1400, per CBDB id 34408 and catalog meta — both agree on this lifespan of 95 suì), zì Chéngmèng 程孟, hào Hǎisāng 海桑, native of Tàihé 泰和 (Jiāngxī). The title Hǎisāng — literally “sea and mulberry”, a Lùnyǔ 莊子 / Shījīng image for the cycle of dynasties or the human lifespan — captures Chén’s status as one of the longest-lived literary figures of the YuánMíng transition. Chén traversed the entire Yuán Shùndì era, the YuánMíng transition, and almost the entire Hóngwǔ reign before dying in Hóngwǔ 33 / Jiànwén 2 (1400). The collection is structured generically across ten juǎn: four-/five-/seven-character ancient form and gē, five-character regulated and páilǜ (juǎn 1); seven-character regulated and páilǜ, five- and seven-character juéjù (juǎn 2); biǎojiān, sòng, lùn (juǎn 3); bēi, míng, zhuàn, shuō (juǎn 4); xù (juǎn 5–6, with yǐn in juǎn 6); jì (juǎn 7), and three further juǎn of prose (table cut off in the source).

Abstract

Chén Mó’s lifedates 1305–1400 are confirmed by CBDB (id 34408: 1305–1400, fl. 1301–1370). The 95-year lifespan makes Chén one of the longest-lived literary figures of the YuánMíng transition — comparable to Qián Zǎi (KR4e0032 Lín’ān jí, 95 suì by both meta and CBDB reckonings) and to Wáng Miǎn (the Yuán painter, 1287–1359, who died seventy-two). Chén’s life-span is sufficient that his career spans three distinct phases: late Yuán Shùndì under Tàihé’s local literary milieu; the YuánMíng transition in Jiāngxī (where he refused service under Chén Yǒuliàng 陳友諒, the rebel-state ruler defeated by Zhū Yuánzhāng at the Póyánghú battle of 1363); and the full Hóngwǔ reign as a Tàihé local Confucian elder.

The Tàihé lineage is the principal contextual anchor: Chén Mó is the elder generation to Yáng Shìqí 楊士奇 (1366–1444), the founding figure of the Yǒnglè–Xuāndé táigétǐ and the first compiler of the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn under Chéngzǔ. Yáng Shìqí’s literary inheritance from Tàihé predecessors — among whom Chén Mó is the principal figure — is the foundational anchor of the early-15th-century Jiāngxī literary establishment. Wilkinson, Chinese History, §28.4, places Chén among the Tàihé senior generation; John W. Dardess in A Ming Society: T’ai-ho County, Kiangsi, in the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Berkeley: UC Press, 1996) makes Chén one of the principal documentary anchors for the late-Yuán / early-Míng Tàihé local literary establishment.

The genre structure of the Hǎisāng jí — verse compressed into two juǎn, prose distributed across at least seven — is characteristic of senior-elder Confucian biéjí of the Tàihé tradition: heavy on xù, jì, bēi, míng, mùzhìmíng (functional ceremonial prose for the local community), light on personal lyrical verse. This is the same generic balance later canonical in Yáng Shìqí’s Dōnglǐ jí 東里集 (KR4e0096).

Translations and research

• John W. Dardess. A Ming Society: T’ai-ho County, Kiangsi, in the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: UC Press, 1996. The standard monograph on Tài-hé’s local literary establishment; Chén Mó is one of the principal documentary anchors.
• L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds. Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644. New York: Columbia UP, 1976. Notice of Chén Mó (under Yáng Shì-qí, vol. 2, p. 1535).
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng bié-jí).

Other points of interest

Chén Mó’s 95-year lifespan (1305–1400) makes him one of the very few literary figures to have lived through the entire Yuán Shùndì reign (1333–1370), the YuánMíng transition (1367–1368), and the full Hóngwǔ reign (1368–1398) — three distinct political-cultural epochs. The Hǎisāng title (sea-and-mulberry, the figure for dynastic turnover) is thus more than a poetic flourish: it is a precise descriptive claim about the author’s own life. He is the foundational figure of the Tàihé literary lineage that culminates in Yáng Shìqí, Yáng Róng 楊榮, and the Sān Yáng tradition of early-15th-century táigétǐ.

Links

• Sìkù tíyào, Kyoto Zinbun digital edition
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §28.4 (Míng biéjí).