The Top 10 Best-looking Men in China’s History (lecture notes)
飒飒东风细雨来，芙蓉塘外有轻雷。
金蟾啮锁烧香入， 玉虎牵丝汲井回。
贾氏窥帘韩掾少，宓妃留枕魏王才。
春心莫共花争发，一寸相思一寸灰。
--A poem by Li Shangyin (Tang Dynasty)
Two criteria by which a man’s charisma is judged:
· 韩掾少 少[shào] : physical beauty, youth
· 魏王才 才[cái] : prodigious literary talent
韩掾 : Han Shou, ( ?- 300AD), a young advisor to the then Prime Minister, with considerable literary talent, remarkable beauty and oratory, won the heart of the daughter of his boss, subsequently visited the young lady’s bedchamber in a similar manner as Romeo did at Juliet’s. The two were eventually able to marry at the PM’s blessing, however, much to his annoyance, for the young man’s social status was no match to that of his bride.
魏王 :Cao Zhi, (192-232), prince of the Kingdom Wei. Often considered as unrivalled, throughout his era, in literary mastery, the prince was both young and Byronic. One great critic of his time even went so far as to claim that the prince accounted for 80% of China’s entire literary gravity. Envied and often victimised by his brother, the King, the prince died young and in dismay.
The ranking
My apologies.
I did mean to select 10 lethally charming men to present to you, hence the title, however, after much struggle, I have decided: there aren’t 10, in fact, there are only 6, to be categorised into three levels.
The lethally good-looking, legendarily accomplished level:
No. 6 公孙阏
Gongsun Yan, a.k.a. Zidu (around 700s BC), member of the ruling acristocratic family in the Dukedom of Zheng, and, as a young man, was in the fantasy of every young woman in his time and his name remained iconic of such until this day in China.
Merit: arguably the most skilled martial artist and the most valiant military leader of his day in the Dukedom.
Downfall: lost to another general in a weight-lifting game, thence bearing grudge, and consequently, in an active battle, shot from behind and killed with an arrow the said general, for which crime, he was punished with death at a young age.
No.5 宋文公
Song Wengong ( ?-589 BC), younger brother of the Duke of Song. Hopelessly attracted to his youthful spirit and unearthly beauty, his grandmother (not biological), the young widow of the late duke his grandfather, took fancy to him and in a deliberately plotted accident murdered his brother the current duke and made him ruler and Duke of Song. He is considered as “the man who won a dukedom by beauty”.
Merit: able, wise and determined as a ruler, unlike his brother, he was much loved and cherished by his male subjects, and worshiped by the female ones.
Downfall: due to the inconvenient accident through which the duke gained power, he was constantly criticised and occasionally attacked by rulers of other dukedoms, therefore attracting consistent military threats from outside, and eventually died of exhaustion.
No. 4 卫阶
Wei Jie (286-312 AD), dubbed as the “jade man”, was a member of a politically distinguished family. From a very young age, he was pursued by female, sometimes also male, crowds whenever he appeared in public.
Merit: one of the top three orator/debater and philosophers of his time. He was often not allowed to speak by his protective mother, but when he did speak, the audience listened with a half-fallen jaw and danced in dreams to the tune of his speech.
Downfall: he was never robust in health, and at the age of 26, when he travelled to the southern capital city of Nanjing, he was pursued and surrounded by fan crowds who had heard too much about him and were determined to never let him go out of their sight, hence, he fell gravely ill due to the 24-hour all-weather hot pursuit. Later the same year, he died.
The level of the historic Sages both in beauty and in literature
No. 3 潘安
Pan An (247-300), as a young man, he was often trapped by large fanatic fan crowds in town, and when he decided to take a stroll in the more quiet suburbs, women ranging from teens to housewives pursued him and threw fruit into his carriage (not an unfriendly action), and by dusk when he returned home, he would have a whole carriage of fruit.
Merit: a giant of beauty as well as of literature, Pan An was a leading figure among the top men of letters of his time. His works can still be found and are read until this day. Although desperately handsome, he was an exemplary husband of loyalty. He met his wife when he was 12, and the two were thence betrothed, and married when they were grown. Years after the death of his wife, by then both still in their 20s, he mourned and wrote heart-sinking prose for the woman he had always loved. The prose is still read today and puts all men and women, who have loved, into tears.
Downfall: although an enormously talented man, Pan An was not wise in politics. He befriended the wrong lot and, in the end, brought ruin to himself and his family.
No. 2 宋玉
Song Yu (298BC- 222BC), rising from an obscure background, was the envy to everyone’s eye. The King envied him for his youth, the intellectual for his overwhelming outburst of talent, the clowns for his oppressive beauty. Words are too feeble to describe the awe.
Merit: in China’s literature hall of fame, his name is among those such as Confucius, Qu Yuan and Li Bai. His 《登徒子好色赋》 is a queer piece of art to have combined both beauty and genius in one single form to vanquish any challenges from the same category. One still laughs and sometimes sinks down on ones knees when reading it today.
Downfall: unrecorded.
The level of “The Only One”
No. 1 高长恭
Gao Changgong (541-573), Prince of Lanling, cousin of the King of Qi. His beauty and valour were a gift of heaven, which elevated him to a semi-deity status that had never been achieved before him and would never be reached again after him. His beauty was that which was unaccountable, contrasting that of other famously good-looking men, and unanswerable by any human devise, therefore, the beauty itself had transformed into a decisive force that changed tides in battle as well as in life. He knew it well, so that he often wore a mask to battle.
Masterpiece: in the year 560, at 19 years old, the prince, masked as usual, led a 500 strong cavalry to rescue the siege of Luoyang. The battle became a bloody tangle and the ally forces inside the castle were hesitating as they were unsure of the identity of the masked figure. At a moment of life and death, the prince removed the mask from his face. The world went quiet, gasped and frozen, and the next moment, the gate flung open, soldiers bewitched. The prince triumphed.
Downfall: increasingly envied by his cousin, the King, the prince enchanted the heart of the whole kingdom and blinded the public eye to such an extent that the King could no longer feel safe to rule. At the age of 32, the prince was awarded a glass of wine by royal appointment, one ingredient of which was the deadly 鸩.