Secret Arts of the Boudoir

Secret Arts of the Boudoir, also known as The Sword Immortal of the Boudoir, is a Qing dynasty vernacular chapter novel in four volumes and fifty chapters, by an unnamed author, completed in the thirty-third year of the Guangxu reign (1907). The title carries the sensational flavor common to late-Qing commercial editions, but the main text is a serious novel of manners about family rules, wifely virtue, and the examination system. Set against the backdrop of An Lushan's rebellion in the Tang dynasty, it follows the scholar Hua Tong of Datong Prefecture, Shanxi, and his family's flight from chaos: Hua Tong flees with his wife, Lady Wang, three sons, and two daughters, is aided by the landowner Tang Deyuan, and sets up a teaching practice. The eldest sons, Zhao Bi and Zhao Kun, are gifted and win Tang Deyuan's favor through their filial act of cutting their flesh to heal a parent, and the two families become in-laws. The brothers then pass the county, prefecture, and academy examinations at the top of the list; the county magistrate Xia Guohua admires their talent and wishes to betroth his daughter Yaoyun to Zhao Kun. But Xia's son Junxiang, mercenary and greedy, secretly betroths his sister as a concubine to Ye Kaitai, son of the Ministry of Personnel official Ye Huai; Yaoyun adamantly refuses, and Junxiang's wicked servant Gou'er, having failed to assault the maid Qingxi, falsely accuses her of adultery, throwing the Xia household into turmoil. Xia Guohua angrily rebukes his son and firmly rejects the Ye marriage contract, and is framed, dismissed from office, and dies. The new county magistrate colludes with the Ye family, bribes a thief to accuse the Hua brothers of being accomplices, and Tang Deyuan is also implicated and imprisoned. Yaoyun and her maid disguise themselves as men and flee; endangered and falling into the water en route, they are rescued by a fisherman and eventually go to the incorruptible official Bao Qingyi to plead their case. In the end, Li Dachun places first in the imperial examination, Hua Zhao Bi and Zhao Kun take the first and third places respectively, Lord Bao investigates by imperial order, the Ye father and son are convicted, the villains are punished, the talented scholar and beautiful maiden are finally united, and the sons of the Hua and Tang families each receive honors and rewards. Opening with "the family regulated, then the state governed," the book weaves filial piety, chastity, examination honors, legal cases, and karmic retribution into a panoramic novel of manners of late-Qing popular fiction.