The Supernatural Hairpin in Three Chuanqi Romantic Plays of late Ming and early Qing China

This paper discusses a few late Ming chuanqi romantic plays that use the hairpin as both the prop and the theme of the play. They are Gao Lian’s (1573–1620) The Romance of the Jade Hairpin (Yuzan ji), Shi Pan’s The Romance of the Double-Shaft Hairpins (Jianchai ji), and Shen Jing’s The Romance of the Fallen Hairpin (Zhuichai ji). This group of hairpin plays show the hairpin as a marital contract, a signifier of an imperative act, on the one hand, and as a connector to the transcendental and divine realm on the other. Specifically, The Romance of the Jade Hairpin stages a romance in a monastery after the girl becomes a nun. The Romance of the Double-Shaft Hairpinspresents the hairpin as a gift from an immortal. The Romance of the Fallen Hairpin is a story about a girl’s ghost coming back to the human realm to demand her wedding with her fiancé to be completed.

Drawing on the hairpin’s ritual function in Buddhist and Daoist ceremonies as described in religious treatises and studied by art historians, this paper will explain why the hairpin is given such enormous supernatural power in these late Ming romantic plays.