In this Ming-era novel, historical narrative, raucous humor, and the supernatural are interwoven to tell the tale of an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Song dynasty. A poor young girl meets an old woman who gives her a magic book that allows her to create rice and money. Her father, terrified that his daughter's demonic nature might be discovered, marries her off. Forced to flee, she and others with supernatural abilities find themselves in the midst of a grotesque version of a historical uprising, in which facts are intermingled with slapstick humor and wild fictions. Attributed to the writer Luo Guanzhong, Quelling the Demons' Revolt is centered on the events of the rebellion led by Wang Ze in 1047-48. But it is a distorted, humorous version, in which Wang Ze's lieutenants show up as a comical peddler and a mysterious Daoist priest and a celebrated warrior appears despite having died many years earlier. Rather than fantastic adventures and supernatural marvels, the author points to human vanities and fixations as well as social injustice, warning of the vulnerability of any pursuit of order in a world plagued by demonic forces as well as mundane corruption. Although the story takes place long before the era in which it was written, ultimately Quelling the Demons' Revolt is the story of the Ming dynasty in Song masquerade, presciently warning of the dynasty's downfall. The novel is divided into chapters, but in many ways it is an arrangement of self-contained stories that draw on vernacular storytelling. This translation offers English-speaking readers a spirited example of social critique combined with caustic humor from the era of Luo Guanzhong.

In his preface, the anonymous author of Courtesans and Opium describes his book as an act of penance for thirty years spent patronizing the brothels of Yangzhou. Written in the 1840s, his story is filled with vice and dark consequence, portraying the hazards of the city's seedy underbelly and warning others against the example of the Fool. Chinese literature's first true "city novel," Courtesans and Opium recounts the illustrious career of a debauched soul enveloped by enthralling pursuits and romantic illusions. While socially acceptable marriages were arranged and often loveless, brothels offered men accomplished courtesans who served as both enchanting companions and sensual lovers. These professional sirens dressed in the latest styles and dripped with gold, silver, and jewels. From an early age, they were taught to excel at various arts and graces, which transformed the brothel into a kind of club for men to meet, exchange gossip, and smoke opium at their leisure. The Fool's fable follows five sworn brothers and their respective relationships with Yangzhou courtesans, revealing in acute detail the lurid materialism of this dangerous world-its violence and corruption as well as its seductive but illusory promise. Never before translated into English, Courtesans and Opium offers a brilliant window into the decadence of nineteenth-century China.

In the 300 years since its initial publication, Li Yu's book has been widely read in China, where it is recognized as a benchmark of erotic literature and currently enjoys the distinction of being a banned-in-Beijing classic.

In the three hundred years since its initial publication, Li Yu's The Carnal Prayer Mat has been widely read in China, where it is recognized as a benchmark of erotic literature and currently enjoys the distinction of being a banned-in-Beijing classic. The story centers on Scholar Vesperus, a handsome orphan and student of Zen. Before taking his monastic vows, Vesperus embarks on a career of licentiousness. His adventures as "hero of the boudoir, a champion of sex" take both comic and calamitous turns, until eventually he attains "enlightenment on the carnal prayer mat".

Li Yu, 1610-1680, was a brilliant comic writer and entertainer, a thoroughgoing professional whose life was in his work-plays, stories, a novel, criticism, essays, and poems. Patrick Hanan places him in the society of his day, where even his precarious livelihood, his constant search for patronage, did not dampen his versatility, his irreverent wit, or his jocund spirit. Li was also an epicure, an inventor, a pundit, and a designer of houses and gardens. He was an exceptional figure in Chinese culture for two reasons: his disregard of the authority of tradition, and his dedication to the cause of comedy.

Hanan uses the term "invention" in his title in several ways: Li Yu's invention of himself, his public image-his originality and inventiveness in a multitude of fields and the literary products of his inventiveness. With expert and entertaining translations Hanan explores the key features of Li Yu's work, summarizing, describing, and quoting extensively to convey Li's virtuosity, his unconventionality, his irreverence, his ribaldry. This is a splendid introduction to the art and persona of a Chinese master of style and ingenuity.

Published within a few months of each other in 1906, Stones in the Sea by Fu Lin and The Sea of Regret by Wu Jianren take opposite sides in the heated turn-of-the-century debate over the place of romantic and sexual love and passion in Chinese life. The Sea of Regret, which came to be the most popular short novel of this period, is a response to the less well-known but equally significant Stones in the Sea. Taken together, this pair of novels provides a fascinating portrait of early twentieth-century China's struggle with its own cultural, ethical, and sexual redefinition. Patrick Hanan's masterful translation brings together these novels -- neither of which has before been available in any foreign language -- in a single volume, with a valuable introduction and notes. A tour de force in the art of translation. 'The Sea of Regret' is not only accurate, but, in the typical Hanan fashion, it is succinct and elegant as well. Impeccable work from an eminent scholar of Chinese fiction and a master of prose. --Lee Ou-fan Lee, UCLA These two short novels are especially interesting for their insights into the debate in educated circles concerning marriage, family, and the status of women. The chaos in China caused by the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 is also vividly rendered in both works. Readers will find not only intrinsic interest but also historical relevance in these early modern novels. --Michael S. Duke, University of British Columbia Patrick Hanan is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of The Chinese Vernacular Story and The Invention of Li Yu and the translator of The Carnal Prayer Mat and A Tower for the Summer Heat.

Li Yu, considered a master of comedy in Chinese literature, was a novelist, playwright, and essayist in the 17th century. In this collection, patrick Hanan has translated six of the twelve stories in the Sh'ier lou collection, which is one of the most famous individual collections of vernacular stories from pre-modern China. With Hanan's introduction and notes, and containing Li Yu's emphasis marks, notes, and critiques, this volume should be of interest to students of Chinese literature and general readers alike.

Falling in love, with all its accompanying problems, was a subject of obsessive interest among writers and readers in the Ming Dynasty, when society held strictly to arranged marriages. The stories in this engaging collection all deal with this theme in very different ways, sometimes comically, sometimes tragically. They portray young people choosing their own lovers, resorting to ingenious stratagems and risky escapades in defiance of contemporary mores. Chosen to represent the best works from the great age of the vernacular story, they offer an admirable introduction to the world of Chinese fiction in this era. All of the stories in ""Falling in Love"" have been translated especially for this volume, and most appear here in translation for the first time. They are taken from two works, ""Constant Words to Awaken the World"" (Xing shi heng yan) and a related collection, ""The Rocks Nod Their Heads"" (Shi dian tou), both published in the early seventeenth century.

"It's such a pity! I, too used to think of money and love as entirely separate things." So begins this popular autobiographical novel, written by litterateur, inventor, and business tycoon Chen Diexian (1879-1940), a remarkable intellectual whose life spanned the old China and the new. Chen's novel is the story of his youth, and in it he chooses to focus on his amorous and erotic development-a rare subject in Chinese literature-revealing his passage from innocent boy, surrounded by females, to young man, armed with a new attitude toward money, business, and the women in his life. Chen's unusual narrative, intimately combining romance and exhibitionism, unfolds to us an intriguing material reality as well as a powerful emotional world and may well be the first extended account of Chinese childhood and youth. The novel is built on our narrator's relationships with the central women in his life: his mother; an affectionate nanny; his devoted wife by an arranged marriage; a tragic peasant girl; and above all, the girl next door and his most enduring love, known-after the instrument she plays-as Koto. Patrick Hanan's graceful translation brings us Chen's story at its disarming best, a popular romance that is at the same time original and distinctive in both voice and theme. First serialized in Shanghai in 1913, The Money Demon appears in English for the first time; included in an appendix is "The Koto Story," a short epilogue to the novel.