The Mr. Simon Suen and Mrs. Mary Suen Sino-Humanitas Institute is very glad to invite Dr. Lee Yi-Hsueh from Central University in Taiwan to visit HKBU in person on 12 December, and give a research seminar to research associates and research postgraudate students on studies on classical poetry of Li Shangyin. Details can be found below:
On Cheng Mengxing’s Reception of Zhu Heling’s Annotations on Li Yishan’s Poetry through Untitled Poems
Date: Thursday, 12 December 2024
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Venue: Room RRS903, 9/F, Run Run Shaw Building, Hong Kong Baptist University
Speaker: Dr. Lee Yi-Hsueh, Associate Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, Central University, Taiwan
Moderator: Prof. Zhang Hongsheng, Director, HKBU Mr. Simon Suen and Mrs. Mary Suen Sino-Humanitas Institute
Language: Mandarin

Summary:
On the afternoon of December 12, 2024, Dr. Lee Yi-Hsueh, Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Central University in Taiwan, visited our institution and delivered a seminar titled “On Cheng Mengxing’s Reception of Zhu Heling’s Annotations on Li Yishan’s Poetry through Untitled Poems.” The seminar was attended by research associates and postgraduate students. Dr. Lee began by sharing his academic journey in studying the reception history of Li Yishan and introduced the background of the growing prominence of annotations on Li’s poetry during the Qing dynasty, referencing the verse, “Alone, I lament that no one crafts Zheng-style annotations.”
In the first part, Dr. Lee introduced the four major annotators of Li Yishan’s poetry during the Qing dynasty: Zhu Heling, Yao Peiqian, Cheng Mengxing, and Feng Hao. He pointed out that, from the late Ming to the early Qing period, the external backdrop of dynastic transition and the internal development of poetics gave rise to the “metaphor and symbolism” approach becoming the mainstream aesthetic vision of the time. This vision influenced and even altered readers’ reception of Li Yishan’s poetry. Among the four, Zhu Heling’s Annotations on Li Yishan’s Poetry (1659) was the earliest and became widely influential both domestically and internationally. Over eighty years later, Cheng Mengxing used Zhu’s annotations as the foundation for his Revised Annotations on Li Yishan’s Poetry (1743), published under the combined authorship “Annotations by Zhu Heling, revised and supplemented by Cheng Mengxing.” The two works became integrated as one. This led Dr. Li to raise a critical question: Did Cheng Mengxing maintain the same perspectives in his “revisions”? Were Cheng’s deletions and additions merely extensions of Zhu’s work, or did they represent a distinct interpretation? In particular, Cheng highlighted Untitled poems and object-descriptive works in Section 6 of his Preface to the Revised Annotations. Dr. Lee focused on Zhu Heling’s and Cheng Mengxing’s annotations on the Untitled poems, exploring how Cheng creatively transformed Zhu’s annotations through strategies of inheritance, deletion, and supplementation. He analyzed Cheng’s methods and the outcomes of these revisions, assessing their merits and shortcomings.
In the second part, Dr. Lee elaborated on the annotation process and interpretive methods in Cheng Mengxing’s Revised Annotations on Li Yishan’s Poetry. Dr. Lee first outlined Cheng Mengxing’s nearly 30-year-long journey in annotating Li Yishan’s poetry. He then pointed out that, since the early Qing, the dominant interpretive approach to Li Yishan’s works had been “understanding the person and the context”. This interpretive shift began with Yao Peiqian, who advocated “deducing the author’s intention through interpretation” rather than focusing on the context of the author, emphasizing “annotations” over “notes.” Cheng Mengxing also adopted the interpretive method of “deducing the author’s intention through interpretation”, but with a slight difference from Yao Peiqian. Yao advocated using the reader’s personal understanding to infer and speculate about the author’s creative intent, placing less emphasis on studying the author and their social context. Cheng, however, believed that the “intention” was not entirely unfounded or left to the imagination of the reader but should be shaped by readers who had gained knowledge of the author and the historical context. Only then could the reader construct a historically grounded authorial “intention” and use it to interpret the author’s “original intent”. In other words, the more thoroughly the interpreter understands the author and their social context, the more accurately they can grasp the author’s original intent. Based on this principle, Cheng Mengxing expanded and revised many of Zhu Heling’s innovations under the approach of “understanding the person and the context”. For instance, he renamed “poetry critiques” as “poetry discourse” and increased the scope of these discussions, adding chronological annotations to works.
In the third part, Dr. Lee discussed Cheng’s reception of Zhu’s annotations on Untitled poems. On a macro level, Cheng Mengxing did not oppose Zhu Heling’s efforts to return to the literary traditions of metaphor and symbolism found in the Book of Songs and Chu Ci. However, he opposed the overextension of the “monarch-minister relationship” theory as the sole theme of Li Yishan’s Untitled poems, the only meaning of these works, or the single perspective for reader interpretation. Instead, Cheng advocated for allowing multiple interpretations under the overarching premise that “all untitled poems are allusion”, ensuring that no single viewpoint would obscure other interpretive possibilities.
This reveals that both Zhu Heling and Cheng Mengxing approached Li Yishan’s Untitled poems with Yang Ji’s allusion theory, forming a shared “horizon of expectation.” However, their respective processes of reception and interpretation resulted in both similarities and divergences, each emphasizing different aesthetic values. Nevertheless, their efforts collectively enriched the interpretative connotations of the Untitled poems. On a micro level, Dr. Lee illustrated how Cheng Mengxing inherited and supplemented Zhu’s annotations. It became evident that Cheng had no intention of competing with Zhu Heling in terms of textual versions or source materials, as Zhu’s annotations were widely recognized for their precision and had already earned widespread acclaim. Cheng thus humbly acknowledged Zhu’s superiority in this area. However, in terms of practical application, Zhu Heling focused on collecting all materials related to the verses, exhausting every possible source and sparing no effort in documenting references. Cheng Mengxing, on the other hand, prioritized the accuracy and efficacy of poetic interpretation, often deeming a brief explanation sufficient as long as it clarified the poem’s meaning. This distinction highlights Zhu’s emphasis on philological analysis and Cheng’s focus on poetic elucidation.
Finally, Dr. Lee concluded that, based on Cheng’s discussions, the emotional undertones embedded in the sixteen Untitled poems could be categorized into four themes: unrecognized talent, yearning for patronage, exclusion from official court positions, and being relegated to subordinate roles in regional offices. These themes often intersect and cannot be sharply distinguished. Whether the poet adopts a female persona to express these emotions or speaks directly in self-reflection, the poems ultimately convey the turbulent and challenging experiences and emotions of Li Yishan’s life.
(Recorded by SHI research student Chen Keyu)
