Die beneath the peony and still be a romantic ghost

“Die beneath the peony and still be a romantic ghost” is Duan Zhengchun’s gallant, self-dramatizing way of imagining death in a lover’s hands. In the scene with Madam Ma, the saying becomes grimly literal: stripped of his martial arts and bound with ox tendon, he meets her violence with teasing words, recasting an act of revenge as a romantic end.

Meaning and Use

The expression rests on a contrast between death’s physical brutality and the lover’s language of beauty. Duan Zhengchun recalls a past promise that Madam Ma could bite flesh from his body, then declares that dying beneath her hands would be more fitting than an illness or even a valiant death defending the country. His idea of romance is inseparable from theatricality: he presents his own death as a final scene worthy of his image of himself.

The Vow Made Literal

The old vow had begun as flirtatious talk between a man and a woman. Now Duan Zhengchun knows that refusing Madam Ma’s proposal to bind him would not prevent her from finding another cruel method. He consents, and she pulls his hands behind his back and secures them with an ox-tendon rope, tightening seven or eight knots. His martial arts have vanished, so even under ordinary circumstances he would not be able to escape quickly; in his weakened state, he is entirely at her mercy.

Madam Ma says she hates his legs because he once left without a trace, then twists his thigh. Later she bites a piece of flesh from his shoulder. She spits it onto the ground and invokes his promise, calling the violence an expression of love. The phrase’s romantic conceit thus collides with the concrete scene: blood, restraint, and deliberate bodily harm occupy the place of the peony’s conventional beauty.

Irony and Narrative Function

Duan Zhengchun continues to joke while facing death, describing Madam Ma’s method as the fulfillment of his dream of dying by the teeth of the most beautiful woman of the age. He argues that such an act could only follow a romance between them; another man’s offer of jewels, however lavish, would not make her bite him. His speech is both a claim about their intimacy and an attempt to give meaning to an ordeal he cannot control.

The scene also makes the saying painfully ironic. Duan Zhengchun’s polished romantic performance does not soften Madam Ma’s violence or undo his helplessness. Outside the window, Xiao Feng watches and admires Duan Zhengchun’s ability to make teasing remarks in a critical moment, while Qin Hongmian and Ruan Xingzhu, terrified that his life may end at any time, silently condemn Xiao Feng for not intervening. The expression therefore gathers the scene’s opposing responses to danger: bravado from the captive, vengeance from Madam Ma, and fearful helplessness from the witnesses.