Dans ce rédaction je voudrais ecrire mes pensées à propos d’un livre tellement connu chinoise. Elle s’appele « La Prune dans le vase d’or ».

Malgré elle es une de, peut-etre les plus connus livres chinoise, en

1. The book is written by an anonymous author. We do not really know who this Lanling Jester is.
2. The book is set during the Song dynasty, but the society in the book is really a late Ming society, and the author is critisizing its mores more that is telling a story about 500 years ago.
3. It ends with the end of the Song dynasty, which is overthrown by the onslaught of the barbarians. This is also likely the end that the author is prophesying the Ming dynasty is going to meet, which makes me suspect that this was a bigger reason for the book to be censored, rather than some cheesy content. It is also possible that adult content was added to the book in order to make it more popular among the people, thus trying to propagate the authors views.
4. The book is really a book-bound publication of a long series of short-ish episodes, mostly resembing a modern-day soap opera. The episodes are interconnected, and there is a general plot line, but each episode is much more conneted with its neighbours than with the over all plot of the novel.
5. There is a theory that those episodes were actually intended to be recited or read aloud in front of an audience, such as in a pub, rather than intended to be sold in retail.
6. This might be the reason why it is written in the Spoken Chinese (Baihuawen), rather than in Literary Chinese (Wenyanwen).
7. The book is one of the most famous Chinese books, belongs to the so-called « Six Big Pearls » group, and was also highly praised by Mao Zedong. (The Six Pearls are: Plum in a Golden Vase, Water Margin, Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Dream in the Red Chamber, and The Story of Confucians.
8. Why exactly would Mao Zedong be praising a pornographic novel?
9. Yes the novel is very explicit in many episodes, even though the abridged version I read excluded most of the pornographic details.
10. Maybe the answer is because it is very much about human weaknesses.
11. Very ironically, and very much in step with our modern time, even though the editor of my edition could not afford including a lot of carnal details, he was not limited in including the gluttonous ones :-), which rhymes so much with our era, when people stopped having sex, but still indulge in good food.
12. This is a book about human weaknesses, which include, of course, lasciviousness, but also gluttony, bibulousness, avarice and embezzlement, sloth and wrath.
13. But keep in mind that the morals in the books are Buddhist, not Christian, so redemption and retribution are not happening in the way the Europeans would expect them to.
14. In particular, this shows in the fact that there are almost no purely good or bad characters in the book, except certain Buddhist monk, the rest are coloured in various shades of grey.
15. Even the most worthy of sympathy character, Wu Song, which heroic act is starting the book, is not actually a good person, in particular he is quite violent, kills a person after openly promising lenience for confession.
16. Other characters are usually even worse, but, at the same time, not unworthy of a bit of compassion.
17. Perhaps this would be a correct formulation: they deserve compassion, but you would not want to relate to them.
18. The Duke of Vice is, of course, the main character – Ximen Qing (do not read this literally, a more faithful English phonetic would be Simen Tsin). But they way, he has a relatively rare for the Chinese surname of two characters rather than one. He appears on the stage well into the book, and dies well before the end, but during his time in the spotlight he takes part in almost all the plot lines unraveling in the book.
19. At the beginning of the book he is an owner of a pharmacy in a county capital, earning enough, but being valued more for his connections in the mayoral office rather than for his commercial successes.
20. By the time he dies, he has extended his business empire to include a pawnbroker, a textile shop, an antiques shop and more, which was expedited by his timely promotion to a position of a battalion commander in the city justice office.
21. Remark: the city justice office was not subordinate to the Mayor, because it belonged to the military hierarchy, not the civilian one, so rather than undermining his benefactor’s position he is strengthening it, by making the clique obtain important positions in both hierarchies.
22. He also makes powerful friends in the capital, which, you know, helps when making business.
23. What does he spend his affluence on then? Well, of course on indulging.
24. For him, of course, the main vice is women.
25. He has six wives, many lovers, and even a male lover.
26. Spoiler: most of them end up very badly by the end of the book, even after Ximen Qing is already long dead.
27. In fact, the Chinese name of the book, Jin Ping Mei consists of characters used in the names of the women living in his house: Pan Jin Lian (Pan the Golden Lotus, his sixth wife), Li Ping Er (Li the Vase, his fifth wive), and Pang Chunmei (Pang the Spring Plum, Pan’s maid).
28. Such beautiful names they are? And how horrible are the things happening to them eventually.
29. Pan Jinlian is killed by her brother-in-law, Li Pinger dies from grief after her only child, Simen Qing’s heir, dies from allergy, and Pang Chunmei dies from over-exhaustion when having sex with a lover, after her husband dies.
30. In fact, none of them needs to wait for the afterlife to see redemption. Only one of the six wives has a successful re-marriage and ends her days in peace.
31. One of them goes back to the brothel from which Ximen had bought her and raised to the position of a wife.
32. The First wife reaches the end of her live lonely and poor, never managing to keep any of the Ximen’s riches afloat, and her son, the second son of Ximen, becomes a Buddhist monk and leaves her at the age of 15.
33. Ximen’s daughter hangs herself, her husband, Ximen’s son-in-law, after faithfully trying to waste his father-in-law’s fortune, gets expelled from the family, and eventually killed by a bodyguard of a woman he is a lover of.
34. But enough of spoilers, I guess you can read about the rest of their misfortunes yourself. (The book was translated into English, French, and Russian, of course.)
35. I don’t think that moralistic bad endings would be the reason for Chairman Mao to highly commend this book.
36. But in addition to being a compendium of vices, this book is also an encyclopedia Chinese culture, and I am very impressed by how much of it is still with us today.
37. Some of the traditions are already out of fashion, but even them are still remembered.
38. The most notable is, of course, foot binding. Search for it on Wikipedia. If a Chinese woman who likes you ask you « what do you like in women », tell her « small, tiny feet really thrill me ». Your success is guaranteed, trust me, bro.
39. Most women in the books have bound feet, which essentially means that they belong to the upper classes… or are prostitutes.
40. In fact, distinguishing slaves, servants, prostitutes, wives, concubines, and freedmen is not an easy task.
41. People are buying and selling everything and everyone, but maidservants who are unhappy with their owner are often allowed to leave and re-sell themselves to someone else.
42. As already mentioned, a woman is bought out from a brothel, lives for 5 years as a wife, and after the husband dies, the « first wife » sells her back to the brother.
43. Matchmakers are all at the same time slave-traders, and there are also state-run matchmakers.
44. But slaves have their own property!
45. People are condemned to a capital punishment, but a light reduction of it means five years of penal labour. Would people die in five years with high probability, or everyone would just forget anything?
46. Luckily, foot binding and slavery did not survive until now, but what did?
47. Holidays, theatre, music, singing, food!
48. In fact, a lot of those in the book resemble what you can see in modern China.
49. The characters are celebrating the Qingming (the Day of Remembrance), Mid-Autumn Festival, Lunar New Year, just like in 2026.
50. The food mentioned in the book is similar, at least in name, to what can be bought from a street food vendor today.
51. Theatre, at least from the brief descriptions, surprisingly resembles modern Jingju or Kunju.
52. One interesting property of the middle-age « show business » is that singers are almost by default assumed to be prostitutes, which surprisingly rhymes with the Russian word « певичка », which has a similar context.
53. Chinese Traditional Medicine also appears in the book, and, very noticeably, the author is very sceptical about it. In particular, most medical interventions in the book fail (except inducing abortions). I guess this is expected for medieval medicine, but it is interesting that the author understands it. Possibly he was a « doctor » himself?
54. Divination and fortune telling appear in the book all the time, mostly done according to the Book of Change, which is also used as the main calendar. Remains of this exist until today.
55. Corruption… Hard to avoid discussing China and not mentioning corruption, even though nowadays, with widespread digitization, things have changed significantly. As mentioned, corruption is the source of Ximen’s rise to success, not the least because he makes powerful friends in the capital, where the emperor is busy more with luxurious life than with defending against the barbarian invasion. On the other hand, there are honest bureaucrats too, including faithful generals and honest judges, and, moreover, very often even corrupt officials have lenience and compassion to people. As I said, the books is not about black-and-white people.
56. The book also mentions a lot of classical Chinese mythical characters, for example, Cháng É, the moon lady, Mén Shen, the guard deity, the Weaver-girl ZhīNǚ. Most of those are recognized by modern Chinese.
57. Speaking of Gods, Xīmén Qìng himself is a Taoist, whereas his wives are Buddhist. In general, the author seems to have some beef with the Taoists.