The Hsu-Tang Library presents authoritative and eminently readable translations of classical Chinese literature, in bilingual editions, ranging across three millennia and the entire Sinitic world.\nThe Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute by one of China's most famous authors builds on earlier dramatic works that had been inspired by the antics and travels of the Zhengde emperor (posthumous title Wuzong; r. 1506-1521) of the Ming dynasty. The Zhengde emperor was, despite his reign title ("Right Virtue"), a dismal failure as emperor. His life was given over to the pursuit of pleasure. When in Beijing he often left the palace in disguise and roamed the city incognito. He also made several long and elaborate trips to other parts of the empire, for instance one to Nanjing and Yangzhou, and one to the cities of Datong and Taiyuan in Shanxi. While these historical trips might have had a certain military purpose, the popular imagination saw them as informed by a search for beautiful women. In alternating prose and song, The Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute tells the tale of the emperor setting out for Datong in the disguise of a common soldier after his evil genius Jiang 
Bin has told him about the beauty of the three thousand courtesans in the red-light district of this garrison town.\nThis volume presents a fully annotated translation of all twenty-eight chapters of the work, preceded by an Introduction that provides context to the life and works of Pu Songling, the genre of "rustic songs" to which the work belongs, and the specific characteristics of the translated text.

The Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute: Songs of the Imperial Visit to Datong (The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature)

Literature & Fiction

Idema, Wilt L.

Songling, Pu

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

China's most important love comedy, Wang Shifu's Xixiangji, or The Story of the Western Wing, is a rollicking play that chronicles the adventures of the star-crossed lovers Oriole and Student Zhang. Since its appearance in the thirteenth century, it has enjoyed unparalleled popularity. The play has given rise to innumerable sequels, parodies, and rewritings; it has influenced countless later plays, short stories, and novels and has played a crucial role in the development of drama criticism. This translation of the full and complete text of the earliest extant version is available in paperback for the first time. The editors' introduction will inform students of Chinese cultural and literary traditions.

The Story of the Western Wing

Wang, Shi-Fu

West, Stephen H.

Dramas & Plays

University of California Press

One of the most exciting recent developments in the study of Chinese literature has been the rediscovery of an extremely rich and diverse tradition of women's writing of the imperial period (221 B.C.E.-1911 C.E.). Many of these writings are of considerable literary quality. Others provide us with moving insights into the lives and feelings of a surprisingly diverse group of women living in Confucian China, a society that perhaps more than any other is known for its patriarchal tradition.
Because of the burgeoning interest in the study of both premodern and modern women in China, several scholarly books, articles, and even anthologies of women's poetry have been published in the last two decades. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in other genres as well, including essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction. 
The authors have presented the selections within their respective biographical and historical contexts. This comprehensive approach helps to clarify traditional Chinese ideas on the nature and function of literature as well as on the role of the woman writer.

The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Grant, Beata

Harvard University Asia Center

This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania).
Despite the “nonhuman” turn in the humanities, studies of animals in Chinese culture are still quite limited in number, while studies of insects in literature are even rarer and tend to focus on only a few aspects, such as cricket fights. The available studies on insects in Chinese literature are almost exclusively limited to insects in Chinese classical poetry, and so provide only a very limited view of the many ways in which insects have been viewed in Chinese culture at large.
This book helps to fill this gap. The first part of this volume begins with the fascination of modern author Lu Xun with entomological literature and satiric animal tales from the West. The book then traces the characterization of individual insects in three thousand years of classical Chinese poetry, from the ancient Book of Odes to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), as emblems of virtues and vices. Separate chapters are dedicated to the selfless and diligent silkworm, the pure and outspoken cicada, the social organization of the ants and the bees (as well as the philandering tendencies of bees and butterflies), fighting crickets and disastrous locusts, slanderous flies, and sly mosquitoes, as well as body parasites as lice, fleas, and bedbugs. Each chapter includes extensive translations, highlighting lesser-known aspects of well-known poets and introducing original works by lesser-known authors.
Preceding the second part of the book is a short intermezzo devoted to insects in classical and vernacular narrative literature, which shows a preference for tales in which insects appear in human shape. The second part of the book delves into the popular literature of late imperial China, in which insects spoke their minds in the formal settings of weddings, funerals, wars, and court cases. A representative selection of such ballads and plays is discussed and translated and is followed by an epilogue, which contrasts the treatments of insects in Chinese and Western literature.
By contrasting the ways in which traditional Chinese belles lettres, traditional classical and vernacular literature, and popular songs and ballads treat insects, it becomes clear that each of these written traditions portrays insects in particular in its own way: as examples of virtues and vices, as fairies and demons in human guise, and as contentious characters speaking in their own voice. While some insects basically remain the same in all three traditions, other insects show unique characteristics in each tradition. Spiders, for instance, transform from wily hunters in classical poetry, to exhibitionists maidens in vernacular narrative, and to champions of justice in popular songs and ballads. Last but not least, the search for texts on insects reveals many works of considerable literary value which are presented in highly readable renditions.
Insects in Chinese Literature will be of interest to all persons who are interested in Chinese literature and comparative literature, all those who are interested in insects in Chinese culture at large, and all those who are interested in cultural entomology and animal studies.

Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology (Cambria Sinophone World)

Cambria Press

Despite the “nonhuman” turn in the humanities, studies of animals in Chinese culture are still quite limited in number, while studies of insects in literature are even rarer and tend to focus on only a few aspects, such as cricket fights. The available studies on insects in Chinese literature are almost exclusively limited to insects in Chinese classical poetry, and so provide only a very limited view of the many ways in which insects have been viewed in Chinese culture at large. 
This book helps to fill this gap. The first part of this volume begins with the fascination of modern author Lu Xun with entomological literature and satiric animal tales from the West. The book then traces the characterization of individual insects in three thousand years of classical Chinese poetry, from the ancient Book of Odes to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), as emblems of virtues and vices. Separate chapters are dedicated to the selfless and diligent silkworm, the pure and outspoken cicada, the social organization of the ants and the bees (as well as the philandering tendencies of bees and butterflies), fighting crickets and disastrous locusts, slanderous flies, and sly mosquitoes, as well as body parasites as lice, fleas, and bedbugs. Each chapter includes extensive translations, highlighting lesser-known aspects of well-known poets and introducing original works by lesser-known authors. 
Preceding the second part of the book is a short intermezzo devoted to insects in classical and vernacular narrative literature, which shows a preference for tales in which insects appear in human shape. The second part of the book delves into the popular literature of late imperial China, in which insects spoke their minds in the formal settings of weddings, funerals, wars, and court cases. A representative selection of such ballads and plays is discussed and translated and is followed by an epilogue, which contrasts the treatments of insects in Chinese and Western literature. 
By contrasting the ways in which traditional Chinese belles lettres, traditional classical and vernacular literature, and popular songs and ballads treat insects, it becomes clear that each of these written traditions portrays insects in particular in its own way: as examples of virtues and vices, as fairies and demons in human guise, and as contentious characters speaking in their own voice. While some insects basically remain the same in all three traditions, other insects show unique characteristics in each tradition. Spiders, for instance, transform from wily hunters in classical poetry, to exhibitionists maidens in vernacular narrative, and to champions of justice in popular songs and ballads. Last but not least, the search for texts on insects reveals many works of considerable literary value which are presented in highly readable renditions. 
Insects in Chinese Literature will be of interest to all persons who are interested in Chinese literature and comparative literature, all those who are interested in insects in Chinese culture at large, and all those who are interested in cultural entomology and animal studies.

Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology (Cambria Sinophone World Series)