94 China in World History
As the former concubine of a famous government minister, she became
one of the most expensive courtesans in the Songjiang area (a city south of
the Yangzi where many government offi cials lived). In subsequent years,
Liu Shi had love affairs with several other very prominent men, including
Chen Zilong and Qian Qianyi, two of the most prominent poet-scholar-
offi cials of the Ming period. During a pleasure boat trip that lasted several
months, Qian married Liu in a formal wedding ceremony even though
he already had a proper wife. This caused a great scandal, but Qian was
prominent enough that the episode did little to hurt his career.
When the Ming dynasty collapsed in 1644, Liu Shi urged Qian to com-
mit suicide as loyal offi cials were expected to do in such circumstances.
Incapable of following her advice, he defected to the Manchus and held
an offi cial position for a couple of years before resigning his post. For
such irresolution, he was widely criticized. He and Liu Shi turned increas-
ingly to Buddhism in their later years, seeking detachment from passion
as consolation for their lost dynasty. In 1663, two years after her daughter
was married, Liu Shi shaved her head in the style of a Buddhist nun. Qian
died the next year. When relatives descended on his estate to try to claim
his property for themselves, Liu Shi took her own life by hanging herself.
Qian’s son had her buried with Qian as his second wife.
Despite the low status of courtesans and concubines in Chinese cul-
ture, Liu Shi has been widely admired ever since for her abundant tal-
ents in poetry and painting, and even more for her courage and strength
of character, as seen in her steadfast loyalty to the Ming dynasty and
her fi nal act of suicide to protest the greed, arrogance, and malice of her
husband’s relatives. She showed to one and all that a mere courtesan
could match the artistic sophistication of the greatest of Chinese male
literati and the highest ideals of Chinese civilization.
Themes of romantic love in literature initially grew out of the fl our-
ishing Ming courtesan culture, but the proper wives of scholar-offi cials
also enjoyed romantic literature along with their husbands, and some
developed companionate marriages in which husband and wife enjoyed
the same intellectual and cultural interests and developed deep emo-
tional ties as both lovers and friends.
A time of great cultural ferment, the late Ming also witnessed grow-
ing political and economic problems. The sixteenth-century surge of
prosperity was concentrated in the southern lower Yangzi valley and
did not extend far toward north or southwest China. The wealthy
found ways to avoid taxes and shift more of the tax burden onto the
poor. Increasing impoverishment forced many peasants to become ten-
ants paying high rents to wealthy landlords. A major tax reform in the