Grass of levity,
Span in brevity,
Flowers’ felicity,
Fire of misery,
Winds’ stability,
Is immortality.

– Inscription in St Mary Magdalene Church, Milk Street, London¹

In the Analects (Lunyu)—one of the defining classics not only of Confucianism, but of all Chinese culture—we find the following adage, which contains a striking metaphor for the transformative power of a superior morality: “The Virtue of a gentleman is like the wind, and the Virtue of a petty person is like the grass—when the wind moves over the grass, the grass is sure to bend.”² (12.19)

Confucius (Kongzi, c. 551-c.479 BC) supposedly said this when asked by a disciple whether it would be advisable to kill those who do not follow the Way, in order to encourage those who do. The Master’s answer was a resolute no: “If you desire goodness, then the common people will be good.”³ He then illustrated the point with the “wind-grass” image quoted above.

Well-known for his ability to turn a phrase, Confucius came up with many other metaphors for the virtuous influence of the Superior Man (junzi), such as the “Pole Star” that receives homage from the myriad lesser stars (2.1) and the “press-frame” which straightens out crooked wood (2.19).⁴ Interestingly, these equally compelling images never entirely caught on like the “wind-grass” analogy, which soon took on a life of its own and developed into a complex literary topos.

Following Confucius’s example, later writers continued to reiterate and refine the wind as a significant symbol of power (both benevolent and malevolent).

The character used by Confucius for “wind” is “feng” (風), which has several closely interrelated meanings in classical Chinese: (1) wind, breeze, storm; (2) culture, enlightenment (or to educate, train in good manners, civilize); (3) customs, atmosphere; (4) manner, charm, tone, style.⁵ The etymological links of these meanings are apparent: (1) the civilizer’s influence on the common people is like the wind; (2) he enlightens the people by example and educates them in everything good; (3) the result, on a collective level, is good customs and traditions; (4) on a personal level, “the Superior Man’s” influence and enlightenment lead to good manners and charming behavior. Interestingly, one of the three categories in the Classic of Poetry (Shijing), another canonical Confucian text and the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, is also called “feng” or “guofeng,” often translated as “airs of the states.” Traditional commentary has it that these songs were periodically collected in the vassal states because they exemplified the “manners” (feng) brought about there by the feudal lords.⁶ Clearly, Confucius’s metaphor left its mark on the Chinese language.

The discerning reader might spot a discrepancy in Confucius’s “wind-grass” analogy. While the petty ones may indeed be as pliant as the grass, not all winds are as mild and nourishing as the moral influence of a true gentleman. There is the Chaucerian Zephyrus of April who exhales his “sweet breath” in “every grove and heath,” but also the “wild,” “uncontrollable,” and “tameless” West Wind of autumn, eulogized by Shelley, that destroys as much as it preserves. The Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang (77-6 BC) picked up this ambiguity and shrewdly elaborated it:

Those below are transformed by those above like grass bending in the wind... the direction from which the wind is blowing will determine the direction in which the grass bends. This is why the ruler of men must be very careful about his behavior.⁷

Liu used a slip on the Master’s part to issue a stern warning to “the ruler of men.” In his vision, even the Superior Man is not infallible and must reflect on his behavior as diligently as everyone else.

This vision of the dual aspects of the wind finds refined expression in a short piece of rhymed prose titled “Rhapsody on the Wind” (“Feng fu”), traditionally attributed to Song Yu (290?-222? BC), but most likely produced during the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD). In this fictionalized account, Song Yu accompanies King Xiang of Chu (King Qingxiang, reg. 298-263 BC) on a trip to the palace of Magnolia Terrace. Suddenly a breeze blows in, and the king is delighted: “How pleasant this wind! Do We not share it with the common people?” A rare democratic mood for a warlord of the Warring States period. But Song Yu puts a damper on his joy and insists that this wind is for His Majesty alone. The king is much bewildered and annoyed. He demands an explanation, taking for granted that the wind, “being the breath of Heaven and Earth, blows vast and wide, and does not choose between noble or mean, high or low.” Song Yu starts by claiming that “the breath of the wind differs depending upon the nature of the places where things lodge” and then, in exquisite parallel verse, proceeds to differentiate between two kinds of wind: His Majesty’s “male” wind and the “female” wind of the common people.⁸

On the one hand, the male wind “rises from the tips of green duckweed,” haunts such lofty places as vast glens and vales and “the bends of great mountains,” and “dances beneath pine and cypress.” When it is strong, it “overturns rock, fells trees, strikes down forests and thickets”; when its power abates, it “scatters and spreads,” “charging into crevices” and “shaking door bolts.” Entering the palace, it scales high walls, threads its way through all kinds of fragrant and rare plants (cinnamon and pepper trees, lotus blooms, basil herbs, wild ginger, peonies, budding willows…), and finally passes into the innermost chamber. Its lofty origins and refined qualities make it worthy of the sovereign. When such a wind strikes a man, it feels “so biting cold he shivers and shakes,” but the ordeal is worthwhile as it is also “refreshingly cool,” “so clean and pure” that it “cures illness, dispels hangovers, soothes the body, comforts men.”⁹

On the other hand, the common people’s female wind is conceived in much seedier surroundings: rising from “a remote lane,” it scoops out grime and dust, stirs up sand piles, blows dead embers, and throws up filth and muck. “Sullen and sad, fretting and fuming,” it attacks humble cottages with “jar-windows.” When it strikes a man, he feels “dizzy and dazed, downcast and dejected.” Inflicting him with heat and dampness, it makes him ill and feverish: “where it strikes his lips, sores break out, where it touches his eyes, they become red and swollen.” Eventually, he is “half-dead, half-alive.”¹⁰

King Xiang finds Song Yu’s exposition “excellent” and satisfying, we are told; but when stripped of its ornate diction, Song Yu’s claim is clear: winds inherit the characteristics of the places where they emerge and blow through, endowing the people in their path with this accumulation of qualities.¹¹

The fact that the male wind, “so clean and pure,” is assigned to the sovereign seems to imply his superior virtue, as the “wind-grass” metaphor does in the Confucian tradition.¹² Still, here the two kinds of wind are described in such detail and so matter-of-factly that one loses sight of their symbolic meanings and is compelled to view them as real entities.

The pseudo-Song Yu’s vision would eventually be picked up and further embellished by Cao Xueqin (1710?-1765?), author of The Story of the Stone (Shitou ji), also known as Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng), which is widely considered the most outstanding work of fiction produced in pre-modern China. As is typical with traditional Chinese vernacular novels, Stone is set in a mythical/metaphysical space, which provides a feasible supernatural explanation for the unusual characters and actions of the protagonists.¹³

Jia Baoyu, the novel’s young hero, was born with “a piece of beautiful, clear, colored jade in his mouth with a lot of writing on it.” As an infant, he played with “combs, bracelets, pots of rouge and powder and the like.” At age ten, he is incredibly mischievous, yet sharp as a needle, saying extraordinary things likely “Girls are made of water and boys are made of mud. When I am with girls I feel fresh and clean, but when I am with boys I feel stupid and nasty.” In his early teens, despite being precociously gifted in literature, he detests studying for the imperial examination (keju kaoshi). He develops a contempt for those who seek official positions through study, calling them “career worms.”¹⁴ Much of the drama in the novel derives from the conflict between his unorthodox personality and his conservative surroundings.

Rather than simply blaming nature or nurture, a sophisticated theory is formulated within the narrative of Stone to elucidate the formation of personality. These passages bear a striking resemblance to the “Rhapsody on the Wind” in diction, but the formulation here is far more complicated. To begin with, we are told that all men, apart from the very good and the very bad, are much alike. This is because the generative process operating in the universe is determined by two “cosmic forces” (qi): the good/beneficent (zhengqi) and the evil/noxious (xieqi). It is said that the great majority of humankind exists in a state wherein good and evil blend in more or less equal proportions. Instances of exceptional goodness or badness are produced when one of the two forces dominates the other.

Those born under the influence of benign forces all seek to promote the well-being of the societies in which they live, while those infused with destructive forces go out of their way to disrupt the world order. The novel is set in an age when beneficent ethereal influences are on the rise, and therefore the reigning dynasty is well-established and society both peaceful and prosperous. A “pure, quintessential” humor permeates the realm “from the palace down to the humblest cottage.” Moreover, an unused surplus of this good force circulates freely abroad, enriching and refreshing all under heaven, while the “cruel and perverse” power takes shelter in the darkest nooks and crannies. By chance, when a stray wisp of the latter escapes from its hiding place and happens upon the former, they will become locked in irreconcilable conflict, “the good refusing to yield to the evil, the evil persisting in its hatred of the good.”¹⁵ When such a volatile mixture finds its way into human recipients, the consequence is remarkable:

… place them in the company of ten thousand others and you will find that they are superior to all the rest in sharpness and intelligence and inferior to all the rest in perversity, wrongheadedness and eccentricity. Born into a rich or noble household they are likely to become great lovers or the occasion of great love in others; in a poor but well-educated household they will become literary rebels or eccentric aesthetes; even if they are born in the lowest stratum of society they are likely to become great actors or famous hetaerae. Under no circumstances will you find them in servile or menial positions, content to be at the beck and call of mediocrities.¹⁶

Here we find traces of Song dynasty Neo-Confucian cosmology, which claims that qi is the means whereby all material things are produced, but what Cao Xueqin presents is a tongue-in-cheek etiology of—and apologia for—the great eccentrics of all times and places, within whose ranks Cao himself claims forever a place of honor.¹⁷ “Qi” (氣), the word used here for “cosmic forces,” has a very similar set of meanings to those of “feng,” ranging from gas, air, breath, and weather to airs, manner, spirit, and the “vital energy” in Chinese medicine.¹⁸ This semantic affinity and the obvious rhetorical borrowings from pseudo-Song Yu position Cao Xueqin’s bizarre exposition firmly in the same literary tradition outlined above.

From Confucius’s analogy of the all-bending wind with the infallibly moral Superior Man, through the dual aspects of the wind described by pseudo-Song Yu, to Cao Xueqin’s ternary system of forces elucidating the formation of unorthodox personalities, a transparent chain of influence can be traced among these works of drastically different ages and genres which together present a consistent and progressively more sophisticated literary vision of the wind: as Confucius tells us, different kinds of wind have different inherent characteristics, and these can be imposed on the people they encounter. In its most developed form, this vision considers winds, whether literally or figuratively, as character-endowing cosmic forces that forever permeate the universe and make their influence felt wherever they go.