Sanyan Stories: Favorites from a Ming Dynasty Collection

by Feng Menglong, Shuhui Yang, Yunqin Yang

Overview

Presented here are nine tales from the celebrated Ming dynasty Sanyan collection of vernacular stories compiled and edited by Feng Menglong (1574–1646), the most knowledgeable connoisseur of popular literature of his time in China. The stories he collected were pivotal to the development of Chinese vernacular fiction, and their importance in the Chinese literary canon and world literature has been compared to that of Boccaccio’s Decameron and the stories of One Thousand and One Nights.

Peopled with scholars, emperors, ministers, generals, and a gallery of ordinary men and women in their everyday surroundings—merchants and artisans, prostitutes and courtesans, matchmakers and fortune-tellers, monks and nuns, servants and maids, thieves and imposters—the stories provide a vivid panorama of the bustling world of imperial China before the end of the Ming dynasty.

The three volumes constituting the Sanyan set—Stories Old and New, Stories to Caution the World, and Stories to Awaken the World, each containing forty tales—have been translated in their entirety by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. The stories in this volume were selected for their popularity with American readers and their usefulness as texts in classes on Chinese and comparative literature. These unabridged translations include all the poetry that is scattered throughout the original stories, as well as Feng Menglong’s interlinear and marginal comments, which point out what seventeenth-century readers of the stories were being asked to appreciate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295994222
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	01/01/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Shuhui Yang is professor of Chinese at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Yunqin Yang is a simultaneous interpreter in the United Nations Secretariat.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Translators' Note xi

Chronology of Chinese Dynasties xiii

Stories from the Sanyan

1 Jiang Xingge Reencounters His Pearl Shirt 3

2 Yang Siwen Meets an Old Acquaintance in Yanshan 40

3 Yu Boya Smashes His Zither in Gratitude to an Appreciative Friend 59

4 Judge Bao Solves a Case through a Ghost That Appeared Thrice 74

5 Madam White Is Kept Forever under Thunder Peak Tower 89

6 Du Shiniang Sinks Her Jewel Box in Anger 122

7 The Oil-Peddler Wins the Queen of Flowers 141

8 The Leather Boot as Evidence against the God Erlang's Impostor 182

9 Over Fifteen Strings of Cash, a Jest Leads to Dire Disasters 206

Notes 225

Editorial Reviews

"An important addition to any collection supporting Asian literature in translation or Chinese history. . . . The three-volume set is invaluable. Highly recommended."

Choice

"Only by reading [the stories] in context . . . can we come to see in them the complexity of different discourses conditioning and competing with each other. And only with that realization can we fully appreciate the value of the first-ever complete English translation of the Sanyan and the significance of the translators’ contributions."

Chinese Literature

As a truly complete collection of vernacular stories, [this] clearly sets a new standard for the English-speaking world.

Review of Bibliography in Sinology