I have briefly mentioned the Ten Courts of Hell on page 36 of the Celestial Empire. This is the place in the netherworld where evil whitesouls stay awaiting their judgement, and where they undergo the judgement itself after having spent some time in this purgatory.
There is a fundamental text of Chinese Folk Religion from the 18th century AD, the Yùlì Bǎochāo 玉歷寶鈔 (the Jade Guidebook), that describes the ten infernal tribunals in detail; you may read it here.
In a nutshell, the whitesoul of the deceased arrives at the gate of Fēngdū (see illustration) where their name is registered, then proceeds to the first court of Hell. This is the most lenient place in Purgatory, for those who committed suicide and who must stay there until the equivalent of what the duration of their life would have been had they not committed suicide has elapsed. Everybody else is ushered into the second court of Hell.
The whitesouls of those who kidnapped or robbed people during their lifetime remain in the second court of Hell to undergo several series of terrible torments. Everybody else is ushered into the third court of Hell.
The whitesouls of those who accepted bribes during their lifetime remain in the third court of Hell to undergo even worse terrible torments.
Etc. etc. with ever more atrocious depictions of torments until the ninth court for arsonists, assassins, rapists, and the like.
The tenth court is not a place of punishment but the place where those whose time of suffering has expired go in order to await the details of their rebirth through the wheel of karma.
The Celestial Empire is not a fantasy tabletop role-playing game inspired by the myths and the history of Cathay, but a TTRPG firmly set in Imperial China, her culture, and her society. As a result, the rules as written strongly encourage the players to have a male character of Hàn ethnicity.
Now I realise this mayn’t be everybody’s cup of tea, and that today’s TTRPG public expects more diversity, both in terms of gender and of ethnicity, when generating their player characters.
However, having the GM set their campaign at the time of the Táng dynasty, and particularly in the capital city of Cháng’ān, could provide a solution. Under the Táng (618-907 AD), Cháng’ān, the eastern end of the Silk Road, was one of the largest metropolises of the world, a cosmopolitan city with several neighbourhoods explicitly designed to house the many merchants, pilgrims, envoys, missionaries, etc. coming from the lands to the West of the Celestial Empire.
This picture (from Twitter) shows the various ethnic groups one might have encountered in the streets of Cháng’ān under the Táng.
Note: the English-language translations in the yellow labels are from a Chinese Facebook group. “Rakshasa” is a wrong interpretation of the original “羅剎”, which used to mean “Russian” and which now indeed means Rakshasa [although I doubt there were any Russians in Cháng’ān; that is an utter anachronism].
I have stumbled upon a very interesting post about tigers in Vietnamese legend and lore. The link is here, and I am copying the most relevant parts below just in case the original post should disappear from the internet (as it often happens); I am not trying to appropriate it!
The Godly Origin of the Tiger
In Vietnam, the tiger is also known as Chuá Sơn Lâm (The God of the Mountain and Forest). The creation myth of the tiger tells of a mutinous heavenly deity by the name of Phạm Nhĩ. While Phạm Nhĩ was remarkably strong and talented, he plotted against the Jade Emperor as he thought he would be a more worthy ruler of the Heavens. Phạm Nhĩ created a huge ruckus, and he was almost successful in his exploits, until Buddha intervened and captured him. Buddha handed him back to the Jade Emperor, but warned that Phạm Nhĩ should not be killed for his crime. Instead, he was reincarnated as an animal on Earth – but he still retained his extraordinary strength and hearing (the name Phạm Nhĩ refers to his long ears).
The Tiger and the Toad
I love finding common threads in tales around the world, and discovering the similarities between this story andThe Turtle and the Hare, as well asThe Banquet of the Twelve Zodiac, made me appreciate it all the more. In this story, a toad dissuade a tiger from devouring it by proposing a competition to see who can jump across the river first. During the jump, the toad hangs onto the tiger’s tail for most of the way, and leap across at the last moment to emerge as the victor. You can see the echoes of how the rat tricked its way to become the first member of the lunar zodiac sign, as well as the ever-present commentary between might and wit in fairy tales.
How the Tiger got Its Stripes
As a child, my favourite kinds of tales were the ones that attempted to explain the natural world around us. Like with many fairy tales, I am surprised at how dark it is now that I look back on it. The tale starts with a tiger who saw an ox being used as a beast of burden by a farmer. The tiger asked the ox why it willingly submitted to a human, when it was exponentially stronger. The ox replied it had to follow the human due to his cleverness, but could not explain what ‘cleverness’ was to the expectant tiger. The tiger then went to ask the farmer to show him this object called ‘cleverness’, and the farmer used the tiger’s curiosity to tie him to a tree and set him on fire (yes, folklore comes with a sobering dose of casual animal cruelty!). While the tiger escaped from the fire, it bore the burn marks from the event, and all tigers henceforth were burn with the black burn marks on their body. The ox? It fell over laughing when the tiger was caught and lost all of its upper teeth, which is why ox now only have teeth on their lower jaw. A two for one creation fable, so to speak.
Tigers in Our Language
Tigers are traditionally respected in Vietnam. Up until the past decade, it was still common practice to avoid referring to tigers as ‘con cọp’ or ‘con hổ’ (tiger), but instead using the titles of ‘ông’ (grandfather) or ‘cậu’ (uncle). In Southern Vietnam, the first born son was called ‘anh hai’ (second elder brother), as the title ‘anh cả’ (eldest brother) was saved for the tiger.
One of the most common folk name for a tiger is ‘Ông Ba Mươi’ (Grandfather Thirty), the name came from a rumored tradition once held. The emperors of yore would reward hunter who can catch a tiger with 30 quan tiền (an archaic Vietnamese currency, loan word from the Chinese 貫) as they prevented the destruction wrecked by tigers. However, they will simultaneously be punished by 30 lashes, for displacing the revered creatures from their natural habitat.
There are many Viet proverbs and ca dao (Vietnamese folk poetry) relating to tigers, one of the most well-known ones tells of the dominance of tigers over other landlocked creatures:
Trời sinh Hùm chẳng có vây, Hùm mà có cánh, Hùm bay lên trời.
Loose Translation: The tiger was born without scales, If the tiger had wings, it would fly to the heavens.
Vietnamese Folk Poetry
The poem puts forward that if tigers had scales like a fish, or wings like a bird, they would also dominate the sea and the sky. This is a call-back to the tiger’s godly origin, from a deity who almost became the Emperor of the Heavens.
Tigers are ubiquitious in Vietnamese idioms, a few examples are below. If you are versed in your Chinese idioms, you’ll notice the crossover because *gestures at the Viet colonial history*:
“Hùm dữ không ăn thịt con” Translation: Vicious tigers won’t eat their own cubs.
Refers to the bonds between parent and child.
“Mình Hổ, tay vượn” Translation: The body of a tiger, the hands of a monkey.
This saying is used to describe anyone who’s at the peak of their physical state: strong like a tiger and as agile as a monkey.
If you’re familiar with the wuxia movieCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you already know what this means. In Vietnamese, it refers to a destination with hidden spiritual potential.
“Hổ phụ sinh hổ tử” Translation: A tiger will father a tiger
Referring to the similarities between parent and child, as well as that insidious expectation that an accomplished parent would have an equally talented offspring.
Tigers in Legends
Like many other East and South-east Asian culture, Vietnamese also revere the Bạch Hổ (White Tiger). You can see a White Tiger carved onto the shrine near the famous Hoàn Kiếm lake in Hà Nội. In the ancient capital Huế, there are not just one, but two notable bridges that once went by the name of Bạch Hổ. One of them is now a popular tourist landmark of the city.
Legends of extraordinary men who defeat tigers with their bare hands are also passed on as an example of their might. You may already be familiar with Wǔ Sōng from the Chinese classicWater Margin,but Vietnamese have a similar figure in Mai Hắc Đế (Mai, the Black Emperor). Mai successfully led the uprising against Táng Dynasty rule in Vietnam in 722AD, and ruled for a short time over a region of the country. One of his backstory told of the slaying of a tiger by his bare hands to avenge his mother.
There are a few ethnic groups who claim the tiger as their ancestor, too. Myths tell of tigers (usually the White Tiger mentioned above), who took on human form, fell in love, and the children of these union became the descendants of tigers. Notable examples are prominent families bearing the surnames Vương, Bành, Dương, Điền, Đàm, Trướng, and Nhiễm. They migrated to Vietnam from the regions of Húběi, Húnán, and Sìchuān in China and carried these legends with them.
Urban Legend: The Three-Claws Tiger
The tiger’s hold on Viet people’s imagination is not a relic of the past. As recently as the 1940s, urban legend of the Cọp Ba Móng (The Tiger with Three Claws/Foot) haunted our thoughts. This was a fearsome tiger who feasted on human meat, there were many reasons proposed for its bias for human flesh – was it because it was used to devouring the corpses of our fallen soldiers? Perhaps it lived for so long that it was close to attaining human intelligence? There were also disputes on its origin, the most popular one being that it escaped from the menagerie of a wealthy French official. Having lost one of its foot in captivity, it turned its hatred and anger onto the Vietnamese villagers in the neighboring area. Among the brewing anti-colonial sentiment at the time, I can see why this theory held particular allure. In any event, it became the harbinger of death and military intervention was introduced to remove it. I can’t quite figure out what happened to the tiger on my readings, but it’s certainly a legend I will ponder for a long time.
The Purple Maiden (Zǐgū 紫姑) is a minor deity of Chinese Folk Religion mostly worshipped by women via a very peculiar possession cult: instead of possessing a medium, the Purple Maiden takes possession of her effigy during the night of her festival (the 15th day of the 1st month).
The effigy is thus swayed in various directions by the weight of the possessing deity; the movements of the effigy are then interpreted by the Ritual Master / Shaman / Spirit-Medium to divine about the prospects of the coming year in terms of silk output, or any other women-related produce.
As with most Chinese Folk Religion deities, the Purple Maiden is an apotheosised mortal. She was a concubine killed by the jealous wife of her master, close to the pigsty or to the latrine of the household. This is why her cult takes place next to the pigsty or latrine. An alternate (and possibly truer) hypothesis is that the stinking parts of the household were deemed inhabited by malevolent spirits, and a tale was fabricated to create a benevolent spirit guarding said parts of the household.
Whatever the truth, the cult of the Purple Maiden has been popular since the Táng dynasty. Under the Sòng, Zǐgū can be called upon even outside of her festival night via a small doll made of chopsticks and wicker, and animated by children. The doll traces lines on the ground, which are then interpreted for divination. This is probably the first instance of fújī (spirit-writing, see p94 of The Celestial Empire), the divination technique that became so popular from the Sòng dynasty on.
A great article available here that busts several myths about the Wōkòu, the notorious Japanese pirates that terrorised Korean and Chinese coastal areas under the Míng.
倭寇 (Wōkòu)
Myth 1. Hǎijìn (海禁, lit. 'Sea ban') or maritime trade prohibition constituted the Wōkòu phenomenon
Myth 2. Poor Chinese coastal inhabitants were forced into piracy by oppressive Hǎijìn policy
Myth 3. Wōkòu were primarily swordsmen
Myth 4. Japanese Yumi is weaker/has lower draw weight than English longbow (or other bows)
Myth 5: Lángxiǎn (狼筅) was developed to specifically counter Japanese swords
During the Míng and Qīng dynasties, the shores of the southern Chinese provinces suffered from pirate attacks (the notorious Wōkòu — see an older post). As a result, some coastal villages built walls against them.
Here are two interesting articles about these walled villages (1) and (2).
I have been criticised for "downplaying" the role of female player characters in The Celestial Empire, see for instance p9-10. I understand political correctness, I understand that female players want to play female PCs, but my decision to de-emphasise the role of female adventurers in a historical Imperial Chinese setting is based on strict historical evidence, not on whim or prejudice.
I have found a very interesting article on this matter on the engrossing Dutch fan web-site devoted to Robert van Gulik, the celebrated author of the Judge Dee mystery novels.
Here is the text of the article, which had originally been published in the 1950s. The highlighted parts have been so by yours truly.
Concubinage One-Sided Notes On a Many-Sided Subject R.H. van Gulik
Some time a studious person with much leisure at his disposal might well compile an encyclopaedia containing all the mistaken statements on Far Eastern subjects that may be culled from ancient and modern Western literature.
His would be the work of a lifetime, but it would be far from labour lost. For so complicated has become the tangle of human relations on this small globe of ours, that a study of errors is often much more enlightening than a study of truisms.
To such an encyclopaedia of errors on the Far East, the entry polygamy would occupy considerable space. Except for Far Eastern politics, there are few topics about which one reads so many erroneous statements.
This goes for China as well as for Japan. Since a great many Japanese customs go back to Chinese prototypes, here we shall deal with polygamy in China, leaving the Japanese aspect of this problem for a subsequent occasion. Some writers describe the old Chinese polygamic system as a pool of black iniquity; others praise it as the long-awaited final solution of all our social problems. In fact it is neither of the two. Polygamy in China was the logical consequence of certain social and economic premises, and worked neither better nor worse than any of our own social institutions. And now that these premises are gradually disappearing, polygamy is disappearing together with them.
There are many reasons for the prevalence of erroneous ideas about Chinese polygamy. In the first place, Chinese family life has until very recently been a closely guarded, isolated territory where no persons except members of the family itself could trespass. Among foreigners it was perhaps only the wives of the early missionaries who could obtain glimpses of life in the quarters of the womenfolk in a Chinese mansion. But foreign wives had an avenue of approach only to Christian Chinese families, where there were no secondary wives or concubines.
Even the Chinese themselves found it difficult to obtain information about the “inner courtyards” of their friends. For in China the separation of the sexes has, since olden times, been carried out so firmly that in old-fashioned families it was considered improper to dry articles of male and female clothing on the same laundry line. An unmarried girl of an upper middle-class family had no contact at all with any male person except her brothers, and the contacts of a married woman were largely confined to the male members of her husband’s and her own family.
This separation of the sexes was facilitated by the architectural features of the Chinese dwelling house. Especially in North and Central China, houses spread horizontally instead of vertically. One mansion is in reality a compound consisting of a number of separate courtyards, each having its own buildings and gardens, and connected with each other by winding corridors or covered passages.
This peculiar arrangement of the Chinese floor plan also answered many of the problems of a polygamic family system. Each of the several wives could live in a separate courtyard of her own, with her own servants, and her own kitchen. The architecture eliminated many causes for the friction which is bound to arise sooner or later if one man lives together with several wives under the same roof.
Besides there were a number of other factors in ancient China that contributed to a harmonious home life. One of the most important probably was sociability. In the olden days Chinese women were rigidly excluded from all outdoor activity, and could not take part in the social functions which their husbands so freely attended. It is not without reason that the husband in conversation with outsiders would refer to his wife as “nèiren”, or “she who is within”, and she speak of him as “wàizǐ”, or “he who is without.” These terms are today still used in Chinese colloquial speech although the real situation is nowadays often quite the reverse.
Women being thus confined to life inside their home, the wives provided company for each other, played card games and chess together, engaged in the polite arts such as painting and embroidery, and celebrated seasonal feasts together. The question of personal dignity, as important in China as anywhere else, did not arise because an age-old tradition had fixed the hierarchy of the womenfolk of a mansion, circumscribing exactly the rights and duties of all, from the seventh concubine to the old grandmother of the husband.
With so many people involved, the activities of a malicious person could easily be curbed by gentle pressure, and without interference on the part of the husband, who, if he was a wise man, kept studiously aloof from all quarrels among his womenfolk.
Further, economic factors played an important role. The old Chinese thought it nonsense to let ten women live in miserable poverty, as long as there could be found one man who could afford to let all ten of them live together with him in ease and comfort. Moreover, the primitive means of communication in ancient China often caused a man to live separated from his family for one or two years at a time. He then took unto him a wife in the place to which his official duty or his business had called him. When he returned home, he took this wife and children, if any, with him. They were incorporated into the original household as a matter of course.
As to the origin of the system, Sinologues are probably right when they derive it from the sacred duty of every man to perpetuate the family line, in order to ensure the continuation of the sacrifices to the ancestors. If the first marriage failed to produce male offspring, it was a man’s duty to take a second or third wife, until he had obtained a son. Ethnologists are probably also right when they look for the origin of the system in the archaic belief that the leader of a tribe or clan has a more potent “aura” than common men, and therefore is entitled to more than one wife, as a matter of prestige. It would seem that it is this same question of prestige that is the origin of the old Chinese tradition that a high official should have at least four wives.
Be this as it may, the polygamic system has worked in China reasonably well for more than 2,000 years. There have been the usual number of tragedies, and the usual examples of complete happiness. Since that is about the same as can be said for our own monogamic marriage system, I for one, taking into consideration the special social and economical environment that obtained in ancient China, would not presume to commit myself either way.
There is, however, one point in the old Chinese polygamic system that in my opinion deserves commendation. That is that all children of one father, whether born from the first wife, secondary wife or concubine, are his legitimate offspring and as such have their incontestable rights, including those to a share of his inheritance.
Some Western writers maintain that the Chinese system of polygamy precluded the existence of spiritual love between husband and wife. Chinese literature supplies ample proof that, under the special conditions that obtained in old China, this is by no means true. There were countless examples of two or three cultured women who were happily untied with one man at the same time, in a deep and true love. The secret of such a harmonious household seems to lie in the virtue of forbearance, which is so prominent a characteristic of the Chinese people in general, and in their genius for compromise.
I conclude these random notes with a Chinese joke, one of the very few that can be translated into English, since through a coincidence the word “sour” has in Chinese the same double meaning as it has in English. The story is about a man who had an exceedingly jealous wife, who for many years had prevented him from acquiring a second spouse. By dint of much gentle persistence, he finally secured her consent, and one day he introduced into his mansion a beautiful young concubine.
From then on, at the evening meal there always occurred an awkward moment, when the steward of the mansion had to ask his master whether he planned to stay with his first wife that night, or whether the servant should make preparations in the court yard of the new arrival. As a solution the master instructed his steward when serving the wine always to ask him whether that day he would drink yellow or white wine. It must be noted that Chinese yellow wine will spoil after a month or so, while white wine, which resembles our gin, will last much longer. The arrangement was that if the master answered “yellow,” it meant his first wife, and that “white” would refer to his preference for his concubine on that day.
The first night after this secret arrangement had been made between the master and his steward, the latter duly asked during the evening meal whether his master would drink yellow or white wine; the answer was “white.” The next evening the steward received the same answer, and the same thing happened on the third night. On the fourth evening, when the steward was approaching his master’s chair to ask the vital question, he bowed and whispered: “Master, may I humbly suggest that tonight you drink some yellow wine, lest it grow sour.”
Pénglái (蓬萊) is the city where Judge Dee starts his mandarinal career. Contrary to the districts in the later novels, many of which are fictional, Pénglái is a real port city on the Bóhǎi Sea, on the north-eastern coast of Shāndōng Province.
Close to the wilderness, to the sea, and to the frontier provinces of north-eastern China, Pénglái is an excellent starting point for a role-playing campaign set in Imperial China.
The map below is from Robert van Gulik's novel The Chinese Gold Murders.
Key
1. Tribunal 2. Temple of Confucius 3. Temple of War God 4. Temple of City God 5. Drum Tower 6. Nine Flowers Orchard 7. Hostel 8. Crab Restaurant 9. Wharf 10. River 11. Korean Quarter 12. Creek 13. Rainbow Bridge 14. White Cloud Temple 15. Flower Boats 16. Watergate 17. Town House Dr. Tsao 18. Yee's house 19. Koo's house 20. Restaurant
I am re-reading The Chinese Gold Murders detective novel by Robert van Gulik. The postscript by the author gives insight as to the exact role of the magistrate in Imperial Chinese society. I believe it can be of great use to whomever wants to play a magistrate in a role-playing game set in Imperial China:
A feature all old Chinese detective stories had in common was that the role of detective was always played by the magistrate of the district where the crime occurred.
This official was in charge of the entire administration of the district under his jurisdiction, usually comprising one walled city and the countryside around it for fifty miles or so. The magistrate's duties were manifold. He was fully responsible for the collection of taxes, the registration of births, deaths and marriages, keeping up to date the land registration, the maintenance of the peace, etc., while as presiding judge of the local tribunal he was charged with the apprehension and punishing of criminals and the hearing of all civil and criminal cases. Since the magistrate thus supervised practically every phase of the daily life of the people, he is commonly referred to as the "father-and-mother official".
The magistrate was a permanently overworked official. He lived with his family in separate quarters right inside the compound of the tribunal, and as a rule spent his every waking hour upon his official duties.
The district magistrate was at the bottom of the colossal pyramidal structure of ancient Chinese government organisation. He had to report to the prefect, who supervised twenty or more districts. The prefect reported to the provincial governor, who was responsible for a dozen or so prefectures. The governor in his turn reported to the central authorities in the capital, with the emperor at the top.
Every citizen in the empire, whether rich or poor and regardless of his social background, could enter official life and become a district magistrate by passing the literary examinations. In this respect the Chinese system was already a rather democratic one at a time when Europe was still under feudal rule.
A magistrate's term of office was usually three years. Thereafter he was transferred to another district, to be in due time promoted to prefect. Promotion was selective, being based solely on actual performance; less gifted men often spent the greater part of their lives as district magistrates.
In exercising his general duties the magistrate was assisted by the permanent personnel of the tribunal, such as the constables, the scribes, the warden of the jail, the coroner, the guards and the runners. Those, however, only performed their routine duties. They were not concerned with the detection of crimes.
This task was performed by the magistrate himself, assisted by three or four trusted helpers; these he selected at the beginning of his career and they accompanied him to whatever post he went. These assistants were placed over the other personnel of the tribunal. They had no local connections and were therefore less liable to let themselves be influenced in their work by personal considerations. For the same reason it was a fixed rule that no official should ever be appointed magistrate in his own native district.
The present novel gives a general idea of ancient Chinese court procedure. When the court was in session, the judge sat behind the bench, with his assistants and the scribes standing by his side. The bench was a high table covered with a piece of red cloth that hung down in front to the floor of the raised dais.
The constables stood facing each other in front of the dais, in two rows on left and right. Both plaintiff and accused had to kneel between these two rows on the bare flagstones and remain so during the entire session. They had no lawyers to assist them, they might call no witnesses and their position was generally not an enviable one. The entire court procedure was in fact intended to act as a deterrent, impressing the people with the awful consequences of getting involved with the law. As a rule there were every day three sessions of the tribunal, in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon.
It was a fundamental principle of Chinese law that no criminal could be pronounced guilty unless he confessed to his crime. To prevent hardened criminals from escaping punishment by refusing to confess even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, the law allowed the application of legal severities, such as beating with whip and bamboo, and placing hands and ankles in screws. Next to these authorised means of torture magistrates often applied more severe kinds. If, however, an accused received permanent bodily harm or died under such severe torture, the magistrate and the entire personnel of his tribunal were punished, often with the extreme penalty. Most judges, therefore, depended more upon their shrewd psychological insight and their knowledge of their fellow men than on the application of severe torture.
All in all, the ancient Chinese system worked reasonably well. Sharp control by the higher authorities prevented excesses, and public opinion acted as another curb on wicked or irresponsible magistrates. Capital sentences had to be ratified by the throne and every accused could appeal to the higher judicial instances, going up as far as the emperor himself. Moreover, the magistrate was not allowed to interrogate the accused in private. All his hearings of a case, including the preliminary examination, had to be conducted in the public sessions of the tribunal. A careful record was kept of all proceedings and these reports had to be forwarded to the higher authorities for their inspection.
"Judge Dee" is one of the great ancient Chinese detectives. He was a historical person, one of the well-known statesmen of the Táng dynasty. His full name was Dí Rénjié, and he lived from A.D. 630 till 700. In his younger years, while serving as magistrate in the provinces, he acquired fame because of the many difficult criminal cases which he solved. It is chiefly because of his reputation as a detector of crimes that later Chinese fiction has made him the hero of a number of crime stories which have only very slight foundation in historical fact, if any.
Later he became a minister of the Imperial Court and through his wise counsels exercised a beneficial influence on affairs of state; it was because of his energetic protests that the Empress Wǔ, who was then in power, abandoned her plans to appoint to the throne a favourite instead of the rightful heir apparent.
In most Chinese detective novels the magistrate is at the same time engaged in the solving of three or more totally different cases. This interesting feature I have retained in the present novel, writing up the three plots so as to form one continuous story. In my opinion, Chinese crime novels in this respect are more realistic than ours. A district had quite a numerous population; it is only logical that often several criminal cases had to be dealt with at the same time.
I have adopted the custom of Chinese Míng writers to describe in their novels men and life as during the sixteenth century, although the scene of their stories is often laid several centuries earlier. The same applies to the illustrations, which reproduce customs and costumes of the Míng period rather than those of the Táng dynasty. Note that at that time the Chinese did not smoke, neither tobacco nor opium, and did not wear the pigtail– which was imposed on them only after A.D. 1644 by the Manchu conquerors. The men wore their hair long and done up in a topknot. Both outdoors and inside the house they wore caps.
Whenever I have been GM'ing using The Celestial Empire or Oriental Monsters & Magic, I have found that character parties built around a judge accompanied by retainers, bodyguards, etc. have worked really well in a Chinese context.
In a highly civilised society such as China, with little personal freedom, little motivation to transgress the boundaries of what one is restricted to, and especially in a society that frowns upon the use of violence, the only possibility for the kind of anti-social behaviour that RPGers enjoy is law enforcement.
Well, a judge in China was assigned a city where he would work as a magistrate, carrying out sentences and settling disputes, but also collecting tax, repairing broken bridges, repressing banditry, and suppressing unorthodox cults.
So the first thing to draw up for your judge PC and his fellow PCs is the prefectural seat he's going to spend the next three years in! For that purpose, I have developed a hack of Éric Nieudan's own more generic classic fantasy random wilderness generator.
What you need:
- A standard 52-card deck with French suits (♠♥♦♣); remove the jokers and the 2's.
- Dice.
1. Draw cards to make a 7×7 grid; leave centre of grid empty. The centre is your city:
2. Terrain the remaining 48 areas according to card suit; face cards mean there is a steading. See tables below:
Terrain
♦ plains or steppe
♣ woods or swamp
♥ hills or desert
♠ mountains or canyons
Steadings
Jack: village, hamlet or camp
Queen: temple, shrine, other holy place
King: manor or mansion
Ace: town or harbour
Choose or draw another card for subtypes, e.g.:
Second Card Drawn
Village Sub-Type
Temple Sub-Type
Manor Sub-Type
♦
Hàn Chinese
Confucian
Retired Mandarin
♣
Hàn Chinese
Buddhist
Guildhouse
♥
Hàn Chinese
Daoist
Head of Local Lineage
♠
Ethnic Minority
Folk Religion
Wealthy Landowner
Third Card Drawn
Buddhist Sub-Type
Daoist Sub-Type
♦
Pure Land
Complete Orthodoxy (Zhèngyi)
♣
Chán
Quánzhēn
♥
Tantric
Xié
♠
other
other
3. Encounters and events. Now, whenever the judge and his companions are travelling throughout the prefecture, random encounters may happen! For each card, roll d20 and compare to card value (Jack = 11, Queen = 12, King = 13, Ace = 14). If the die roll is ≤ card value, look at the encounter on the table below.
Variant: Use a d10 in the light grey area.
Die
Civilised Encounters
Die roll < card value
Events
Die roll = card value
1
Farmers ♦travelling ♣foraging ♥poaching ♠fleeing
2
Fishermen ♦working ♣mending nets ♥famished ♠building a dam
3
Merchants ♦caravan ♣lost ♥being robbed ♠loaded with silver
Ambush or trap
4
Monks ♦preaching ♣looking for help ♥begging ♠on a pilgrimage
In Imperial China, according to the Táng Code, married men had seven criteria whereby they could repudiate their wife, called the Seven Outs (qīchū 七出): 1- barrenness (not giving birth to children) 2- lasciviousness 3- disobedience to her husband's parents 4- indulgence in gossip 5- thievish propensities 6- jealousy 7- a disfiguring illness
The Míng code added that a woman who hadn't any living relatives, however, could not be repudiated [that would have made her free of any male dominance, which is contrary to Confucian orthodox thought]. Neither could be repudiated a wife who had mourned three years for her husband's parents. Husbandly repudiation was also forbidden in the case of a husband who had become rich having been poor previous to and at the time of the marriage.
Needless to say, repudiation only worked one way: a woman could never require the marital relation be dissolved, no matter how miserable her life. Miserable women would routinely commit suicide instead, thereby shaming their husband who would lose face.
A man who had repudiated his wife without her falling in one of the seven criteria would have had to take her back, and he would have been punished by 80 strokes of beating with the heavy stick.
A woman who ran away from her home would be sold by the State if caught. If she had been married during her absence, she was sentenced to death by strangulation.
The laws were either identical or extremely similar in the other countries of the East Asian cultural sphere: Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
Under the Qīng, the Code added the possibility of a mutual divorce. Here again, the asymmetry of the male and female positions in society was apparent by the fact that a divorced man could remarry, whereas a divorced woman could not. Another kind of divorce, and then under all dynasties, was the state-mandated annulment of marriage; it would be pronounced by a magistrate if either spouse had committed any of the following offences: - murder - adultery - assault and battery upon an in-law
The Ten Yāma Kings are well-known and respected personages in the pantheon of Chinese Folk Religion (they are also widely present in Korean and Japanese myths and beliefs). In Chinese, they are known as the 十殿閻王 (shí diàn Yánwáng, the Ten Yāma Kings) or as the 十代冥王 (shí Dàimíng Wáng, the Ten Lords of Hades). They are represented as grave-looking magistrates, which is in line with the Chinese view of the Underworld as a well-ordered and stern place under the jurisdiction of the Jade Emperor; a concept very far from the Western view of Hell as a disorderly place ruled by horrid devils wreathed in flames. The Ten Yāma Kings are not monsters, they are honourable magistrates!
In The Celestial Empire, I briefly mentioned them in the section about Chinese Myths and Beliefs (p34-35). In particular, I have written the following on p35:
Evil whitesouls are brought to the ten infernal tribunals, ruled by the ten Yāma Kings (閻王 Yánwáng), the judges of the Nether Region, who decide the kind of punishment to be undergone in the City of Ghosts (Fēngdū 酆都).
The scope of this blog entry is to give some more detail about the Ten Yāma Kings and their halls, should your foolish players travel to the Underworld!
Here is the roster:
1 - the King of Qínguǎng (秦廣王蔣). He rules the very first hall and is responsible for a preliminary review of the deeds from the whitesoul's lifetime. The actual punishment is then carried out in one of the nine other halls.
2 - the King of Chǔjiāng (楚江王歷). He rules the court reserved for thieves and murderers, and his hell is ice cold.
3 - King Sòngdì (宋帝王余). He rules Black Rope Hell.
4 - King Wǔguān (五官王呂). He rules Blood Pool Hell.
5 - King Yāma (閻羅王包). He rules the Iron City and oversees the nine other Yāma Kings.
6 - King Impartial (平等王陸). He is in charge of discriminating between ghosts according to their behaviour, and deciding affairs such as grades and transmigration.
7 - the King of Mount Tài (泰山王董). He rules the Black City of Shadowy Fiends. He is No.2 in the hierarchy of the Yāma Kings.
8 - the Metropolitan King (都市王黃). He rules the Suffocation Hell and the City of the Dead-by-Accident.
9 - the King of Biànchéng (卞城王畢). He rules the City of Innocent Deaths.
10 - the King of the Ever-Turning Wheel (轉輪王薛). He rules the tenth and last hall and is responsible for meting out retribution. Like in the first hall, there is no place of torment here. The Terrace of Oblivion is part of the tenth hall.
Note that depending on the sources, the order of the judges between 6 and 9 is not always the same.
Mellified man, or human mummy confection, was a legendary medicinal substance created by steeping a human cadaver in honey. The concoction is mentioned only in Chinese sources, most significantly the Běncǎo Gāngmù (本草綱目) of the 16th-century Chinese pharmacologist Lǐ Shízhēn (李時珍, 1518-1593). Relying on a second-hand account, Lǐ reports a story that some elderly men, nearing the end of their lives, would submit themselves to a process of mummification in honey to create a healing confection.
This process differed from a simple body donation because of the aspect of self-sacrifice; the mellification process would ideally start before death. The donor would stop eating any food other than honey, going as far as to bathe in the substance. Shortly, his faeces (and even his sweat, according to legend) would consist of honey. When this diet finally proved fatal, the donor's body would be placed in a stone coffin filled with honey.
After a century or so, the contents would have turned into a sort of confection reputedly capable of healing broken limbs and other ailments. This confection would then be carefully sold in street markets as a hard to find item with a hefty price.
Leprosy in East Asia is believed to be caused by (a) bad geomancy or (b) bad karma. People with leprosy are marginalised and discriminated against. Lepers are restricted to living in leper colonies, remote villages isolated from the rest of the population, or even secluded on islands (esp. in Korea). Lepers are deprived of their inheritance rights.
Because of fear, stigma, and revulsion toward lepers, the latter may travel quite unhinderedly— constables or guards, for instance, will refuse to search their body and belongings. On the other hand, what explanation can they provide for not being restricted to their colony?
If you're using The Celestial Empire, the Status skill of a leper is limited to 20%. If you're using Monsters & Magic, the Status attribute of a leper is limited to 4.
Literacy was brought to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system from Three Kingdoms Korea between the 3rd and the 5th centuries, mostly through two channels:
1- Court scribes 'imported' from Baekje and Silla
2- Buddhism and its many sūtra commentaries
In the Kamakura (1185–1333) and Edo (1603-1868) periods, some Japanese scholars associated with the movement that wanted to separate Shintō from Buddhism, and chagrined at the idea of Japan owing its writing system to China and Korea, claimed that the Japanese already had a uniquely Japanese writing system before the introduction of the Chinese system. This putative writing system wasn't even human in origin, but had been gifted to the Japanese by no less than the Japanese gods!
These scholars claimed that the jindai moji had been created by the god Izanagi with his demiurgic naginata called the Amenonuhoko (天沼矛 "heavenly jewelled spear"), and that the divine script fell into disuse after Prince Shōtoku (聖徳太子, 572-622) replaced it with Chinese characters. However, the Yoshida (吉田) family was supposed to have secretly kept the knowledge from then on. This is why the existence of jindai moji came to be prominently accepted amongst Yoshida Shintō believers. (Yoshida Shintō was a brand of Neo-Confucian Shintō that arose during the late Muromachi period.)
The 'divine' writing system was variedly named as kamiyo no moji (script of the age of the gods), jindai moji (god age script), hifumi (after its first three syllables), etc. Several tablets, bamboo slips and secret scrolls were unearthed or produced as 'proof' of the existence of the script, but all were later analysed by professional linguists and revealed as forgeries.
Amongst the various legends and rumours associated with the ninja, one was that they used jindai moji as a secret script to carry undecipherable messages.
In your campaign game, you may obviously decide that the jindai moji is genuine and indeed of divine origin, and use it as a magical script for arcane and/or occult purposes.
The Ryūkyū Islands, which are today part of Japan, were a wealthy trading kingdom (the Ryūkyū Kingdom 琉球國) in the 16th century. The kingdom was nominally a tributary state of Míng Dynasty; however, following the Míng policy of ending sea voyages gradually put in place during the 15th century, and also due to the increased threat on maritime travel posed by the Wōkòu (倭寇), the Kingdom was de facto independent.
The archipelago has been united in the first half of the 15th century by Shàng Bāzhì (尚巴志), who is also the founder of the ruling Shàng Dynasty. The capital city is at Shuri (首里) on the largest island: Okinawa (沖縄).
The reign of Shàng Zhēn (尚眞, 1477–1526) is widely regarded as the golden age of the island kingdom.
Despite the presence of a ruling aristocratic class, the Ryūkyū Islands have an egalitarian society. In particular, no native Ryukyuan may ever be bound into slavery — all slaves on the islands have been bought from foreign traders, and are usually Chinese or Korean victims of coastal raids by the Wōkòu.
The upper nobility (who are the descendants of Chinese gentry families from Fújiàn who arrived in the 14th century) have Chinese-style names and are bilingual, Chinese and Ryukyuan; the rest of the population have local names and are monolingual. Ryukyuan is a language related to (but different from) Japanese.
The Ryukyuan religion is a mix of ancestor worship, nature worship (the Moon and the Sun), and shamanism. Due to Chinese and Japanese influence, Buddhism is making inroads; there are Japanese Buddhist missionaries from Kyōto on Okinawa, and they have built four temples.
Irrespective of the particular strand of religion, all celebrants are female; some of them are “druid”-like, some others more like Inner Asian shamans.
Spirits and magical creatures such as yāoguài (妖怪, see p112 of The Celestial Empire), dragons, guardian lions, and ghosts, are very present and of paramount importance in the local folklore.
There is also a big emphasis placed on the fabrication and the use of amulets, talismans, etc. Lóngmài (ley lines, see p85 of TCE) strongly influence Ryukyuan magical and religious practices.
The islands are covered with all manner of moist forest and other tropical and subtropical flora. There aren't any large predators; the only danger when travelling overland are venomous snakes.
In the 15th century, the Japanese Empire is officially a tributary state of Míng China. In reality, Japan isn't ruled by its emperor, impoverished and restricted to a ceremonial role, but by its military commander-in-chief or shōgun (将軍). China does not hold any kind of real power over the shōgun either.
The office of shōgun stays within the Ashikaga clan. The Ashikaga shogunate is also called the Muromachi period of Japan because the shōgun resides in the Muromachi district of Kyōto (京都). The shogunate is a semi-hereditary position: upon the death of a shōgun, the male members of the clan fight or manoeuvre to obtain the title; each contender is supported by various other feudal clans who have an interest in his victory. In the second half of the 15th century, one of these succession contests escalates into a full-blown civil war, known as the Ōnin War, which ends in 1477 leaving Japan bled white and without a clear-cut winner.
In the early 16th century, even though Japan enjoys a relative period of peace after the hardships of the Ōnin War, the country is divided and is effectively experiencing a form of “low-intensity” feudal anarchy:
The direct rule of the Ashikaga clan is restricted to the half-ruined city of Kyōto itself, where the cousins Ashikaga Yoshitane and Ashikaga Yoshizumi are constantly vying for the shogunate, with the Hosokawa clan pulling the strings.
Because of the decline of the shogunate, the provinces are ruled by petty feudal lords called daimyō (大名), whose personal loyalty to the shōgun depends on the personal prestige of the latter, and who are constantly feuding amongst themselves.
Kaga Province has become a de facto independent republic under the Ikkō-shū (一向宗) sect of Pure Land Buddhism.
Kyōto is in a perpetual state of unrest, with barricades dividing the various districts of the city, whose allegiances are constantly shifting.
Because of the general lawlessness, travel by road is highly unsafe.
There are trade barriers between provinces, and the use of money loses ground in favour of barter.
Barricade fighting in Kyōto (1528)
Should the GM decide to set his game in early 16th century Japan, adventurers will have an easy time finding jobs as caravan guards, bodyguards, spies, assassins, etc.
With travel between provinces having become dangerous, roads are deserted, and supernatural creatures can reclaim the wilderness…
I have already mentioned Fúsāng, the axis mundi-like gigantic mulberry tree from the legends of archaic China.
The concept of a gigantic mulberry tree to the east of the East China Sea faded with time, and gave birth to the vague notion of a mythical land existing at the far eastern end of the East China Sea, even farther east than the legendary Pénglái islands inhabited by the Daoist Immortals.
With the progress of navigation and of ship-based exploration, several islands to the east of China were called “Fúsāng” in the history of China, ranging from Japan to America to made-up stories to impress the Emperor.
Anyway, a series of recent articles on the internet have started mentioning the book The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps by Benjamin B. Olshin. Menzies-style, Prof. Olshin claims that the founder of the Yuán Dynasty entrusted the Venetian merchant cum explorer Marco Polo with a mission to Fúsāng, and that Marco Polo sailed along the northern coasts of East Asia up to Alaska (and back). According to some sources, the mission was funded by a southern noblewoman rather than by the emperor himself. Whichever the case, the book claims Marco Polo travelled all the way to the Aleutian Islands, where he met with the natives, to whom he delivered a message.
As with Menzies' book, I am not interested in the scientific value of Prof. Olshin's book (which is probably quite low) but in the crazy role-playing ideas it may provide.
Edit, May 2017: I had based the post above on articles read on the internet, and not on Prof. Olshin's book itself, which apparently does not actually endorse said theory (see comments section).
