Jack's Beijing Adventure (2): The Wall

The Great Wall of China (23/11/18)

I had two lectures to give: one on the Wednesday after I arrived, the other on the Wednesday I left. For the most part, the time in-between was free for sightseeing or "Academic exchange" (i.e. talking to colleagues about this and that).

I found that the one thing I was determined to do was to see the Great Wall. Admittedly there's a lot of it to be seen, but just one of the sections open to tourists would be enough for me. I've dreamed for so long of walking along it, from fort to fort.

Great Wall Certificate

Apparently there's a Chinese proverb that claims that "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man." So, yes, I'm afraid that I did fork out for a certificate to that effect, counter-signed by my guide Zhang Ping, together with an "official" photo of the event (which looks a bit better in its original frame, without the camera flash at the bottom.

wall anxiety

not without reason

it's pretty steep!

the view ahead

the view back

further vistas

It was rather a foggy day, as you can see from the greyness of many of the pictures, but given my general lack of fitness, that might have been just as well. I was certainly sweating after scaling some of these slopes!

the basic layout

it soon gets steep again

floodlights

a typical fort

graffiti

more graffiti

There's a lot of graffiti written up here and there, despite all the signs warning you of dire penalties if you disrespect the rules. There are a lot of them:

rules

padlocks

I presume these padlocks are left here by couples as proofs of eternal fidelity, just like the ones on the Pont Neuf in Paris.

wishing stone

I'm afraid I couldn't resist adding a New Zealand twenty-cent piece to the ones in this little wishing pool. Hopefully it will bring me good luck.

•

A long time back - twenty years ago, in fact - I wrote a poem called "Journey to the West," inspired by repeated readings of the four classic Chinese novels: The Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, Journey to the West, and The Red Chamber Dream.

The last part of that poem runs as follows. It seems appropriate, somehow:

Is it high?
It touches heaven.
Deep?
It reaches hell.

White clouds surround the mountain
black mists swim
red-blushing plums / jade bamboo
dark-green cypresses / blue pines
_____________________________

Ten-mile pavilion: no travellers leave
nine-faced heaven: stars have set
on eight harbours: boats are docked
in seven thousand cities: gates shut
six palaces: officials gone
five departments: ledgers closed
four seas: fishing lines sink
three rivers: waves subside
two towers: bells resound
one moon lights earth and sky

inscription

The True Story of the Novel (6): The Chinese Novel

Yao Yuxin: Hsiang-yun among the flowers (1978)
[from Cao Xueqin: Hung-lou Meng, chapter 63]

They went out to look, and sure enough found Hsiang-yun lying on a stone bench in a quiet spot behind an artificial mountain. She was sound asleep and covered with peony petals, which had floated over from all sides to scatter, red and fragrant, over her face and clothes. Her fan, dropped to the ground, was half-buried in fallen blossoms, too, while bees and butterflies were buzzing and flirting around her. And she had wrapped up some peony petals in her handkerchief to serve as a pillow. They all thought she looked both sweet and comical..."

– Tsao Hsueh-chin, A Dream of Red Mansions, trans. Yang Hsien Yi & Gladys Yang (1978): vol. II, p. 364.

Cao Xueqin

I've already had a fair amount to say on this subject at various times. My essay "In Love with the Chinese Novel: A Voyage around the Hung Lou Meng" appeared in brief 37 (2009): 10-28 (after being long-listed for the Landfall Essay Prize). I also put up a kind of bibliographical post with illustrations of classic Chinese novels here on the Imaginary Museum at roughly the same time.

If it does interest you, I recommend that you check out one or both of these pieces. There doesn't seem much point in repeating here what I've already written there. The topic is, however, a vast one, so I'm certainly not afraid of running out of things to talk about.

To summarise briefly, traditional Chinese critics have identified a canon of four - and only four - Great Classical Novels:

The Three Kingdoms: The Peach Garden Oath (1591)



1. Luo Guanzhong: Sānguó Yǎnyì [The Three Kingdoms] (c.1400)




The Water Margin: Lu Zhishen uproots a tree (19th century)



2. Shi Nai'an: Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn [The Water Margin] (late 14th century)




Journey to the West: The Four Pilgrims (Summer Palace, Beijing)



3. Wu Cheng'en: Xī Yóu Jì [Journey to the West] (1592)




Dream of the Red Chamber: The Crab-Flower Club (19th century)



4. Cao Xue Qin: Hóng Lóu Mèng [The Red Chamber Dream] (late 18th century)

Here are some of the principal English translations of each novel (all are fortunately now available in complete, scholarly versions):

Moss Roberts, trans.: The Three Kingdoms (1994)


The Three Kingdoms


1. Lo Kuan-Chung. San Kuo, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor. 2 vols. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1925.


2. Luo Guanzhong. Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel. Trans. Moss Roberts. Foreword by John S. Service. 1994. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press / Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.


3. Luo Guanzhong. Three Kingdoms. Trans. Moss Roberts. Foreword by John S. Service. 1994. 4 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2001.




John & Alex Dent-Young, trans.: The Marshes of Mount Liang (1994-2002)


The Water Margin


4. Buck, Pearl, trans. All Men are Brothers [Shui Hu Chuan]. 2 vols. New York: The John Day Company, 1933.


5. Shih Nai-an. Water Margin. Trans. J. H. Jackson. 2 vols. Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1963.


6. Weir, David. The Water Margin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978. [based on the BBC TV series]


7. Shi Nai’an & Luo Guanzhong. Outlaws of the Marsh. Trans. Sidney Shapiro. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980.


8. Shi Nai’an & Luo Guanzhong. The Marshes of Mount Liang. Trans. John & Alex Dent-Young. 5 vols. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1994-2002.
   
   • Vol. 1: The Broken Seals. 1994.
   • Vol. 2: The Tiger Killers. 1997.
   • Vol. 3: The Gathering Company. 2001.
   • Vol. 4: Iron Ox. 2002.
   • Vol. 5: The Scattered Flock. 2002.




Anthony C. Yu, trans.: The Journey to the West (1977-83)


Journey to the West


9. Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Monkey. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1942. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.


10. Low, C. C. & Associates, trans. Pictorial Stories of Chinese Classics: The Adventures of the Monkey God. 1975. 4 vols. Singapore: Canfonian Pte Ltd., 1989.


11. The Journey to the West. Trans. Anthony C. Yu. 4 vols. 1977-1983. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, 1982, 1980, 1984.


12. Wu Cheng’en. Journey to the West. Trans. W. J. F. Jenner. 1982. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990.


13. Tung Yueh. Hsi-yu pu. Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West. Trans. Shuen-fu Lin & Larry J. Schultz. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1978.


14. Pisu, Silverio. The Ape. Illustrated by Milo Manara. New York: Catalan Communications, 1986.


15. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season One: Episodes 1-13. Japan: Nippon TV, 1978.


16. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season One: Episodes 14-26. Japan: Nippon TV, 1978.


17. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season Two: Episodes 27-39. Japan: Nippon TV, 1979.


18. Monkey [“Saiyūki”]: Season Two: Episodes 40-52. Japan: Nippon TV, 1980.




David Hawkes, trans.: The Story of the Stone (1978-86)


The Red Chamber Dream


19. Tsao Hsueh-Chin. Dream of the Red Chamber. Trans. Chi-chen Wang. 1929. Preface by Mark van Doren. London: Vision Press, 1959.


20. Kuhn, Franz, ed. Hung Lou Meng: The Dream of the Red Chamber – A Chinese Novel of the Early Ching Period. Trans. Isabel and Florence McHugh. 1958. The Universal Library. New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1968.


21. Cao Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: A Chinese Novel by Cao Xueqin in Five Volumes. Trans. David Hawkes. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973-80.
    • Vol. 1: The Golden Days. 1973.
    • Vol. 2: The Crab-Flower Club. 1977.
    • Vol. 3: The Warning Voice. 1980.


22. Cao Xueqin. The Story of the Stone (Also Known as The Dream of the Red Chamber): A Chinese Novel by Cao Xueqin in Five Volumes, edited by Gao E. Trans. John Minford. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982-86.
    • Vol. 4: The Debt of Tears. 1982.
    • Vol. 5: The Dreamer Wakes. 1986.


23. Tsao Hsueh-Chin & Kao Ngo. A Dream of Red Mansions. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 3 vols. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978.


24. Wu Shih-Ch’Ang. On The Red Chamber Dream: A Critical Study of Two Annotated Manuscripts of the XVIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.

I suppose the first thing to say about these novels is that all they're very long; often available in a variety of versions, sometimes with different numbers of chapters; and that each of these chapters is carefully constructed, and generally introduced by a poetic couplet summarizing its contents.

Abridged or "adapted" versions can give you some of the flavour of the originals, but unfortunately they're bound by their very nature to miss out certain of the vital characteristics of these very particular masterpieces of the novelist's art: above all, the immense scope and inclusiveness of all four of these works.

Though they clearly build upon one another, each of the four has an atmosphere and style all its own:

• The Three Kingdoms is a kind of Chinese Iliad, an immense chronicle of war and intrigue spanning decades and vast terrains: a profoundly serious meditation on war and peace and statecraft.


• The Water Margin is equally complex, but far more popular and vernacular in tone. It chronicles the adventures of a group of Robin Hood-like outlaws, and is episodic in structure: serious and humorous by turns.


• The Journey to the West continues this emphasis on popular culture: in this case myths and folktales, but combines them with a wise, witty, and deeply disenchanted vision of the doings of all the creatures in Earth and Heaven. Wu Cheng’en's novel is, essentially, a satire on conventional religion, but one can't help feeling that the author remains agnostic about the true nature of the universe lying behind this absurd veil of appearances ...


• The Red Chamber Dream, finally, is a family chronicle - deeply autobiographical, we are assured, but transformed into a tapestry of poetry, philosophy and eroticism which rivals in intensity anything in Proust or Lady Murasaki. It's probably the most immediately approachable of these great novels, though the frustratingly fragmentary nature of the text means that only the first two thirds of the story seems to reflect accurately its author's original artistic intentions.

What else can one say? There they are. Read them. They're certainly as essential to any true understanding of the possibilities of the novel form as Tolstoy or Flaubert (not to mention Kafka or Joyce).

Once you have read them, though, a number of questions will no doubt arise for you. Why did only these four make the cut? What are all the other Classical Chinese novels like? Are they so inferior to these ones? How reliable is this particular piece of canon-making? Is there really a complete critical concensus about it?

Well, luckily the profusion of new translations of these and other Chinese novels in the second half of the twentieth century was accompanied with some marvellous works of literary analysis and commentary. The place to start remains C. T. Hsia's venerable The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (1968), a work which is unlikely to be superseded anytime soon (despite certain blindspots in his judgements of the individual novels).

Hsia enlarged the canon of "classic novels" to six, including the vast and sexually explicit Jīn Píng Méi [The Golden Lotus] (1618), as well as Wu Jingzi's satire on Confucian bureaucracy Rúlínwàishǐ [The Scholars] (1750). Both are now available in reliable contemporary English translations, luckily (though David Tod Roy's magisterial five-volume version of the Chin P’ing Mei was only completed this year - a couple of months ago, in fact):

The Golden Lotus: Hsi-men Ching with Golden Lotus (Ming dynasty)


The Golden Lotus


1. Egerton, Clement, trans. The Golden Lotus: A Translation, from the Chinese Original, of the Novel Chin P’ing Mei. 1939. 4 vols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.


2. 'Lanling Xiiaoxiaosheng'. The Golden Lotus: Jin Ping Mei. Trans. Clement Egerton & Shu Qingchun (Lao She). 1939. Rev. ed. 1972. Introduction by Robert Hegel. 2 vols. Tokyo / Rutland, Vermont / Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 2011.


3. Kuhn, Franz, ed. Chin P’ing Mei: The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and his Six Wives. Trans. Bernard Miall. Introduction by Arthur Waley. 1939. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1952.


4. Kuhn, Franz, ed. Ko Lien Hua Ying: Flower Shadows behind the Curtain: A Sequel to Chin P’ing Mei. Trans. Vladimir Kean. London: The Bodley Head, 1959.


5. Jin Ping Mei: Fleur en Fiole d’Or. 2 vols. Trans. André Lévy. 1985. Collection Folio 3997-8. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.


6. Magnus. Les 110 pillules, d’après Jin Ping Mei. Trans. Luca Staletti. 1986. Paris: l’Echo des Savanes / Albin Michel, 1991.


7. Roy, David Tod, trans. The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei. 5 vols. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1993-2013.
   • Vol. 1: The Gathering. 1993.
   • Vol. 2: The Rivals. 2001.
   • Vol. 3: The Aphrodisiac. 2006.
   • Vol. 4: The Climax. 2011.
   • Vol. 5: The Dissolution. 2013.




Wu Jingzi (1701-1754)


The Scholars


8. Wu Ching-Tzu. The Scholars. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1957. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973.

These suggested additions to the list have probably attracted almost as many English-language readers as the other four, given the immense popularity of Hsia's book. And, indeed, the first of them is unquestionably a masterpiece: one of the great novels of world literature. As for the second, its disjointed structure and the very targetted nature of its satire make it a little difficult for a non-Chinese speaking reader to judge. It's certainly not lacking in appeal, though:

David Tod Roy, trans.: The Plum in the Golden Vase (1993-2013)



• The Plum in the Golden Vase is probably the most erotically explicit of all great world novels. Its most recent translator, David Tod Roy, argues persuasively that this is part of the author's complex plan to show the necessary consequences of official corruption in his own day - for Hsi-Men Ching, the protagonist, read the Emperor, and so on down the chain. There's certainly little of the hedonistic romp about it - though some of the earlier, more selective translations did try to stress some of the more playful aspects of the action, trying to imply that this framework of morality was simply a kind of necessary smoke-screen. At least we're finally in a position to consider this question in detail, thanks to Roy's immense and painstaking work of translation and commentary ...




Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang, trans.: The Scholars (1957)



• The Scholars is the least immediately impressive of these classic Chinese novels, but it's certainly readable enough, and one can see a kind of Balzacian intelligence behind it, alert to the untapped possibilities of the novel form for social and intellectual commentary.

It's probably too early to judge whether English-speaking readers are now in a position to appreciate properly the range and scope of the traditional Chinese novel. Certainly Lu Hsun's Brief History of Chinese Fiction (1923-24) lists large numbers of works which are still completely unavailable in translation. Of those that are extant, The 16th-century Creation of the Gods has little beyond the excitement of incident to add to the technical innovations of the "big five" (the four + Chin P'ing Mei). Li Yu's Carnal Prayer Mat is far more witty and entertaining, like a kind of Chinese Fanny Hill, but probably not in itself a "great work" (whatever that means).

The one that really sounds interesting is Li Ju-Chen's Flowers in the Mirror (1828), unfortunately still available only in an abridged and (we're told) inadequate English translation. It is - apparently - a kind of Chinese Alice in Wonderland, with certain aspects of the Pilgrim's Progress mixed in. But since a large part of its appeal comes from the learned game-playing of its author's prose-style, it seems quite likely that it will remain untranslatable for the foreseeable future.

I've compiled a list here of some other striking works of Chinese fiction, short and long. I wish I myself owned more of the excellent critical works which have come out on the subject since C. T. Hsia's, but they tend to be very expensive to buy, and to go out of print pretty quickly: the major ones appear to be Andrew H. Plaks' Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel (1987), David L. Rolston's Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing Between the Lines (1997), as well as the same author's earlier collection of edited essays How to Read the Chinese Novel (1990). The only other considerable work on the subject I have a copy of is Robert E. Hegel's excellent (though very specific) The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China (1981).

Jin Ping Mei

Miscellaneous Chinese fiction:

1. Creation of the Gods [Fêng-shên yen-i] – 16th century
2. The Carnal Prayer Mat [Jou Pu Tuan] – 1657
3. Flowers in the Mirror [Ching hua yuan] – 1828
4. Feng Menglong (1574-1645)
5. Lu Xun (1881-1936)
6. Pu Songling (1640-1715)
7. Robert van Gulik (1910-1967)
8. Anthologies & Secondary Literature

---

Creation of the Gods [Fêng-shên yen-i] – 16th century


1. Low, C. C. & Associates, trans. Pictorial Stories of Chinese Classics: Canonization of Deities. 3 vols. Singapore: Canfonian Pte Ltd., 1989.


2. Gu Zhizhong, trans. Creation of the Gods. 2 vols. 1992. Beijing: New World Press, 1996.


The Carnal Prayer Mat [Jou Pu Tuan] – 1657


3. Li Yu. Jou Pu Tuan: The Before Midnight Scholar, or The Prayer-mat of Flesh. Ed. Franz Kuhn. 1959. Trans. Richard Martin. 1963. London: Corgi Books, 1974.


4. Li Yu. The Carnal Prayer Mat. Wordsworth Erotic Classics: Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1995.


5. Li Yu. The Carnal Prayer Mat. Trans. Patrick Hanan. 1990. Honolulu: University of Hawaí’i Press, 1996.


6. Li Yu. A Tower for the Summer Heat. Trans. Patrick Hanan. 1992. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.


Flowers in the Mirror [Ching hua yuan] – 1828


7. Li Ju-Chen. Flowers in the Mirror. Trans. Lin Tai-Yi. London: Peter Owen, 1965.


8. Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang, trans. Excerpts from Three Classical Chinese Novels: The Three Kingdoms, Pilgrimage to the West & Flowers in the Mirror. Beijing: Panda Books, 1981.


Feng Menglong (1574-1645)


9. Feng Menglong. Stories Old and New: A Ming Dynasty Collection. 1620. Trans. Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. Seattle & London: Washington University Press, 2000.


Zhou Shuren ['Lu Xun' / 'Lu Hsun'] (1881-1936)


10. Lu Hsun. Selected Stories of Lu Hsun. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1960. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978.


11. Lu Hsun. Old Tales Retold. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1961. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972.


12. Lu Hsun. Wild Grass. 1974. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1980.


13. Lu Hsun. Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976.


14. Lu Xun. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. Trans. William A. Lyell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.


15. Lu Xun. The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. Trans. Julia Lovell. Afterword by Yiyun Li. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2009.


16. Lu Hsun. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. 1923-24. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1959. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1982.


Pu Songling / P'u Sung-ling (1640-1715)


17. P’u Sung-ling. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Trans. Herbert A. Giles. 1916. Honolulu, Hawai’i: University Press of the Pacific, 2003.


18. Pu Songling. Strange Tales of Liaozhai. Trans. Lu Yunzhong, Yang Liyi, Yang Zhihong, & Chen Tifang. Illustrated by Tao Xuehua. Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, Ltd., 1982.


19. Pu Songling. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Trans. John Minford. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006.


Robert Hans van Gulik (1910-1967)


20. Van Gulik, Robert, trans. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An): An Authentic Eighteenth-Century Detective Novel. 1949. New York: Dover, 1976.


21. Van Gulik, Robert. The Haunted Monastery & The Chinese Maze Murders: Two Chinese Detective Novels. 1961 & 1957. New York: Dover, 1977.


Anthologies & Secondary Literature


22. Hegel, Robert E. The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.


23. Hsia, C. T. The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction. 1968. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.


24. Lévy, André, trans. Le Sublime Discours de la fille candide : Manuel d’érotologie chinoise. 2000. Picquier Poche 224. Paris: Philippe Picquier, 2004.


25. Ma, Y. W. & Joseph M. Lau, eds. Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.


Korean:


26. Kim Man-Choong. The Cloud Dream of the Nine: A Korean Novel – A Story of the Times of the Tangs of China about 840 A.D. Trans. James S. Gale. London: Daniel O’Connor, 1922.


Tibetan:


27. Tshe ring dbang rgyal. The Tale of the Incomparable Prince. 1727. Trans. Beth Newman. The Library of Tibet. New York: HarperPerennial, 1997.

The last two listed there, from (respectively) ancient Korea and Tibet develop a number of themes from such Buddhist-inspired works as The Journey to the West, but with some additional flavour from their own indigenous traditions.

I should also explain the (apparent) anomaly of listing the sinologist Robert van Gulik among the other authors above. Van GHulik first published a translation of a "genuine eighteenth-century" Chinese detective novel, Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, in 1949. He proceeded to follow this up with his own original series of crime novels starring the same character, which proved quite popular. It's certainly an unusual (possibly unique) example of direct influence between the Chinese and Western fictional traditions, even though the results read (to me, at any rate) a little on the wooden side.

I guess I began this post with a quote from the Hung Lou Meng to try and give you something of the half-realistic, half-idealised atmosphere of that particular novel. I'll close, instead, with a famous scene from The Three Kingdoms where the warlord Cao Cao reveals his true nature:

Statue of Cao Cao

During his stay in Lü Boshe's house, Cao Cao overheard the sharpening of knives and a conversation among Lü's servants about whether to "kill or to tie up first", and he suspected that Lü was pretending to be hospitable towards him while actually plotting to harm him. He and Chen Gong dashed out and indiscriminately killed everyone in Lü Boshe's household. Later, they discovered that the servants were actually talking about slaughtering a pig for the feast and that they had killed innocent people. It was too late for regrets, so Cao Cao and Chen Gong immediately packed their belongings and left the house. Along the way, they met Lü Boshe, who was returning from his errand. When Lü Boshe asked them to stay with him, Cao Cao asked, "Who's that behind you?" When Lü Boshe turned around, Cao Cao stabbed him from behind and killed him. Chen Gong was shocked and he questioned Cao Cao, "Just now, you made a genuine mistake when you killed those people. But what about now?" Cao Cao replied, "If Lü Boshe goes home and sees his family members all dead, do you think he'll let us off? If he brings soldiers to pursue us, we'll be in deep trouble." Chen Gong said, "It's a grave sin to kill someone with the intention of doing so." Cao Cao remarked, "I'd rather do wrong to the world than allow the world to do wrong to me." Chen Gong did not respond and he left Cao Cao that night.

That final comment of Cao Cao's:

寧我負人，毋人負我！
nìng wǒ fù rén, wú rén fù wǒ!
"I'd rather do wrong to others than allow them to do wrong to me!"

has become proverbial. In Luo Guanzhong's novel, however, the original wording, used by the historical Cao Cao in 189 CE, has been subtly altered to read:

寧教我負天下人，休教天下人負我
"I'd rather do wrong to the world than allow the world to do wrong to me."

Statue of Luo Guanzhong

Chinese critic Yi Zhongtian claims, in a 2006 essay on the Three Kingdoms, that Luo "deliberately changed the words in the quote to reflect that Cao Cao had no sense of remorse because 'world' [lit. "people under Heaven"] carries greater weight than 'others' [lit. "people"], so as to enhance Cao's image as a villain in his novel."

Whether that's true or not, it gives us a vivid sense of the delicate balance between historical truth and fictional interpretation Lou tries to maintain throughout this most revered of the classical Chinese novels.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Classical Chinese Novels

[Hung Lou Meng]





[Bao-yu & Dai-yu]





[Monkey]





[Journey to the West & The Scholars]





[The Canonisation of Deities]

An Illustrated Bibliography of My Collection:

NB: For more of my thoughts on these novels, see my essay "In Love with the Chinese Novel" on my Opinions website.

•

1) The Three Kingdoms [San-kuo-chih-yen-i]
– c.1400

"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide." Set in the second century AD, at the end of the Han era, this celebrated historical novel contains far more fact than fiction. The precise proportions of each are difficult to estimate. What remains beyond question is the depth and complexity of this 14th-century masterwork:

a) Lo Kuan-Chung. San Kuo, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Trans. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor. 2 vols. Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1925.


b) Luo Guanzhong. Three Kingdoms. Trans. Moss Roberts. 1995. 4 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2001.

•

2) The Water Margin [Shui Hu Chuan]
– late 14th century

This story of a group of Chinese Robin Hoods has inspired films, TV series, vernacular novels and comics. Pearl Buck translated it in the 1930s, but the Beijing Foreign Languages Press edition is probably still the most entertaining to read. I have to admit that I haven't yet had a chance to examine John & Alex Dent-Young's complete new 5-volume translation (1994-2003), though:

a) Buck, Pearl, trans. All Men are Brothers [Shui Hu Chuan]. New York: The John Day Company, 1933.


b) Shih Nai-an. Water Margin. Trans. J. H. Jackson. 2 vols. Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1963.


c) Shi Nai’an & Luo Guanzhong. Outlaws of the Marsh. Trans. Sidney Shapiro. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980.


d) Weir, David. The Water Margin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978. [based on the BBC TV series]

•

3) The Golden Lotus [Chin P’ing Mei]
– 1618

Reputed to be the most extensive and notorious work of pornography in world literature, the Chin P'ing Mei is actually far more than that: with its grasp of human psychology and mastery of complex narrative forms, its author probably created the world's first realist novel:

a) Egerton, Clement, trans. The Golden Lotus: A Translation, from the Chinese Original, of the Novel Chin P’ing Mei. 1939. 4 vols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.


b) Kuhn, Franz, ed. Chin P’ing Mei: The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and his Six Wives. Trans. Bernard Miall. 1939. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1952.


c) Kuhn, Franz, ed. The Love Pagoda: The Amorous Adventures of Hsi Men and his Six Wives. Trans. Bernard Miall. Abridged and introduced by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. Chatsworth, CA: Brandon Books, 1965.


d) Kuhn, Franz, ed. Ko Lien Hua Ying: Flower Shadows behind the Curtain: A Sequel to Chin P’ing Mei. Trans. Vladimir Kean. London: The Bodley Head, 1959.


e) Magnus. Les 110 pillules, d’après Jin Ping Mei. Trans. Luca Staletti. 1986. Paris: l’Echo des Savanes / Albin Michel, 1991.


f) Roy, David Tod, trans. The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei. 5 vols. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1993-2013.

Vol. 1: The Gathering (1993)

Vol. 2: The Rivals (2001)

Vol. 3: The Aphrodisiac (2006)


Vol. 4: The Climax (2011)




Vol. 5: The Dissolution (2013)

•


4) Journey to the West [Hsi-yu Chi]
– 1592

"The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!" Whether or not you remember that cult Japanese TV series of the late 70s, you're in for a treat if you decide to follow these four pilgrims, Tripitaka, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy, on their Journey to the West:

a) Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Monkey. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1942. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.


b) Low, C. C. & Associates, trans. Pictorial Stories of Chinese Classics: The Adventures of the Monkey God. 1975. 4 vols. Singapore: Canfonian Pte Ltd., 1989.


c) The Journey to the West. Trans. Anthony C. Yu. 4 vols. 1977-1983. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, 1982, 1980, 1984.


d) Tung Yueh, Hsi-yu pu. Tower of Myriad Mirrors: A Supplement to Journey to the West. Trans. Shuen-fu Lin & Larry J. Schultz. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1978.


Wu Cheng’en. e) Journey to the West. Trans. W. J. F. Jenner. 1982. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990.


f) Pisu, Silverio. The Ape. Illustrated by Milo Manara. New York: Catalan Communications, 1986.

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5) Creation of the Gods [Fêng-shên yen-i]
– 16th century

Combining the historical overview of the Three Kingdoms with the magic realism of Monkey, this bizarre novel deserves to be far better known. In its crazy eclecticism, it resembles Salman Rushdie more than the Socialist Realist fiction advocated by Mao:

a) Low, C. C. & Associates, trans. Pictorial Stories of Chinese Classics: Canonization of Deities. 3 vols. Singapore: Canfonian Pte Ltd., 1989.


b) Gu Zhizhong, trans. Creation of the Gods. 2 vols. 1992. Beijing: New World Press, 1996.

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6) The Carnal Prayer Mat [Jou Pu Tuan]
– 1657

I guess this novel owes its popularity to European fascination with the "Floating World" genre. It's really more comic than pornographic, but its author was certainly a complex character in his own right (as Patrick Hanan reveals in his 1988 biography The Invention of Li Yu):

a) Li Yu. Jou Pu Tuan: The Before Midnight Scholar, or The Prayer-mat of Flesh. Ed. Franz Kuhn. 1959. Trans. Richard Martin. 1963. London: Corgi Books, 1974.


b) Li Yu. The Carnal Prayer Mat. Trans. Patrick Hanan. 1990. Honolulu: University of Hawaí’i Press, 1996.


c) Li Yu. A Tower for the Summer Heat. Trans. Patrick Hanan. 1992. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.


d) Li Yu. The Carnal Prayer Mat. Wordsworth Erotic Classics: Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1995.

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7) The Scholars [Ju-lin wai-shih]
– mid 18th century

Episodic rather than tightly-plotted, The Scholars is more a compendium of telling anecdotes and character studies than a conventional novel in the European sense. Invaluable as a guide to the baroque excesses of Confucian examination system, though:

a) Wu Ching-Tzu. The Scholars. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1957. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973.

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8) The Red Chamber Dream [Hung Lou Meng]
– late 18th century

The unquestioned masterpiece of the Chineses novel, and one of the great novels of world literature, the Hung Lou Meng had to wait till the 1970s for an adequate English translation to appear. It's ahrd to know what to compare it to: as perverse (in its way) as Lolita, it combines this with the nostalgic charm of Proust and the satirical realism of Gogol's Dead Souls:

a) Tsao Hsueh-Chin. Dream of the Red Chamber. Trans. Chi-chen Wang. 1929. Preface by Mark van Doren. London: Vision Press, 1959.


b) Kuhn, Franz, ed. Hung Lou Meng: The Dream of the Red Chamber – A Chinese Novel of the Early Ching Period. Trans. Isabel and Florence McHugh. 1958. The Universal Library. New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1968.


c) Cao Xueqin. The Story of the Stone: A Chinese Novel by Cao Xueqin in Five Volumes. Trans. David Hawkes. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973-80.

Vol. 1: The Golden Days (1973)
Vol. 2: The Crab-Flower Club (1977)
Vol. 3: The Warning Voice (1980)

Cao Xueqin. The Story of the Stone (Also Known as The Dream of the Red Chamber): A Chinese Novel by Cao Xueqin in Five Volumes, edited by Gao E. Trans. John Minford. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982-86.

Vol. 4: The Debt of Tears (1982)
Vol. 5: The Dreamer Wakes (1986)

d) Tsao Hsueh-Chin & Kao Ngo. A Dream of Red Mansions. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 3 vols. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978.


e) Wu Shih-Ch’Ang. On The Red Chamber Dream: A Critical Study of Two Annotated Manuscripts of the XVIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961.

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9) Flowers in the Mirror [Ching hua yuan]
– 1828

A slight but amusing fantasy. In its analysis of dreams, it anticipates Lewis Carroll. In its somewhat ponderous allegorical machinery, it resembles Sylvie and Bruno rather more than Alice, however:

a) Li Ju-Chen. Flowers in the Mirror. Trans. Lin Tai-Yi. London: Peter Owen, 1965.


b) Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang, trans. Excerpts from Three Classical Chinese Novels: The Three Kingdoms, Pilgrimage to the West & Flowers in the Mirror. Beijing: Panda Books, 1981.

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10) Short Stories

Pu Song-Ling's collection of sttrange tales is the real treasure trove here. Surely someone could afford to commission a complete English translation? There's already one available in French. Feng Meng-lung's compilation is also well worth a look:

a) Acton, Harold & Lee Yi-Hsieh, trans. Four Cautionary Tales. London: John Lehmann, 1947.


b) Bauer, Wolfgang & Herbert Fiske, eds. The Golden Casket: Chinese Novellas of Two Millennia. 1959. Trans. Christopher Levenson. 1964. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.


c) Ma, Y. W. & Joseph M. Lau, eds. Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.


d) P’u Sung-Ling. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Trans. Herbert A. Giles. 1916. Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2003.


e) Pu Songling. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Trans. John Minford. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006.


f) Van Gulik, Robert, trans. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An): An Authentic Eighteenth-Century Detective Novel. 1949. New York: Dover, 1976.


g) Van Over, Raymond, ed. Smearing the Ghost’s Face with Ink: A Chinese Anthology. 1973. London: Picador, 1982.


h) Yang, Shuhui & Yunqin, trans. Stories Old and New: A Ming Dynasty Collection, compiled by Feng Menglong. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 2000.


i) Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang, trans. The Courtesan’s Jewel Box: Chinese Stories of the XIth-XVIIth Centuries. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981.


j) Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang, trans. The Dragon King’s Daughter: Ten Tang Dynasty Stories. 1954. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1980.

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11) History & Memoirs

Shen Fu's book is delightful, rivalling some of the great Heian Japanese memoirs and diaries. Ssu Ma Chien's historiography is indispensable for anyone interested in the evolution of the Chinese prose tradition:

a) Shen Fu. Six Records of a Floating Life. Trans. Leonard Pratt & Chiang Su-Hui. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.


b) Szuma Chien. Selections from Records of the Historian. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1979.

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12) General

C. T. Hsia's remains the classic, groundbreaking work in this field. Lu Hsun is also worth reading, however. No doubt it's a field which will grow and grow over time:

a) Birch, Cyril & Donald Keene, eds. Anthology of Chinese Literature. 1965. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.


b) Chai, Ch’u & Winberg Chai, eds. A Treasury of Chinese Literature: A New Prose Anthology including Fiction and Drama. 1965. New York: Thomas J. Cowell Company, 1974.


c) Hsia, C. T. The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction. 1968. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.


d) Lu Hsun. A Brief History of Chinese Fiction. 1923-24. Trans. Yang Hsien-Yi & Gladys Yang. 1959. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1982.