Sh i P oe t ry : musiC bur e au P oe m s 99the folk tradition. Overall, Frankel maintains that this poem is an oral folk song
elaborated “by an upper-class poet for an aristocratic audience.”32 Nonetheless, it
is open to different interpretations since there is no direct evidence to definitively
categorize it.
Zong-qi Cai posits five major characteristics in analyzing this poem: situational
thinking, ahistorical presentation, abrupt transitions, composite structure, and
repetitions.33 The poem’s composite structure is a particularly important obser-
vation. In explaining the composite structure of a folk yuefu, Cai points out that it
“involves the participation of several performers who each bring to the work a dif-
ferent point of view, a different set of oral formulas or expressions, and probably a
different style of performance as well.”34 Orally composed or not, the performative
nature of this poem is clear and serves as a useful interpretative tool. Each section
is like a mini-drama with an awareness of an audience.
Traditional interpretations of this poem, especially those from mainland China,
usually view it as a story of a brave peasant girl resisting the advances of a lustful
governor. This reading, which stresses class struggle and oppression, was typi-
cal of mainland scholarship before the 1990s. With the introduction of Western
anthropological and literary theories, however, many scholars no longer support
it. The tendency in more recent scholarship has been to consider it as a song of
flirtation without serious moral issues. Cai, for example, has suggested that it is a
work imitating the courtship rite.
This intriguing poem continues to attract different interpretations. The theme
of male flirtation is not unusual in the Chinese literary tradition. For example,
“Dengtuzi haose fu” (Fu on Master Dengtu, the Lecher) contains a paragraph in
which a man politely presents poetry to a young lady to express his love. Qiu Hu,
in the Lienü zhuan (Biographies of Various Ladies), represents another example. As
Qiu Hu is returning home, he sees along the road a woman collecting mulberry
leaves. He attempts to seduce her with gold but is refused. When his wife discovers
the true identity of the stranger, in her shame, she drowns herself in a river. There
is another story in that collection about collecting mulberry leaves, but without the
theme of flirtation. In this story, the king of Qi decides to marry a woman with a
big goiter because she is the only one who does not look at him and concentrates
only on collecting mulberry leaves.35 From these and similar stories, we know that
collecting mulberry leaves for silkworms was an important agricultural activity
in ancient China portrayed in several literary texts and genres. The examples we
find are all, in one way or another, related to love or the relationship between a
man and a woman. Even though we have no direct evidence in this poem relevant
to the courtship theory, there is little doubt that the mulberry as an image of love
is deeply rooted in Chinese civilization. For example, poem no. 48 in the Book of
Poetry talks about a love tryst in the mulberry grounds in the springtime.
Another significant point is Luofu’s beautiful clothes and precious jewelry,
which do not suggest a peasant girl, but a woman of some social status. But why,
it might be asked, would such a lady collect mulberry leaves, unless the poet is