Egerton’s translation of Jin Ping Mei has undergone 25 editions since its first appearance in 1939. The first major alteration came in 1972 when Routledge published an edition in which Egerton’s Latin passages (inadvertently except one) had been rendered into English (that overlooked line has been translated from the Chinese for this edition); recently an abridgement has appeared (Rockville, MD: Silk Pagoda Press, 2008). Golden Lotus has been published in London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo, and, in 2008, by Renmin wenxue (People’s Literature Press) in Beijing. The online bibliographical source WorldCat lists 366 separate printings to be found in participating libraries around the globe. It is my hope that this updated edition extends its life to reach yet another generation or two of readers.
About This Edition
Until around 1980, the dominant scheme for representing the standard pronunciation of Chinese was the Wade-Giles Romanization system, named after a missionary and a scholar, both British, of the late nineteenth century. But with the death of Mao and China’s reemergence on the world stage, the Romanization system authorized by the People’s Republic government and adopted by the United Nations has become the standard for Chinese language textbooks and, increasingly, for scholarly writings in Western languages. This edition has been reset in this international system, designated Hanyu pinyin, to make it easier for new generations of readers to equate the names given here with what they have read in other sources. Most of the secondary works in the bibliography that follows still use the Wade-Giles system, rendering the novel’s original title as Chin P’ing Mei tz’u-hua.
Through the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, English translators of Chinese fiction regularly Romanized the names of male characters while translating the names of all women and girls, ostensibly to make identification easier for readers unfamiliar with Chinese transliterations. Egerton followed this practice in his 1939 edition. But literal translations often produced odd or confusing renditions; two different names in Chinese could well turn out looking very similar in English. To avoid such confusion (and to avoid the sexist overtones of treating male names differently from women’s names), this edition renders all names in the modern standard pinyin and provides a character finding list, as did Egerton’s original, in the hope that this facilitates following each of them through the various chapters in which they appear. The work of Romanizing all names was ably carried out by Dr. Rumyana Cholakova. I am extremely grateful for her care and thoroughness in editing; through this process she also discovered and corrected occasional misidentifications of minor characters in Egerton’s translation. I have corrected several other small errors here, including those pointed out by Lionel Giles in his 1940 review of the first edition.
Useful Sources in English
Brokaw, Cynthia. “On the History of the Book in China.” In Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. Cynthia J. Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 3–54.
Carlitz, Katherine. The Rhetoric of Chin P’ing Mei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
Chang Chu-p’o [Zhang Zhupo]. “How to Read the Chin P’ing Mei.” Trans. David T. Roy, in David L. Rolston, ed., How to Read the Chinese Novel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), Chapter 4, pp. 196–243.
Dictionary of Ming Biography. Ed. L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.
Egerton, Clement C. African Majesty: A Record of Refuge at the court of the King of Bangangté in the French Cameroons. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1938.
Egerton, Clement C., trans. The Golden Lotus: A Translation, from the Chinese Original, of the Novel, Chin P’ing Mei. 4 vols. London: G. Rout-ledge, 1939.
Giles, Lionel. Review of: Golden Lotus. In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 3 (1940), 368–71.
Hanan, Patrick D. The Chinese Short Story: Studies in Dating, Authorship, and Composition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.
_________. The Chinese Vernacular Story. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.
_________. “Sources of the Chin P’ing Mei. ” Asia Major, n. s. 10.1 (1963), 23–67.
_________. “The Text of the Chin P’ing Mei.” Asia Major, n. s. 9.1 (1962), 1–57.
Hegel, Robert E. “The Chinese Novel: Beginnings to Twentieth Century.” In Encyclopedia of the Novel, ed. Paul Schellinger (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), Vol. 1, pp. 205–11.
Hsia, C. T. The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Esp. Chapter 5, pp. 165–202.
Hu, Jinquan [King Hu]. “Lao She in England.” Trans. Cecilia Y.L. Tsim, Renditions 10 (1978), 46–51.
Idema, Wilt L., and Lloyd Haft. A Guide to Chinese Literature. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1997.
Martinson, Paul V. “The Chin P’ing Mei as Wisdom Literature: A Methodological Essay.” Ming Studies 5 (1977), 44–56.
Mote, F. W. Imperial China 900–1800. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1999. Esp. Chapter 29, “The Lively Society of the Late Ming,” pp. 743–75.
Plaks, Andrew H. The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch’ishu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Esp. Chapter 2, pp. 55–180.
Roy, David Tod, trans. The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei. 5 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993–.
Shang Wei. “Jin Ping Mei and Late Ming Print Culture.” In Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan, ed. Judith T. Zeitlin and Lydia H. Liu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), pp. 187–219.
Shapiro, Sidney, trans. Outlaws of the Marsh. 2 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981.
Wang, Richard G. Genre, Consumption, and Religiosity: The Ming Erotic Novel in Cultural Practice. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011.
Footnotes
* Roy, Plum, Vol. 1, p. xvii. The conventional epithet for the tiny bound foot, sancun jinlian, “three inch golden lotus,” makes Jinlian’s name itself into an erotic image; “vase,” too, appears in erotic descriptions.
† Shang, “ Jin Ping Mei and Late Ming Print Culture,” pp. 201–02.
‡ Roy, Plum, Vol. 1, pp. xxiii, 451n30.
§ See Roy, Plum, vol. 1, pp. xxxiii, xxxv; Plaks, Four Masterworks, pp. 72-82.
* Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, Harry Zohn trans (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 86.
† See Hsia, Classic Chinese Novel, pp. 164–202, esp. 170–73.
‡ For a succinct history of the period during which the novel was produced and initially circulated, see Mote, Imperial China. David Roy discusses these historical references very persuasively in his introduction to Plum, vol. 1, pp. xxix–xxxvi. For biographical sketches of the Jiajing and Wanli Emperors of the Ming, see Dictionary of Ming Biography, pp. 315, 325.
* For brief surveys of the history of the Chinese novel, see Hegel, “Chinese Novel,” and Idema and Haft, Guide to Chinese Literature, pp. 198–211, 219–30. An extensive study of these four major novels as a group is Plaks, Four Masterworks.
† See Hanan, “Sources of the Chin P’ing Mei.” For a translation of Shuihu zhuan, see Sidney Shapiro, trans., Outlaws of the Marsh (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981), where the Wu Song-Pan Jinlian episode takes up chapters 23–27.
* The first detailed study of this genre in English is R. G. Wang’s Genre, Consumption, and Religiosity.
† See Hanan, Chinese Short Story, pp. 133–51; see also his Chinese Vernacular Story, pp. 54–74.
‡ See Shang, “ Jin Ping Mei and Late Ming Print Culture.”
§ A number of important studies of the developing print culture in late imperial China have appeared in recent years; for a review, see Brokaw, “On the History of the Book.”
¶ They include poet and critic Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) and his brother Yuan Zhongdao (1570–1624),
dramatist Tang Xianzu (1550–1617), and painter Dong Qichang (1555–1636). Tang has been identified as one possible author for Golden Lotus; see Roy, Plum, vol. 1, pp. xliii.
** Egerton omitted most of the remaining poems, translating the few remaining into a generally very wordy style of English. The Chongzhen and later versions omit cihua from the title; presumably that term referred to the large number of popular songs incorporated into the original text but deleted subsequently.
†† See Roy, Plum in the Golden Vase, Vol. 1, pp. xvii-xlviii, esp. pp. xx-xxi. The first major study of these questions in English is Hanan, “Text of the Chin P’ing Mei. ” For a translation of Zhang’s lengthy critical introduction to his edition, see Chang, “How to Read,” pp. 196–243.
‡‡ Hanan, “Text of the Chin P’ing Mei.” Given the time required to copy a lengthy text by hand, there were generally only one or two manuscript copies of an unprinted or unfinished novel available at any given time, making the loss of pages or even whole chapters not uncommon.
* Shang, “ Jin Ping Mei and Late Ming Print Culture.”
† See Hanan, “Sources of Chin P’ing Mei.”
‡ See Roy, Plum, vol. 1, pp. xxiii–vii, xxix–xxxii, for his argument about the novel’s moralistic perspective.
§ Wu Xiaoling, “ Jing Ping Mei cihua li de Qinghe ji yi Jiajing shiqi de Beijing wei moxing chutan,” Zhongwai wenxue 18.2 (1989), 107–22; cited in Roy, Plum, vol. 1,” pp. xxxvi, 453n64.
¶ Henry R. T. Brandreth, Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1947), pp. 16, 22n8.
** Class of 1879 Hartford Public High School (http://www.ctgenweb.org/county/cohartford/ files/misc/hphs.txt), accessed July 10, 2010.
* For a photograph of Egerton in the mid 1930s, see his African Majesty, Plate 121, “Saying Good-bye” to King N’jiké (facing p. 329); Egerton is wearing a pith helmet along with tie, white shirt, sweater, jacket, and glasses; his face is in profile.
† Lao She, “Wode jige fangdong,” http://www.eduzhai.net/wenxue/xdmj/laoshe/zw14/048.htm. For a photograph of Lao She during those years, perhaps taken in the apartment shared with the Egertons, see: http://baike.baidu.com/image/718e25c7a0f8959dd0006023 (both sites accessed August 16, 2010). For Shu’s references to reading English fiction as language learning material, see Zhang Guixing, ed., Lao She nianpu (Shanghai: Shanghai Wenyi, 1997), vol. 1, p. 43.
‡ Hu Jinquan, Lao She he ta de zuopin (Hong Kong: Wenhua Shenghuo, 1977), pp. 32–36, translated as “Lao She in England,” pp. 46–47. In his 1939 preface to The Golden Lotus, Egerton notes that he had begun the translation fifteen years before and that he had spent many years polishing it with advice from various scholars, apparently after Lao She was no longer working on the project. I am grateful to Dr. Rūdiger Breuer for his unstinting assistance in locating sources of information about Lao She’s activities in England.
* This supposition seems to be confirmed by a comment made by Lionel Giles in his 1940 review of Golden Lotus. There he finds Egerton mistranslating zhuli as “bamboo fans” when instead it means literally “bamboo fence” (introductory poem to Chapter 79). The characters for “fans” (shan) and “fence” (li) look nothing alike, but a Chinese learner of English might well pronounce the two similarly.
† See Hu, “Lao She in England.” For Lao She’s comments on the novel: Zhongguo xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan 1986, no. 3, quoted in Li Zhenjie, Lao She zai Lundun (Beijing: Guoji wenhua, 1992), p. 13.
Translator’s Introduction
It is now fifteen years since I set to work on this translation of the Jin Ping Mei, and nearly ten since it was, as I imagined, almost ready for press. I did not flatter myself that it was a perfect translation—it would have needed the research of many years to clear up a number of difficult points —but I thought a few months’ work would make possible a fairly adequate rendering of what I had come to regard as a very great novel. Now, looking at the proofs, I wish I had another ten years to spend on it. I have made no attempt to produce a “scholarly” translation, but it is not easy, from the staccato brevity of the original, to make a smooth English version and, at the same time, to preserve the spirit of the Chinese. It would, doubtless, have been possible to escape some of the difficulties by omitting the passages in which they occur, but I could not bring myself to do this or even to cut down occasional passages that seem to me a little dull. I made the best I could of them. The position was not quite the same with the poems. Nobody would, I think, claim that they are masterpieces of Chinese poetry, and some of them, turned into English, seemed very much like gibberish. I have allowed myself much more liberty with them and have omitted a great many. After all, they are merely conventional trimmings to the story, and I have no qualms of conscience about them. But for the rest, I confess that I have not even read the proofs. My long-suffering publishers knew that I was so anxious to go on polishing the translation that they thought the book would be indefinitely delayed if I was allowed to handle the proofs. They have been corrected by Mr. A. S. B. Glover.
There was one other problem that I must mention. I have already said that I could see no excuse for tampering with the author’s text. He set out, coldly and objectively, to relate the rise to fortune and the later ruin of a typical household at a time when Chinese officialdom was exceedingly corrupt. He omitted no detail of this corruption, whether in public or in private life. Such detail he obviously considered essential to his story. If he had been an English writer, he would have avoided some subjects completely, skated over thin ice, and wrapped up certain episodes in a mist of words. This he does not do. He allows himself no reticences. Whatever he has to say, he says in the plainest of language. This, of course, frequently is acutely embarrassing for the translator. Again I felt that, if the book was to be produced at all, it must be produced in its entirety. But it could not all go into English, and the reader will therefore be exasperated to find occasional long passages in Latin. I am sorry about these, but there was nothing else to do.*
Perhaps I may be allowed to say how I came to translate the book. Some time after the Great War I became interested in the social applications of a certain modern school of psychology. I thought I should like to study these applications in the case of a developed civilization other than our own. So I began to learn Chinese and to search about for documentary material. The novel was the obvious field to be investigated.
The Chinese have never regarded novel writing as anything more than a rather doubtful diversion for a literary man. Literature, to them, was almost a sacred art, hedged about by conventions. It had a language of its own, and this language must not be profaned. For this reason, though there is a mass of novel “Literature” in Chinese, it has never been accepted as such, and novels were written in the colloquial language of the period and not in the literary language. It is only within the present generation that scholars like Hu Shi have come to appreciate the value and the interest of the Chinese novel.
This depreciatory attitude to the novel of the learned class in China is, perhaps, responsible for the absence of any true development of style. The Jin Ping Mei is written in a sort of telegraphese. There are no flowers of language. And when the author goes beyond plain narrative, his descriptions are bare and devoid of any very picturesque quality. But the narrative is so detailed and so ruthless in its searching delineation of character that there is little need for any attempt to convey atmosphere by deliberate means. It is this power of conveying the essential with the utmost economy in the use of literary devices that seems to me to make the Jin Ping Mei a great novel. It has something, surely, of the quality of a Greek tragedy in its very ruthlessness. It proceeds slowly and, apparently, unsuspectingly to its climax: and so suddenly, but inevitably, to its end.
In view of its limitations, the characterization of the book is very striking. There is a multitude of characters—Ximen Qing’s wives, the women of the household, the singing girls with whom he associates, his disreputable s
ponging friends, the officials with whom he comes into contact—but there is no confusion among them. Each is a living character, clearly drawn and perfectly distinct. This distinctness comes, not from any deliberately drawn picture of each individual, but from his words and actions. I know no other book in any language in which such an effect has been produced by such means. It is partly for this reason—though my main reason was a very strong belief that a translator has no right to mutilate any author’s book—that I felt it necessary not to cut out any of the details of behavior given by the author. I am convinced that such details were included in the original not for the purpose of titillating the reader’s palate for the salacious, but because they, too, indicate shades of character that, given the author’s stylistic limitations, could not be indicated by any other means.
It was more or less accident that made me choose the Jin Ping Mei as a suitable novel for my original purpose. I first came across it in Cordier’s Bibliotheca Sinica. He says of it there, “In it there is set before us a whole company of men and women in all the different relationships that arise in social life, and we see them pass successively through all the situations through which civilized human beings can pass. The translation of such a book would render superfluous any other book upon the manners of the Chinese.”
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