This selection of stories from Feng Menglong’s collection includes representative types of the storyteller’s traditional art. "The Pearl-sewn Shirt" is a cautionary romance describing the tragedy of a broken marriage; the heroic biography, which depicts a neglected man of high worth gradually receiving recognition, is represented by "Wine and Dumplings"; an authentic twelfth-century forerunner of the detective story is found in "The Canary Murders." The other tales concern traffic in the supernatural, didactic admonitions to observe morality in sex and loyalty in friendship, and realistic accounts of the meanness and corruption of official life.

The popularity of the Chinese storyteller goes back to the market place of the T’ang dynasty, but the familiar figure came into his own in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and his audience included not only the populace but the Emperor as well. In the early sixteenth century, near the end of the Ming dynasty, as the taste for lighter forms of literature grew, the reading, writing, and publication of colloquial fiction became a craze. At this time, Feng Menglong, a teacher and scholar with a sketchy official career, collected prompt-books, transcribed stories, and compiled a large collection of tales from the oral tradition that waspublished in 1624 as Stories Old and New.

This selection of stories from Feng Menglong’s collection includes representative types of the storyteller’s traditional art. "The Pearl-sewn Shirt" is a cautionary romance describing the tragedy of a broken marriage; the heroic biography, which depicts a neglected man of high worth gradually receiving recognition, is represented by "Wine and Dumplings"; an authentic twelfth-century forerunner of the detective story is found in "The Canary Murders." The other tales concern traffic in the supernatural, didactic admonitions to observe morality in sex and loyalty in friendship, and realistic accounts of the meanness and corruption of official life.

Introduction

The Lady Who Was a Beggar

The Pearl-sewn Shirt

Wine and Dumplings

The Journey of the Corpse

 The Story of Wu Pao-an

 The Journey of the Corpse

The Canary Murders

The Fairy’s Rescue

Notes