Thatched Cottage in a Fallen City The Poetics and Sociology of Survival under the Occupation

This article examines the construction of lyric identities by Li Xuanti, a classical-style poet, cultural celebrity and prominent civil servant in collaborationist regimes based in Nanjing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It argues that Li used his poetry to explore the confusion, ambivalence and sense of cultural pride while living with the occupiers. Despite his collaboration, a frequent identity that appears in Li’s poetry is that of a yimin (loyalist), who has retreated to the inner world of reclu-sion.With the progress of the war, however, another identity eventually emerged in Li’s poetry, namely that of a patriot. Historical allusions in Li’s poems thus acquire double-entendre, expressing his ambivalent loyalty. Li was also at the social centre of a group of like-minded collaborators and accommodators in Nanjing, bound by their common practiceof classical-stylepoetryandarts.Theircommunitythusbecomesaspecialcase of study for the sociology of survival under the Japanese occupation.

state and its moral command to be patriotic, defined in twentieth-century China as loyalty to a party-state.
In these regards, the 'elegant gatherings' at the Thatched Cottage were complex literary, political and sociological events that merit careful examination. This paper represents a preliminary effort to understand what these gatherings meant for literati like Li Xuanti in their struggle to maintain the illusion of normalcy under the occupation. He and his fellow poets formed an ambivalent social space where no clear boundaries demarcated spheres of collaboration and accommodation, where patriotism was negotiable, and where traditional Chinese culture provided a rich repertoire of identities to be donned to legitimise and signify mere survival, at least to oneself.

Li Xuanti: Poet, Collaborator, Survivor
Hailing from Houguan (Fujian Province) and often known by his sobriquets Shikan 釋戡, Taishu 太疎 and Sutang 蘇堂, Li was descended from a prominent literati family of salt trade wealth. His paternal grandmother was the daughter of Shen Baozhen 沈葆楨 (1820-1879), a late Qing viceroy and reformer. His father, Li Zongyan 李宗言, passed the prefectural examination in 1882 in the same class as Lin Shu 林紓 (1852-1924), the most famous late-Qing translator of European novels. That year, Zongyan also joined a Fuzhou poetic society founded by Chen Yan 陳衍 (1856-1937), which would become a milestone in the rise of the late Qing Tongguang style of poetry.9 Li Xuanti's cousin Xuangong 李宣龔 (1876-1953, sobriquet Bake 拔可 or Mochao 墨巢) was a poet in his own right too. Despite the traditional background of his clan, Xuanti's parents decided to give him a modern education. He graduated from the Fuzhou Anglo-Chinese College and went to study in Japan, first at the military preparatory school Tokyo Shinbu Gakkō (1904Gakkō ( -1906-where Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石  would soon be enrolled-and then at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy (1906)(1907)(1908)(1909)(1910). Despite his military training, however, Li Xuanti naturally graduated into a network of power and poetry back in China thanks to his family's literati connections. Li had a short albeit notable career in the Qing court, serving first as Imperial Guardsman for Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧 (1835-1908) and then in the Court of Territorial Affairs (Lifanyuan 理藩院). But he did not follow the path of many prominent Tongguang poets in remaining a Qing yimin 遺民 (loyalist). Instead, he continued to serve in the newly founded republic, rising to prominence in the Beiyang regime as a secretary in the State Council and achieving the rank of lieutenant general in 1927. When the Beiyang regime was replaced by the Nationalist regime in 1928, he did not resume his service immediately, resulting in the public perception of him as a 'Beiyang loyalist' .10 In actual fact, latest since April 1935 he had been working as a secretary in the Executive Yuan.11 It was possible that he was personally hired by the chairman of the Executive Yuan, Wang Jingwei, as they were acquainted on 27 October 1933 (if not earlier), at a literati 'elegant gathering' at the Tower of Sweeping Leaves (Saoye lou 掃葉樓) in Nanjing. 12 After the Sino-Japanese war broke out and the capital Nanjing fell, however, Li did not follow his colleagues who were relocating to the hinterland. The reasons for not moving westwards remain unclear, though he was not alone in making this choice. He appears to have found refuge in Shanghai, where the International Settlement provided safe haven. When Liang Hongzhi 梁鴻志 (1883-1946 Zhongyi 眾異), another poet and former Beiyang bureaucrat, was recruited by the Japanese army to establish the collaborationist Reformed Government (Weixin zhengfu 維新政府) in March 1938, he in turn recruited Li Xuanti, an old friend, to lead the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. After the rng was founded in Nanjing on 30 March 1940, replacing the previous regional collaborationist regimes, Li managed to retain his position. He became increasingly passive, however, after the Pacific War broke out in December 1941. Soon after Wang Jingwei died in Nagoya, Japan, in November 1944, Li resigned from his offices and moved to Shanghai. When World War ii ended, Li Xuanti somehow managed to escape the post-war trials of collaborators of 1946. Nonetheless, he was disgraced in public opinion and maintained a low profile. He died in Shanghai in 1961 of heart disease.
Luckily, during the last fifteen years of his life, Li was cared for by a former protégé, Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (1894-1961), the male 'queen of Peking opera' .  , who also held a degree in economics from Kyoto University. When the new rng currency zhongchuquan 中 儲券 (Central Reserve banknote) was launched in January 1941, for instance, it was seen as Zhou's crowning accomplishment, while Li appears to have had little to do with either its introduction or its success.15 rng military forces were controlled by regional military leaders, over whom the civil leaders of the regime exerted little influence. Though Li was friendly with the Navy Minis- ter Ren Yuandao 任援道 (1890-1980 Huo'an 豁盦), their friendship was mostly based on their common interest in poetry. His friendship with Ren, however, might help to explain how he escaped the post-war trials. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, Ren contacted Chongqing and began to work secretly under its directives, probably as a hedging strategy.16 When the war ended, since Chongqing could not send its troops to those territories formerly occupied by the Japanese quickly enough to prevent a communist takeover, Ren Yuandao was recruited to serve as a commander of the vanguard. It may well have been Ren who advised Li Xuanti to resign before it was too late and also protected him from being tried as a traitor. Ren himself would escape to Hong Kong after the foundation of the prc and eventually die in Canada.
In contrast to the passive role that Li appears to have taken in the economic and military management of the rng, he actively supported a few journals which featured the research and publication of classical-style Chinese poetry, including National Arts (Guoyi 國藝, -1942, Accord (Tongsheng 同 聲, 1940(Tongsheng 同 聲, -1945 and Sea of Learning (Xuehai 學海, 1944(Xuehai 學海, -1945, as an unofficial editor and frequent contributor. Since Li Xuanti's poetic anthology Selected Poems of Sutang (Sutang shishi 蘇堂詩拾, 1956)17 omitted the majority of the poems written during the occupation, these journals have become precious sources for the study of his life, poetry and thoughts during the war. These journals, in addition to the 'elegant gatherings' that he hosted, broadened the outreach of the rng into a large group of traditionally educated cultural elites who had stayed behind in, or returned to, occupied territories. In this sense, Li Xuanti served as an unofficial rng 'liaison officer' for cultural elites.

Cultural Memory and Identity Construction
In the official discourses of the victors, and in popular culture today, World War ii is celebrated as a great saga of anti-fascism, as the battle between good and evil, and as a unique event that changed the course of world history. However, at different stages of the war, in different localities where it was fought and for different groups of people entangled in its machinery, the war was experienced in many ways and never in its totality, resulting in fragmented individual memories which do not always cohere with the grand narrative that developed after 1945. To Chinese elites, in the first stage of the war, when Japan quickly occupied large swathes of territory that included most of China's cultural, political and economic heartland, the war felt ominously familiar: they wondered if it was to become yet another war of foreign conquest like those that had led to the overthrow of mighty Chinese dynasties in the past. Were that the case, the order that would be established after an (albeit immoral) conquest would be no less legitimate than the one that it replaced. There might even have been some psychological comfort for cultural elites in thinking of the Japanese invasion in this way, since they could then fall back on familiar cultural paradigms as they sought to develop suitable patterns of response.
One such cultural paradigm, as Chiu Yi-hsuan's article in this special issue has also examined, was that of the yimin (loyalist), who remained faithful to a fallen dynasty and refused to serve a conqueror regime. Loyalists, however, did not necessarily deny the legitimacy of the new regime: they could not serve it, owing to the obligatory fealty that they felt towards their erstwhile patrons. Responses conforming to this paradigm had already appeared when the Qing Dynasty was replaced by Republican China and when the Beiyang government was replaced by the Nationalist government. Living under the Japanese occupation, therefore, some might perceive the ethical challenge inherent in responding to an invading foreign force as not unlike that faced by pre-modern loyalists: the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing were once 'foreign' conquerors too, but the ethnicity of the ruling houses did not prevent their dynasties from eventually being accepted as 'Chinese' .
There were, however, crucial differences. First of all, the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek was yet to surrender, and was continuing to lead the resistance from Chongqing. Second, perhaps owing to the rise of nationalism as the default paradigm of political legitimisation, Japan did not integrate occupied mainland Chinese territories into its own colonial empire (as it had done with Taiwan and Korea in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Instead, it established collaborationist regimes under nominal Chinese control. These client regimes, moreover, all chose familiar symbols of legitimacy: Manchukuo styled itself as the recovery of the Qing Dynasty on its native Manchu soil; the Provisional Government in north China and the Reformed Government in Nanjing were led respectively by former Beiyang bureaucrats, with both adopting Beiyang symbols, including the five-coloured national flag (wuse qi 五色旗); and the rng claimed itself to be the same Nationalist government that had been nominally established by Sun Yat-sen, 'returning to the capital' (huandu 還都) of Nanjing. It continued to adopt the 'blue sky, white sun, and a wholly red earth' (qingtian bairi man di hong 青天 白日滿地紅) national flag, the kmt party flag and the Sun Yat-sen personality cult, among other trappings of legitimacy. All these were designed to encourage the perception that the client regimes were fully Chinese, notwithstanding Japanese bayonets, and to bolster the wishful thinking that full Chinese control might be reasserted one day.
Li Xuanti's lyrical construction of his political identity, consequently, can also be divided into three phases. From the establishment of the Reformed Government until the autumn of 1940, his poems lack historical allusions that might suggest an identification with historical figures. Instead, they betray a sense of confusion and shame. From late 1940 until early 1942, just after the outbreak of the Pacific War, he frequently refers to historical precedence in his poetry to style himself as a loyalist, a recluse or an exile, external to the politics of the day. And from 1942 through until the end of the war, with the failure of the Japanese militarist venture becoming increasingly clear, he begins to style himself after patriots living in periods of division, primarily the Southern Song poet Lu You 陸遊 (1125-1210), yearning for national unity. Such lyrical performance of his identity, furthermore, was exemplary of the socio-literary circles in which Li found himself.
In the following section, many of Li Xuanti's literary associates will be introduced. Since they were cultural figures who so far have received virtually no attention from historians, I will give their dates, names, sobriquets (used when they published in literary journals) and, whenever necessary, brief descriptions, to illustrate the social composition of this circle of literati collaborators and accommodators.
In the first phase, Li's poetic social circle consisted primarily of former Beiyang colleagues, including Gao Jinchen 高近宸 (?-?, sobriquet Zihuo 子 矱 or Gusou 固叟), Ren Yuandao, Chen Daoliang 陳道量 (1898-1970, sobriquet Liaoshi 廖士), Chen Zhaoting 陳趙亭 (1899-1962, sobriquet Shirong 世 鎔 or Boye 伯冶), and Huang Maoqian 黃懋謙 (?-1950, sobriquet Moyuan 默 園 or Moyuan 嘿園). Some of these individuals had never fully embraced the legitimacy of the Nationalist government that had been established in Nanjing in 1928 and were resentful of the latter's 'mismanagement' of China and its failure to defend China against foreign invasion. They thus perceived collaboration as an opportunity for a political 'comeback' through which they could realise their political ambitions. Such sentiments were most clearly revealed in a poem by Liang Hongzhi written immediately after his return to Nanjing in February 1938. It boldly declares that 'I carry on one shoulder the thousand buckets of this world's sufferings' (shi nan qian jun wo yi jian 世難千鈞我一肩). In this poem, Liang compares himself to Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮 (181-234) and yang European Journal of East Asian Studies 19 (2020) 209-236 Guan Zhong 管仲 (725-645 bce), two famous literati chancellors who served in times of chaos.18 In contrast, perhaps partially owing to Li Xuanti's record of service in the Nationalist regime, Li could hardly declare a lack of responsibility for China's loss. In poems written while touring Nanjing in the spring after the Nanjing Massacre, he juxtaposes the beautiful images of an innocent nature in recovery19 with his own sentiments of sorrow, shame, nostalgia and confusion. A heptasyllabic poem on hearing that the crab apple in a garden has failed to blossom runs: 名園景物未全荒 Scenery in this famous garden has not been entirely wasted; 憔悴今聞到海棠 The spell of languishing, as I hear, is on the crab apple flowers. 淡月籠紅思夜好 I think of the fine nights when pale moonlight encased the red; 暖風催綠怨春忙 And lament the busy springs when warm winds hastened greening. 花時賓客詩猶綺 When the season comes, poems of visitors remain flowery; 劫後王孫盡作糧 After the catastrophe, princes and lords have become fertilisers. 自有聯床佳興在 Reclining on connected couches, we rejoice in poetry, 任渠蛙黽滿池塘 Despite the clamour of frogs swarming in a pond.20 Though multiple poems of Li Xuanti's written in 1938 hint at the Nanjing Massacre, none explicitly excoriate the Japanese invaders for being responsible. This poem is no exception. The first line implicitly points to the invasion and its consequences. The second couplet, however, is nostalgic, expressing the poet's longing for the innocent pleasures of the past. The third couplet is startling: the visitors to the garden are most likely collaborators returning to the fallen city, whose flowery poetry is in wanton ignorance of the carcasses rotting to The last line alludes to a sentence in the Book of Documents: 'When would the sun ever die? I swear to die with you!' (shi ri he sang yu ji ru xie wang 時日曷 喪予及汝偕亡) ('Oath of Tang' or Tang shi 湯誓). If we read the 'sun' (ri 日) as a reference to Japan (Nihon 日本), the 'Empire of the Sun' , this couplet may be Li's strongest expression of his anti-Japanese sentiments. Such explicit expressions of patriotism, however, disappear from his poems after he started to work for the collaborationist regimes. In a poem written in the autumn of 1938, he simply declares: 邦國已非衰朽事 Matters of the state are no longer the business of the senile; 卻從兒女漫思量 I leave it to the thoughts and plans of my children.26 After the foundation of the rng, Li Xuanti was reintegrated into the poetic circle around Wang Jingwei. That autumn he responded to three poems by Wang Jingwei, in which he praises Wang as being driven by a passionate concern for the land and by his humaneness to pick up the broken pieces of conquered territories,27 as a pillar holding up the falling sky28 and as a mythological bird trying to fill a surging ocean with pebbles carried in its bleeding beak.29 The last comparison refers to Wang's sobriquet Jingwei. In an ancient myth recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas,30 the jingwei bird is the reincarnation of a young princess drowned in the East Sea. In wrathful vengeance, the bird tirelessly carries pebbles in its bleeding beak to fill up a surging ocean. Adopted by Wang in 1905 when he joined the anti-Qing revolutionary movement, this name   were also frequent guests. When Li Xuanti moved into the Thatched Cottage, Chen Zhaoting became his next-door neighbour. Amicable, generous, well-connected and widely liked, Li was the centre of this social circle. He was almost never alone. But the company of such talented poet friends did little to alter Li's increasing despair. This was perhaps because it had become obvious that the Japanese puppet masters had little intention to grant the rng any actual autonomy or to realise 'peace' in China without total conquest. Regardless of altruistic ideals that may have originally motivated Wang Jingwei to collaborate (and may have motivated his followers to continue to believe in the virtues of collaboration), the rng's true status as a client regime, whose very existence was reliant on the support of a belligerent occupant hostile to its professed nationalist agenda, would never change.
Long Yusheng, who came to Nanjing as a legislator, redirected his energy to literature and founded Accord in October 1940. In its first issue, Li Xuanti published six poems entitled 'Poetry in the West Bridge Thatched Cottage' , formally introducing his new studio's name to the literary public. In these poems, he compares himself to Ruan Ji 阮籍 (210-263) and Tao  Tao's poem describes a farmer-recluse who has not abandoned human society. The 'distantness' of his hut is the result of the 'remoteness' of his mind. Similarly, Li Xuanti's 'Thatched Cottage' was in reality a villa close to the city centre of Nanjing. Yet, as his poem hints, his mind was already 'remote' from the centre of power. This sentiment is also revealed in another poem in this series describing the environment of his studio:34 散策騎驢從所欲 Following a cane, riding a donkey, I go wherever my heart desires; 未須一舸逐鴟夷 No need to chase Chiyi, away on a dinghy.
'Riding a donkey' refers to Ruan Ji, who was related to the Cao royal family of the Wei Dynasty. After the Sima family usurped the throne and founded the Jin Dynasty, Ruan Ji continued to serve in the court, but disengaged from its actual administration. Once the emperor asked Ruan Ji what he wanted, and he declared that he was fond of the city of Dongping and would like to be its mayor. His wish was granted. Ruan then rode a donkey (a commoner's means of transport) to Dongping and resigned there ten days later, claiming that he was satisfied.35 The second line refers to the story of Fan Li 范蠡 (536-448 bce), who helped the King of Yue to recover the land lost to the kingdom of Wu and 33 For the Chinese original, see Tao  'Qin Dynasty' is a synonym for all autocratic political regimes that have united, or tried to unite, the whole of China. For Li, the 'Qin Dynasties' referred to here are likely to include the Qing Dynasty, the Beiyang regime, the Nationalist regime and imperial Japan-but not the collaborationist regimes, as these lacked the authority to declare themselves 'Qin' . Li Xuanti thus jokes about himself being a 'loyalist'-with apparent sarcasm, since he had served in all of these regimes. However, this might also be a camouflaged apology, declaring his service to be a kind of 'reclusion in the court' , his mind disengaged from the politics of the day. It should be noted that this was the first time since joining the Reformed Government in February 1938 that Li had tapped into China's reservoir of cultural memory to construct a kind of cultural and political identity. As Jan Assmann's work on cultural memory points out, identity is sociogenic. 'Individual consciousness is sociogenic not only through socialization (from outside in) but also because it creates community by being the bearer of a collective self-image, or awareness of the "we".'38 Cultural memory is the collective framework of reference by which a community defines itself. In classical-style Chinese poetry, memory of the past is manifested not only through allusions (diangu 典故), but also through the choice of style, voice and motif, all having the potential of subtly nodding to a shared reservoir of cultural memory yang European Journal of East Asian Studies 19 (2020) 209-236 that only an insider can detect. This cultural memory can be further divided into the 'the archive and the store house' and the 'working memory'; the latter is actualised in a society's or in an individual's recollection.39 Li's reference to cultural paradigms suggests his active recollection of his identity, the result of his gradual emergence out of confusion and his achievement of certain clarity in understanding his choice. The paradigm into which he attempted to fit himself is that of a 'court recluse' cum 'loyalist' , philosophically 'disengaged' from the current power structure. In poems that he published in National Arts and in Accord over the following year and a half, he repeatedly elaborates upon this identity and justifies his self-comparison. In a poem matching Gao Jinchen's in rhyme, for instance, he declares:40 早躭禪悅心常住 Long indulged in the Chan pleasure, my heart is constantly still, 肯為功名骨盡枯 Unwilling to turn into withered bones for worldly feats. 大浸稽天塵劫耳 A flood brimming to the sky is the kalpa of this dusty world; 與君藕孔忍須臾 You, sir, and I shall hide in a lotus root's hole for a while.
Chan (Zen) is a Buddhist term literally meaning meditation. Kalpa, also a Buddhist term, refers to the catastrophe at the end of a cyclical world; after cosmic destruction, a new world will be born. Using this term to refer to the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li Xuanti signals his optimism that, after the horror of war, a new chapter of Chinese history may soon begin. He and his friends, the literati survivors, will hide from the destruction in a 'lotus root's hole'-a metaphor for his Thatched Cottage, sheltered by the Wang regime (the 'lotus root' itself) in a fallen city in the invaders' grip (the 'flood').
Another identity that Li often finds for himself is that of an exile, primarily in the disguise of the Song poet Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037-1101, style name Dongpo 東坡), who was banished to Huizhou (Guangdong Province) and Danzhou (Hainan Island), the margins of Chinese civilisation in the eleventh century. Li had long admired Su Shi. In this second phase, however, Li specifically compares himself to Su Shi in exile. This comparison started around the beginning of 1941. In a poem written on 11 February that year (after the Chinese New Year), Li com- In the Vimalakirti Sutra, one of the central canons of Chan Buddhism, the layman Vimalakirti famously pretends to be ill to test his visitors' wisdom. But perhaps Li Xuanti is also comparing himself to Wang Wei 王維 (699-761), the Tang Dynasty poet who adopted Vimalakirti as his style name: after the capital Chang'an fell, Wang Wei did not follow the Tang court into exile (as Du Fu did) but stayed in Chang'an and was forced to collaborate with the rebels' regime. After the dynasty recovered the capital, Wang remained in office but became a 'court recluse' . Su Shi, against all odds, survived Hainan to come back to the mainland. In this poem, Li again asserts himself to be a recluse and exile, marginalised in the bureaucratic system. The sense of shame in his early poems written under the Reformed Government is now replaced by defiance, which might suggest that Li eventually learned to reconcile himself to his collaboration, adopting even a gesture of moral confidence typical of Wang Jingwei and many of Wang's followers. One young friend who perfectly understood Li Xuanti was Qian Zhonglian. In his preface to a set of poems on a painting entitled 'The West Bridge Thatched Cottage' , he not only explicitly compares Li Xuanti to Wang Wei in the 'court recluse' phase of life, but concludes: 'Where is the Peach Blossom Spring? One hides in the ocean of humanity. A big disaster lies in the future; but here one finds pleasure. Thus I feel fortunate on the Master's behalf.'46 Li Xuanti's 'Thatched Cottage' was a refuge from the real troubles of the world.
The third phase of Li's identity transformation began in the spring of 1942, after the outbreak of the Pacific War. As Liu Wei-chih has analysed, in a poetic exchange with Wang Jingwei and Long Yusheng concerning a painting acquired by Ren Yuandao on the motif of Jing Ke's 荊軻 assassination of the King of Qin, Li Xuanti's two poems may be read as a 'subtle remonstration' suggesting that Wang play the assassin: pretending to surrender to Japan, only to strike with a proverbial 'dagger' at the final moment.47 From that late spring onwards, and 46 Qian  Poshek Fu, Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937-1945(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993, xi. European Journal of East Asian Studies 19 (2020) 209-236 of moral choices that defies such simplistic stereotyping' as the Manichean view of good versus evil. His book thus proposes a 'tripartite model of intellectual responses to the "grey zone" of the Japanese Occupation' , namely, resistance, passivity and collaboration.54 The collaborators he studied were a group of contributors to the journal Reminiscence (Gujin 古今), which 'provided many intellectual collaborators … with space for atonement, becoming the vehicle of a self-pitying, self-justifying, and reclusive literature that befitted yimin' .55 Through writing nostalgic lyrical essays, these classically educated collaborators found a 'personal space' in which to distance themselves from the politics of the day. For the most part, Fu's observation of the collaborators' sentiments of guilt, nostalgia and escapism also applies to the Nanjing group, though their chosen means of communication was classical-style poetry and they in general possessed greater cultural and social capital than the obscure contributors to Reminiscence that Fu examined. However, unlike a journal, Li Xuanti's Thatched Cottage was a concrete social space for their physical gathering. The Nanjing group was thus also bound by family ties, native place links, overlapping career paths, common hobbies and accidental encounters-not unlike any social group of artists or writers inhabiting a modern metropolis.
Li's was a relatively egalitarian space. Though Wang Jingwei, the head of the rng, does not seem to have joined any of Li's gatherings, senior leaders, including Liang Hongzhi and Ren Yuandao, were occasionally found here. Most regulars, however, were high-to mid-level bureaucrats who had known Li before the rng period. Gao Jinchen, Chen Zhaoting and Huang Maoqian all hailed from Fujian; they most likely had known Li Xuanti as a colleague in the Qing court or in the Beiyang government. Chen Daoliang had worked with Li in the Executive Yuan under Wang Jingwei and, earlier, in the Reformed Government under Liang Hongzhi. Mao Jingfan, like Li, descended from a prominent literati family and was appreciated by senior Tongguang poets. When they gathered in this social space, however, poetic skill became the predominant criteria of distinction, since an exchange of poetry was at the same time an intensely competitive game: poets would be assigned a rhyme category, if not a set of rhymes, and be given a limited amount of time (such as within the burning of an incense stick) to complete a poem; slow or dry wit invited embarrassment, as fellow poets were ruthless judges who delivered their verdicts in heart, if not in words.
These collaborators, in turn, connected their social circle to a broader sphere of intellectuals choosing to live under the occupation, who might resist joi- 54 Fu, Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration, xiv. 55 Fu,Passivity,Resistance,and Collaboration,111. sonal flowers such as osmanthus and plum blossom, and to complain about the extreme summer heat in Nanjing. Li Xuanti, a man known for his generosity, did not spare rare food items such as coffee, eel or 'drunken crabs' to treat his guests.56 This undoubtedly added to the popularity of his salons. 'Apolitical' as these poetic exchanges might appear to be, they helped to normalise the occupation, creating a sense of the continuity of Chinese national culture, despite or perhaps precisely because of it. The presence of Japanese sinologists in these exchanges, who sincerely shared their joy in classical Chinese poetry, was the most eloquent argument in supporting the Japanese wartime propaganda that China and Japan enjoyed a 'shared race and shared culture' (tongzhong tongwen 同種同文), and should thus be natural allies in a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The occupation paradoxically became a chance for the revival of traditional Chinese arts (poetry, painting and calligraphy included), marking a sharp contrast with the situation in Chongqing, where the modernist 'New Culture' had marginalised native Chinese cultural traditions,57 and in Yan'an, where Mao Zedong's red star was rising and a Rectification Movement was brewing to convince and compel intellectuals to 'learn the language of the people' . These exchanges thus created the illusion that a truly native and national Chinese culture was blooming under Japanese patronage. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the regime funded Li Xuanti's weekly salons.
The composition of Li's social circle also shows the murky boundary between collaboration and accommodation. After the war, Li's cousin Xuangong, like a number of other poets named in this paper, was broadly commended for refusing to serve the collaborationist state. But they found no difficulty in joining Xuanti's parties and wrote poems in sympathetic exchanges. Arguably, it was already a kind of 'sin' to survive under the occupation, instead of sacrificing one's life in resistance-more so if one sought to live an acceptably good life, thus accepting benefit from various actors whose political or economic power was ultimately dependent on the patronage or tolerance of the occupying force. To live was to negotiate with reality. The line separating collaboration from accommodation was drawn in sand. Between the most avid 'collaborationist' who fully subscribed to the occupier's agenda and the most unflinching resister, there was a broad grey zone of politics, morality and action which refuses a clear definition.  Art, and Film, 1937-1949(Leiden: Brill, 2013

Coda
The celebration of Lu You's birthday in 1943 appears to have been the last major social gathering at the Thatched Cottage. Towards the end of the year, Wang Jingwei's health rapidly deteriorated. By the end of January 1944, he was bedridden, besieged by high fever and incontinence. On 3 March, Wang was flown from Nanjing to Nagoya and would never set foot on Chinese soil again. The end was near. The ranking collaborators knew that Wang was their best hope for a post-war political deal; without him, the future was gloomy. It was unclear whether Li continued to receive state funding for his literary salons during Wang's illness or after his death. Very few of his poems from 1944 have survived. Wang Jingwei passed away in Nagoya in the afternoon of 10 November 1944. Li probably resigned and left for Shanghai soon after the funeral. Like most poets in his social circle lucky enough to survive the post-war purge, Li Xuanti in his remaining days would not talk about his collaboration again. Regardless of whether there was any justification for joining the Wang regime, the decision to do so was not worth defending. Amnesia and aphasia, it appears, were common diseases assailing the survivors of the rng who remained in mainland China. After the foundation of the prc, and despite his poverty, Li Xuanti continued to lead the life of a 'debonair scholar' , spending his days in 'elegant gatherings' and Peking opera theatres, probably at the cost of his friends. The social circle of traditionally educated elites provided a safe space for him to construct a stable cultural identity, which continued to transcend the politics and ideologies of the day. Again, cultural practices normalised life under otherwise abnormal circumstances. But those years were the last rays of sun before the red terror in the name of 'continuous revolution ' , starting in 1957, would rip open the social fabric of this life, leading eventually to the catastrophic Cultural Revolution. The Peking opera plays that Li wrote would be denounced as 'poisonous weeds' (ducao 毒草), to be replaced by 'Revolutionary operas' ( yangbanxi 樣板戲). Mei Lanfang's student Yan Huizhu 言慧珠 (1919-1966), whom Li also befriended and praised as a new 'Goddess of the Luo River' ,58 would commit suicide to defend her dignity. Li Xuanti's death in 1961 was thus rather opportune. He managed to hide 'in a lotus root's hole' from the cosmic flood after all. 58 Li Xuanti, 'Guan jiuzuo Luoshen ju zeng Huizhu' 觀舊作洛神劇贈慧珠 (To Huizhu, after watching the 'Goddess of the Luo River' , my old play), in Sutang shishi, 46.