The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei by Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng

Roy's words, intended 'to express in the most powerful metaphor available to him the author's contempt for the sort of persons who indulge in them.' The novel is a sprawling panorama of life and times in urban China, allegedly set safely in the Sung dynasty, but transparently contemporary to the author's late sixteenth-century world, as scores of internal references demonstrate. 't is time to remind ourselves that The Plum in the Golden Vase is not just about sex, whether the numerous descriptions of sexual acts throughout the novel be viewed as titillating, harshly realistic, or, in Mr. Its readers in the late Ming period likely hid it under their bedcovers.'-Amy Tan, New York Times Book Review Replete with convincing portrayals of the darker side of human nature, it should appeal to anyone interested in a compelling story, compellingly told. This translation and its annotation aim to faithfully represent and elucidate all the rhetorical features of the original in its most authentic form and thereby enable the Western reader to appreciate this Chinese masterpiece at its true worth. This is partly because all of the existing European translations are either abridged or based on an inferior recension of the text. Although its importance in the history of Chinese narrative has long been recognized, the technical virtuosity of the author, which is more reminiscent of the Dickens of Bleak House, the Joyce of Ulysses, or the Nabokov of Lolita than anything in earlier Chinese fiction, has not yet received adequate recognition. 1010) and Don Quixote (1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature. With the possible exception of The Tale of Genji (ca. Written during the second half of the sixteenth century and first published in 1618, The Plum in the Golden Vase is noted for its surprisingly modern technique. The novel, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of the narrative art form-not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context. The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei is an anonymous sixteenth-century work that focuses on the domestic life of Hsi-men Ch’ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. This is the third volume in David Roy’s celebrated translation of one of the most famous and important novels in Chinese literature.

The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei by Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng