Synopses & Reviews
K’ung Shang-jen (1646–1718), descended directly, in the sixty-fourth generation, from Confucius, was a collector of antiques and an authority on ancient rites and music. A doctor of the Imperial Academy, he was dismissed from his post for writing
The Peach Blossom Fan.
Chen Shih-hsiang (1912–1971) was a professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are The Genesis of Poetic Time and, with Harold Acton, Modern Chinese Poetry.
Harold Acton (1904–1994) was a prolific English writer who moved to Beijing in 1932, collaborating on many translations, until the outbreak of the war forced him to leave in 1939.
Cyril Birch is a translator of the Agassiz Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jonathan Spence is a historian of late-imperial and modern China. He lives in Connecticut.
Synopsis
A tale of battling armies, political intrigue, star-crossed romance, and historical cataclysm,
The Peach Blossom Fan is one of the masterpieces of Chinese literature, a vast dramatic composition that combines the range and depth of a great novel with the swift intensity of film.
In the mid-1640s, famine sweeps through China. The Ming dynasty, almost 300 years old, lurches to a bloody end. Peking falls to the Manchus, the emperor hangs himself, and Ming loyalists take refuge in the southern capital of Nanking. Two valiant generals seek to defend the city, but nothing can overcome the corruption, decadence, and factionalism of the court in exile. The newly installed emperor cares for nothing but theater, leaving practical matters to the insidious Ma Shih-ying. Ma's crony Juan Ta-ch'eng is as unscrupulous an operator as he is sophisticated a poet. He diverts resources from the starving troops in order to stage a spectacular production of his latest play. History, however, has little time for make-believe, though the earnest members of the Revival Club, centered on the handsome young scholar Hou Fang-yu and his lover Fragrant Princess, struggle to discover a happy ending.