4: Genre in Fragments: Mobility, Sociability, and the Rhetoric of Commemorating Yuan Theater

This paper examines two Yuan-dynasty anecdotal texts—The Records of the Green Bowers (Qinglou ji) and Records from a Southern Village during Respites from the Plow (Nancun chuogeng lu)—as commemorative works that reconstruct the cultural world of Yuan theater across temporal, spatial, and ethnic dimensions. It explores how theater, as reflected in these texts, functioned as a liminal site for constructing and remembering multiethnic sociability.

Particular attention is given to how the sociocultural dynamics of Yuan theater are mapped through fragmentary yet purposeful anecdotes that register interethnic encounters, generational transmission, and regional circulation. Green Bowers traces a mobile, multiethnic world spanning urban centers, invoking temporal language to mark fame and continuity. Ethnic identity is rarely marked, suggesting a cultural imaginary in which performers and patrons of different backgrounds coexist without rhetorical distinction. This absence invites us to reconsider the interface between “heartland” and “steppe” as one of cosmopolitan entanglement rather than division. In contrast, Southern Village adopts a more personal commemorative mode, shaped by the author’s autobiographical voice and moral commentary. Framing himself as a historian of private memory, he constructs an archive of a vanishing world for future readers. While Green Bowers seeks to capture the vitality of a shared cultural moment, Southern Village foregrounds individual remembrance and historical reflection.

By analyzing how these works commemorate actresses and patrons through the generic interplay of anecdote, biography, and personal memoir, this paper contributes to discussions of genre, historical memory, and literary representations of multiethnic sociability in Yuan cultural production.