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

I recommend this book, in the strongest possible terms, to anyone interested in the novel form in general, in Chinese literature in particular, or in the translation of Chinese literature.' -Shuhui Yang, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, and Reviews The puns and various other kinds of word plays that abound in the Chin P'ing Mei are so difficult to translate that I can't help 'slapping the table in amazement' each time I see evidence of Roy's masterful rendition of them. Praise for previous volumes: 'Clearly David Roy is the greatest scholar-translator in the field of premodern vernacular Chinese fiction.

I wholeheartedly recommend The Plum to anyone interested in Chinese literature, culture, and history, and look forward to the publication of the final volume of Roy's translation. Reading The Plum can help scholars understand the research that has been conducted on this novel and help them develop new directions for future research. Most important of all, The Plum represents the culmination of Roy's life-long devotion to research on fin Ping Mei and demonstrates Roy's encyclopedic knowledge of Jin Ping Mei scholarship.

English-speaking readers can, for the first time, appreciate one of the masterpieces of Chinese fiction in its entirety, thanks to Roy's diligent and careful work. Roy's superb translation skills preserve the subtleties in the original Chinese novel. Praise for previous volumes: 'Reading Roy's translation is a remarkable experience.' -Robert Chatain, Chicago Tribune Review of Booksīoth the fourth volume of The Plum and the previous three volumes are top-notch English translation of traditional Chinese fiction. Its readers in the late Ming period likely hid it under their bedcovers. The eight hundred or so men, women, and children who appear in the book cover a breath-taking variety of human types, and encompass pretty much every imaginable mood and genre-from sadism to tenderness, from light humor to philosophical musings, from acute social commentary to outrageous satire.' -Jonathan Spence, New York Review of Books 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. Praise for the previous volumes: '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.

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