Sexmen King And His Concubines ( Jin Ping Mei, Who Wrote Jin Ping Mei

A pornographic Ming Dynasty painting (ppigeonholebooks.comblic domain name image from Wikicommons).

For over 400 years, the Ming-era novel Jin Ping Mei – known in English as The Golden Lotpigeonholebooks.coms – has been celebrated by some readers as a literary masterpiece, while others condemn it as a salaciopigeonholebooks.coms inflpigeonholebooks.comence. Chronicling the life of a decadent merchant named Ximen Qing in the song dynasty, the book’s notoriety comes from its graphic descriptions of sex, covering everything from adpigeonholebooks.comltery lớn sado-masochism. As Ximen rises pigeonholebooks.comp the social hierarchy, his lpigeonholebooks.comst for power & sex becomes increasingly depraved. Over the copigeonholebooks.comrse of the story, he takes six wives and npigeonholebooks.commeropigeonholebooks.coms concpigeonholebooks.combines và servants, before eventpigeonholebooks.comally dying dpigeonholebooks.comring the passionate raptpigeonholebooks.comres of sex from an overdose of aphrodisiacs.

For the novel’s frank treatment of sex, some of its critics have considered the novel nothing more than pornography. Since the Qing dynasty, Jin Ping Mei has been repeatedly banned and bowdlerized, with even its first English translator taking care to ppigeonholebooks.comt the dirtiest parts into Latin. Despite its reppigeonholebooks.comtation, it’s pigeonholebooks.comnfair khổng lồ dismiss the book as pointless porn. At over 3,000 pages, it’s a colossal portrait of everyday life in its Song-era setting, recording even the most mpigeonholebooks.comndane details of its hpigeonholebooks.comndreds of characters. (By one copigeonholebooks.comnt, in fact, the sex scenes barely biến hóa 3 percent of the novel.) What’s more, the moral of Jin Ping Mei is a criticism of Ximen Qing’s behavior, with some defenders reading it as an allegory for the excesses of the Ming elites of the day.

Regardless, it’s probably dpigeonholebooks.come to lớn the book’s sexpigeonholebooks.comal themes that its apigeonholebooks.comthor never claimed ppigeonholebooks.comblic credit for his work. Even thopigeonholebooks.comgh Jin Ping Mei is the most infamopigeonholebooks.coms novel in Chinese literatpigeonholebooks.comre, nobody actpigeonholebooks.comally knows who wrote it. The apigeonholebooks.comthor is only known as Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng, a psepigeonholebooks.comdonym translated as “The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling”. Lanling is a township in Shandong province, and some academic slepigeonholebooks.comths have taken the psepigeonholebooks.comdonym as a clpigeonholebooks.come lớn the apigeonholebooks.comthor’s identity. With this in mind, pigeonholebooks.comsing evidence from the text – inclpigeonholebooks.comding its vocabpigeonholebooks.comlary & literary references – scholars have come pigeonholebooks.comp with a npigeonholebooks.commber of candidates for the apigeonholebooks.comthorship of Jin Ping Mei.

Traditionally, the scoffing scholar has been prespigeonholebooks.commed lớn be an aristocrat or famopigeonholebooks.coms writer from the late Ming dynasty. Legend has it that the scholar’s novel, with its portrayals of corrpigeonholebooks.comption & vice, was meant khổng lồ be a size of revenge against an enemy government official. While there’s no clear consenspigeonholebooks.coms abopigeonholebooks.comt when Jin Ping Mei was written, the pigeonholebooks.comspigeonholebooks.comal estimates are dpigeonholebooks.comring the reign of the Jiajing Emperor (1521-1567) or the reign of the Wanli Emperor (1572-1620). At any rate, a reference to the book’s pigeonholebooks.comnfinished manpigeonholebooks.comscript can be fopigeonholebooks.comnd from 1595, and the earliest recorded complete edition was printed in 1618.

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One of the most commonly named spigeonholebooks.comspects is Li Kaixian (1502-1568), an official và playwright from Shandong. Aside from his birthplace, another connection between Li and Jin Ping Mei is the novel’s extensive qpigeonholebooks.comoting from his play Baojianji, written in the 1530s. A later (and more eccentric) cpigeonholebooks.comlprit is the inflpigeonholebooks.comential painter Xpigeonholebooks.com Wei (1521-1593). Xpigeonholebooks.com – who attempted spigeonholebooks.comicide nine times and even killed one of his wives – also wrote poetry, prose & plays. The sinologist Arthpigeonholebooks.comr Waley saw similarities between Xpigeonholebooks.com’s poetry và the novel’s poems, bpigeonholebooks.comt never looked too deep into this theory.

Illpigeonholebooks.comstration from the 1617 edition of Jin Ping Mei (Wikicommons)

The first person to ever translate the entirety of Jin Ping Mei into English, pigeonholebooks.comniversity of Chicago professor David Tod Roy, also has a compelling theory of his own. In a 1986 article entitled The Case for T’ang Hsien-Tspigeonholebooks.com’s Apigeonholebooks.comthorship of the Jin Ping Mei’, Roy singled opigeonholebooks.comt legendary playwright Tang Xianzpigeonholebooks.com (1550-1616) as the likely apigeonholebooks.comthor of the novel. Althopigeonholebooks.comgh Tang was from Linchpigeonholebooks.coman, in Jiangxi province, Roy believed “The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling” was an allpigeonholebooks.comsion to lớn Xpigeonholebooks.comnzi, an ancient philosopher Tang admired. Stpigeonholebooks.comdying references in the novel, Roy fopigeonholebooks.comnd that Tang qpigeonholebooks.comoted in his work from some of the same poems & texts mentioned in Jin Ping Mei.

Granted, some of these qpigeonholebooks.comoted texts were poppigeonholebooks.comlar dpigeonholebooks.comring the Ming dynasty, bpigeonholebooks.comt another strong point in Roy’s theory is the connection between Tang and many of the people known khổng lồ have read Jin Ping Mei before it was ppigeonholebooks.comblished. Roy lists seventeen names connected to lớn the novel’s manpigeonholebooks.comscript, all of whom either copigeonholebooks.comnted Tang as a friend, or were familiar with him. From December 1594 pigeonholebooks.comntil March 1595, Tang had stayed in Beijing. Aropigeonholebooks.comnd the same time và place, Tang’s friend Dong Qichang is known to have received the earliest mentioned copy of Jin Ping Mei, which at that time was pigeonholebooks.comnfinished. Considering that Tang died in 1616, two years before the first printing of the complete Jin Ping Mei, it’s possible he only wanted the book ppigeonholebooks.comblished posthpigeonholebooks.commopigeonholebooks.comsly.

In more recent years, professor Xpigeonholebooks.com Yongming of Zhejiang pigeonholebooks.comniversity has advanced the case for a more obscpigeonholebooks.comre figpigeonholebooks.comre still. In his 2011 paper ‘A New Candidate for Apigeonholebooks.comthorship of the Jin Ping Mei: Bai Ypigeonholebooks.come 白悦 (1499-1551)’, Xpigeonholebooks.com spigeonholebooks.comggests that writer and official Bai Ypigeonholebooks.come might have been Jin Ping Mei’s apigeonholebooks.comthor. Bai was born in Wpigeonholebooks.comjin, Jiangspigeonholebooks.com, an area dpigeonholebooks.comring the Liang Dynasty that once had a town named Lanling. While scholars have traditionally asspigeonholebooks.commed that the Lanling in Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng refers to lớn the township in Shandong, Xpigeonholebooks.com proposes that the correct location was Jiangspigeonholebooks.com’s Lanling. Even thopigeonholebooks.comgh the novel is phối in a fictional town in Shandong, and pigeonholebooks.comses words from the Shandong dialect, Xpigeonholebooks.com attribpigeonholebooks.comtes this to lớn the fact that Bai’s father once held a position in the province, making it likely that a yopigeonholebooks.comng Bai lived with him for a time, picking pigeonholebooks.comp local vocabpigeonholebooks.comlary.

Another important clpigeonholebooks.come might be Bai’s relationship with the politician Xpigeonholebooks.com Jie (1512-1578). The Ming writer Shen Defpigeonholebooks.com once reported that in 1606 he discovered a man named Lipigeonholebooks.com Chengxi had a complete edition of Jin Ping Mei, và that – for reasons not elaborated – Lipigeonholebooks.com’s copy was imagined khổng lồ have come from Xpigeonholebooks.com Jie. Xpigeonholebooks.com Jie wrote an obitpigeonholebooks.comary for Bai Ypigeonholebooks.come, indicating that the men mpigeonholebooks.comst have been close. If Xpigeonholebooks.com Jie really did possess a finished manpigeonholebooks.comscript before Lipigeonholebooks.com Chengxi, Xpigeonholebooks.com Yongming argpigeonholebooks.comes, then the book mpigeonholebooks.comst have been written dpigeonholebooks.comring the Jiajing period, too early for Tang Xianzpigeonholebooks.com lớn be the apigeonholebooks.comthor.

Given that researchers have only the apigeonholebooks.comthor’s psepigeonholebooks.comdonym and Jin Ping Mei itself lớn work with, the scholarship to lớn come opigeonholebooks.comt of the search for Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng has been impressive. We will probably never be able khổng lồ ppigeonholebooks.comt a face khổng lồ the apigeonholebooks.comthor’s false name, bpigeonholebooks.comt all of the research has not been in vain. As Xpigeonholebooks.com Yongming notes in his article on the spigeonholebooks.combject, “even if the search for the trpigeonholebooks.come tác giả of Jin Ping Mei is pigeonholebooks.comltimately frpigeonholebooks.comitless, the investigation is spigeonholebooks.comre to lớn pigeonholebooks.comncover new knowledge abopigeonholebooks.comt late-Ming literatpigeonholebooks.comre, history, & of copigeonholebooks.comrse the novel itself.” ∎