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"Footbinding Fiction."
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The female man
'The Female Man' is the story of four women from parallel universes. Joanna's world is like our own, Jeannine's world is a poorer, grungier version and Janet comes from a world where men have died off. Lastly we meet Jael, warrior and assassin.
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Amplification and Conclusion
WITH LIVES, WORKS, AND INFLUENCES now behind us, we can return to our frame of family and assess the differences between the writings of the Zhan brothers. For the most part, this assessment is based on the three reformist novels they produced: Zhan Xi’sLove among the Courtesans, on the one hand, and Zhan Kai’sChina’s New HeroinesandWomen’s Power, on the other. From it I conclude that the differences outweigh the similarities. (For the rather different look of the covers, see figures 3.1, 5.1 and 5.2.)Pearls in an Azure Seawill also be brought in, but only
Book Chapter
The lotus shoes
Love and loss. Sisterhood and betrayal. Little Flower and Linjing's fates are bound together. As a child, Little Flower is sold to Linjing's wealthy family to become a muizai. In a fit of childish jealousy over her new handmaiden's ladylike bound feet and talent for embroidery, Linjing ensures Little Flower can never leave her to ascend in society. Despite their starkly different places in the Fong household, over the years the two girls must work together to secure both their futures through Linjing's marriage. As the two grow up, they are by turns bitter rivals and tentative friends. Until scandal strikes the family, and Linjing and Little Flower's lives are unexpectedly thrown into chaos. Linjing's fall from grace could be an opportunity for Little Flower - but will their intertwined fates lead to triumph, or tragedy for them both?
BOOK
From a Courageous Maiden in Legend to a Virtuous Icon in History
For folk stories that often first take shape in oral tradition, a tale’s transformation into literary form requires careful analysis “not only of the tale itself, but also of the motives and values of those responsible for its metamorphosis” (Hallett and Karasek 17). The legend of Mulan is such a tale. Between the globalized and animated reconfiguration presented by Disney and its accredited Chinese source, “Ballad of Mulan,” stand numerous variations. This chapter investigates what “metamorphosis” the character Mulan and her story have undergone in China and how these changes are conditioned by different motives, values, and circumstances. Because some
Book Chapter
The Scholar-Novelist and Chinese Culture
In this essay I propose to discuss Ching-hua yuan (Flowers in the Mirror) as a ripe example of the scholarly novel and what that term implies in our understanding of its thought and structure. Ching-hua yuan is best known for its wit and humor, its erudition and wide coverage of miscellaneous information; but, far more intrinsically, it is an allegoric romance in total support of Confucian morality and Taoist wisdom. If it is, as has been enthusiastically proclaimed by modern scholars of the May Fourth era, a satire of women’s position in traditional Chinese society,¹ it is far less ambiguously
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The New Novel Before the New Novel—John Fryer’s Fiction Contest
The story of the modern Chinese novel, as it is often told by literary historians, begins with Liang Qichao, more specifically with his founding of the journal Xin xiaoshuo (New fiction) in Yokohama in 1902. In his advertisement for the journal Liang set forth the categories of subject matter he recommended, ranging from the historical and the political to the detective, romantic, and supernatural. Liang’s own Xin Zhongguo weilai ji (The future of new China), published in installments in New Fiction in 1902 and 1903, is generally considered the earliest of the “new novels,” and most of the famous novels
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Silken Slippers
DENG XIAOPING DIED without any title in the Chinese government or the Party. In fact, the former Party president, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, had withdrawn from the political scene entirely in his final days. Yet when he died, all Chinese flags were lowered to mourn him, and newspapers all over the world reported his death and his funeral. Jiang Zemin, the president of China, was pictured in theNew York Timescrying like a son at Deng’s funeral.
It didn’t matter that Deng had resigned his positions in the government, party, and the military force, or that he had Alzheimer’s. Deng
Book Chapter
The plum in the golden vase or, Chin P’ing Mei, volume four
This is the fourth and penultimate volume in David Roy's celebrated translation of one of the most famous and important novels in Chinese literature.The Plum in the Golden Vaseor,Chin P'ing Meiis an anonymous sixteenth-century work that focuses on the domestic life of Hsi-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. The novel, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of the narrative art form--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context.
Written during the second half of the sixteenth century and first published in 1618, ThePlum in the Golden Vaseis noted for its surprisingly modern technique. With the possible exception ofThe Tale of Genji(ca. 1010) andDon Quixote(1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature. Although its importance in the history of Chinese narrative has long been recognized, the technical virtuosity of the author, which is more reminiscent of the Dickens ofBleak House, the Joyce ofUlysses, or the Nabokov ofLolitathan anything in earlier Chinese fiction, has not yet received adequate recognition. This is partly because all of the existing European translations are either abridged or based on an inferior recension of the text. This complete and annotated translation aims to faithfully represent and elucidate all the rhetorical features of the original in its most authentic form and thereby enable the Western reader to appreciate this Chinese masterpiece at its true worth.
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