Jin Ping Mei

"The Golden Lotus" redirects here. For other uses, see Golden Lotus.
Jin Ping Mei

Wanli Era Edition
Author Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng ("The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling", pseudonym)
Original title 金瓶梅
Country China
Language Chinese
Media type Print

Jin Ping Mei (Chinese: 金瓶梅; pinyin: Jīn Píng Méi) — translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus — is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The author took the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (蘭陵笑笑生), "The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling,"[1] and his identity is otherwise unknown (the only clue being that he hailed from Lanling County in present-day Shandong).[2] The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596, and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610. The most widely read recension, edited and published with commentaries by Zhang Zhupo in 1695, unfortunately deleted or rewrote passages important in understanding the author's intentions.[3]

The explicit depiction of sexuality garnered the novel a notoriety akin to Fanny Hill and Lolita in English literature, but critics such as the translator David Tod Roy see a firm moral structure which exacts retribution for the sexual libertinism of the central characters.[4]

Jin Ping Mei takes its name from the three central female characters — Pan Jinlian (潘金蓮, whose given name means "Golden Lotus"); Li Ping'er (李瓶兒, given name literally means, "Little Vase"), a concubine of Ximen Qing; and Pang Chunmei (龐春梅, "Spring plum blossoms"), a young maid who rose to power within the family.[2] Chinese critics see each of the three Chinese characters in the title as symbolizing an aspect of human nature, such as mei (梅), plum blossoms, being metaphoric for sexuality.

Princeton University Press, in describing the Roy translation, calls the novel "a landmark in the development of the narrative art form – not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context...noted for its surprisingly modern technique" and "with the possible exception of The Tale of Genji (c. 1010) and Don Quixote (1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature."[5]

Plot

Chapter 4 illustration of Jin Ping Mei.

Jin Ping Mei is framed as a spin-off from Water Margin. The beginning chapter is based on an episode in which "Tiger Slayer" Wu Song avenges the murder of his older brother by brutally killing his brother's former wife and murderer, Pan Jinlian. The story, ostensibly set during the years 1111–27 (during the Northern Song Dynasty), centers on Ximen Qing (西門慶), a corrupt social climber and lustful merchant who is wealthy enough to marry six wives and concubines. After Pan Jinlian secretly murders her husband, Ximen Qing takes her as one of his wives. The story follows the domestic sexual struggles of the women within his household as they clamor for prestige and influence amidst the gradual decline of the Ximen clan. In Water Margin, Ximen Qing was brutally killed in broad daylight by Wu Song; in Jin Ping Mei, Ximen Qing in the end dies from an overdose of aphrodisiacs administered by Jinlian in order to keep him aroused. The intervening sections, however, differ in almost every way from Water Margin.[6] In the course of the novel, Ximen has 19 sexual partners, including his 6 wives and mistresses. There are 72 detailed sexual episodes.[7]

Evaluation

Ximen and Golden Lotus, illustration from 17th-century Chinese edition

For centuries identified as pornographic and officially banned most of the time, the book has nevertheless been read surreptitiously by many of the educated class. The early Qing dynasty critic Zhang Zhupo remarked that those who regard Jin Ping Mei as pornographic "read only the pornographic passages."[8] The influential author Lu Xun, writing in the 1920s, called it "the most famous of the novels of manners" of the Ming dynasty, and reported the opinion of the Ming dynasty critic, Yuan Hongdao, that it was "a classic second only to Shui Hu Zhuan." He added that the novel is "in effect a condemnation of the whole ruling class."[9] The American scholar and literary critic Andrew H. Plaks ranks Jin Ping Mei as one of the "Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel" along with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Journey to the West, which collectively constitute a technical breakthrough and reflect new cultural values and intellectual concerns.[10]

The story contains a surprising number of descriptions of sexual objects and coital techniques that would be considered fetish today, as well as a large amount of bawdy jokes and oblique but still titillating sexual euphemisms. Some critics have argued that the highly sexual descriptions are essential, and have exerted what has been termed a "liberating" influence on other Chinese novels that deal with sexuality, most notably the Dream of the Red Chamber. David Roy, the novel's most recent translator, sees an "uncompromising moral vision," which he associates with the philosophy of Xunzi, who held that human nature is evil and can be redeemed only through moral transformation.[8]

Authorship

The identity of the author has not yet been established, but the coherence of the style and the subtle symmetry of the narrative point to a single author.[11] The British orientalist Arthur Waley, writing before recent research, in his Introduction to the 1942 translation suggested that the strongest candidate as author was Xu Wei, a renowned painter and member of the "realistic" Gong'an school of letters, urging that a comparison could be made of the poems in the Jin Ping Mei to the poetic production of Xu Wei, but left this task to future scholars.[12]

The "morphing" of the author from Xu Wei to Wang Shizhen would be explained by the practice of attributing "a popular work of literature to some well-known writer of the period".[13]

Translations

A Chinese edition of the novel
An illustration of a fireworks display from a 1628-1643 edition of Jin Ping Mei from the Ming era.[14]
Translated with the assistance of the celebrated Chinese novelist Lao She, who because of the nature of the novel refused to claim any credit for its English version. It was an "expurgated", though complete, translation of the 1695 edition, as the more explicit parts were rendered in Latin.
Republished in 2008, as part of the Library of Chinese Classics. In 5 volumes as the book is in a mirror format with the simplified Chinese next to the English translation.[16]

Adaptations

Notes

  1. ↑ Michael Dillon, China: A Cultural and Historical Dictionary, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-7007-0439-6, pp.163-164
  2. 1 2 Lu (1923) p.408
  3. ↑ Roy (2006), p. xx-xxi.
  4. ↑ Charles Horner. "The Plum in the Golden Vase, translated by David Tod Roy". Commentary Magazine.
  5. ↑ Princeton University Press Online Catalogue
  6. ↑ Paul S. Ropp, "The Distinctive Art of Chinese Fiction," in Ropp, ed., The Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization. (Berkeley; Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 324-325.
  7. ↑ Ruan, Matsumura (1991) p.95
  8. 1 2 Wai-Yee Li, "Full-Length Vernacular Fiction," in V. Mair, (ed.), The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (NY: Columbia University Press, 2001). p. 640-642.
  9. ↑ Lu Xun. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (1923; Foreign Languages Press, 1959). Translated by G. Yang and Yang Xianyi. p. 232, 235.
  10. ↑ Andrew H. Plaks, Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), esp. pp. 497-98.
  11. ↑ Li (2001), p. 637-638.
  12. ↑ Arthur Waley, "Introduction," to Shizhen Wang, translated from the German of Franz Kuhn by Bernard Miall, Chin P'ing Mei: The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and His Six Wives. (London: John Lane, 1942; rpr. New York, Putnam, 1947.
  13. ↑ Liu Wu-Chi An Introduction to Chinese Literature)
  14. ↑ Needham, Joseph (1987). Science & Civilisation in China, volume 7: The Gunpowder Epic. Cambridge University Press. p. 140. ISBN 0-521-30358-3.
  15. ↑ Crossley, Pamela Kyle; Rawski, Evelyn S. (Jun 1993). "A Profile of The Manchu Language in Ch'ing History". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. Harvard-Yenching Institute. 53 (1): 94. doi:10.2307/2719468. JSTOR 2719468.
  16. ↑ Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng The Golden Lotus
  17. ↑ Horner (1994).
  18. ↑ Review: Golden Lotus - The Musical, MADDBUZZHK, September 13, 2014

References and further reading

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