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Jin Ping Mei, or The Plum in the Golden Vase (Chinese: 金瓶梅; pinyin: Jīn Píng Méi, also translated as The Golden Lotus), is a Chinese naturalistic novel composed in vernacular Chinese during the late Ming Dynasty. The author was Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (蘭陵笑笑生), "The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling", a clear pseudonym,[1] and his identity is otherwise unknown (the only clue is that he hailed from Lanling, or present-day Shandong).[2] The earliest known versions of the novel exist only in handwritten scripts; the first block-printed book was released only in 1610.[3] The more complete version available today comprises one hundred chapters, amounting to over a thousand pages.[4]
Its graphically explicit depiction of sexuality has garnered the novel a level of notoriety in China akin to Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterley's Lover in English literature, but critics such as the translator David Roy see a firm moral structure which exacts retribution for the sexual libertinism of the central characters. [5]
Jin Ping Mei takes its name from the three central female characters — Pan Jinlian (潘金蓮, whose given name means "Golden Lotus"); Li Ping'er (李瓶兒, given name literally means, "Little Vase"), a concubine of Ximen Qing; and Pang Chunmei (龐春梅, "Spring plum blossoms"), a young maid who rose to power within the family.[2] According to some Chinese critics, each of the three Chinese characters in its title symbolizes an aspect about human nature, such as mei (梅), plum blossoms, is metaphoric for sexuality.
Princeton University Press in describing the Roy translation calls the novel "a landmark in the development of the narrative art form – not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context...noted for its surprisingly modern technique" and "with the possible exception of The Tale of Genji (c. 1010) and Don Quixote (1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature." [6]
Jin Ping Mei is sometimes considered to be the fifth classical novel after the Four Great Classical Novels.
