2: Tracing Her Body: Daoist Ritual Elements in Hong Sheng's (1645-1740) Changsheng dian

The early Qing dynasty (1644-1911) bore witness to considerable imperial patronage of Daoist masters and monasteries. Hong Sheng’s (1645-1704) composition of Changsheng dian (The Palace of Lasting Life) coincided with the favorable milieu to Daoist practices during the Kangxi reign (1645-1722). Notably, the play features a large number of Daoist ritual elements, especially with respect to the body of the female lead Precious Consort Yang. This paper first centers on her body and explores why the ritual of taiyin lianxing (refining the form in the Ultimate Yin) proves particularly suitable for her resurrection by charting the ritual’s conceptual fluidity and flexibility. It then examines a Daoist priest’s ritual performance for summoning the resurrected consort, focusing on his use of neidan (inner alchemy) terms in blurring the boundary between the ritual space and his own body. However, the summoning ritual ends up being futile. In the last section, this paper juxtaposes the heteroglossiac perspectives on the failed ritual and proposes infelicity as the ultimate reason for its inefficacy. Going beyond the philological explication of ritual terms, this paper examines the performance of Daoist rituals in the Changsheng dian, seeking to challenge the view of such practices as holistic or static and calling for greater attention to literary treatment of ritual failure and inefficacy.