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korrick's review against another edition
3.0
3.5/5
One of the blurbs calls this 'Rabelaisian,' and if that's actually accurate, that originating work is more toned down than I had imagine. Sure, there are descriptions of nudity and accompanying actions involving individuals as well as groups that delve in various degrees of explicitness (everything from 'snow-white body' to 'fondled each other's charms'), but the sex scenes themselves barely delve into what would merit an R rating for films in certain parts of the world. I suppose what the deal here is that, whenever the writer reached the portion of the narrative that detailed a physical relationship (most of these pieces revolved in one way or another around a marriage plot, and the ones that didn't involved either sex work or the "rear courtyard relationship" mentioned earlier) and/or plot point/theme hinging around the human body, there was no fade to black or other form of almost complete truncation of the events that were necessarily associated. Gratuitous as such was in parts, it also allowed the author to complicate the narrative in a much more straightforward fashion than would be allowed otherwise (imagine handling the final climactic scenes of various stories, such as a eunuch using his enslaver's skull as a chamber pot or a father recognizing his son through the progeny's possession of a single testicle, without that flexibility). I suppose the aforementioned queer rep (same sex and polyamory making for what would have been perfectly happy and healthy relationship were in not for a particularly nasty storyline) also has something to do it, but honestly, monogamists/cishets just need to get over themselves. Beyond that, there were interesting tidbits about crosscultural relations, technology, religions, social systems, and much else that characterized 17th c. China that I continue to build upon in an autodidact fashion. I'll never be a scholar about, but I did manage to recognize a 'Three Kingdoms' reference unprompted, and between that and a few other tidbits, I'm rather satisfied with the time I spent reading this.
For me, what this work does is cut through much of the mysticism that has accumulated both internally and externally with regards to that millennia-entity known as China. Reading this risqué but ultimately immensely straightforward and comprehensible collection of stories alongside a far more obscenely popular mid 20th c. WASP piece that uses its one Chinese character as exotic sounding board/everyman apologist for the class system (admittedly from which some rather interesting queer readings can be made) really hammered home how much Orientalist gunk has been handed down to the hegemonic cultural milieu of the modern day, and all largely because one text is so much older, so much harder to popularly market, and so much less of a romanticizing and self satisfied Puritan about major life themes. So, while this work is no 'The Story of the Stone' and co., much as was the case with Burney's [b:Evelina|37638|Evelina|Frances Burney|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1168976259l/37638._SY75_.jpg|3055922], it was rather revitalizing to travel so far back in literary times and find not only comprehension, but also relevance. I can't imagine that those taken in by the whole 'China hates gay people' that gets rolled out whenever a Euro film industry wants to get away with its cishetnormativity will find themselves reading this, but the sheer existence of these stories complicates conventional Anglo understandings of both the development of literature and the continued existence of China. It's almost certain that that was not what Li Yu set out to accomplish in writing his tales, but the fact that his work, orgies and all, translates over so well means that, once the reader typical to this website gets past their own hang ups regarding sexualized matters (and perhaps the odd footnote), they're in for an engaging time if they put in the effort. All in all, this certainly isn't a favorite work of mine, even among what I've read of Chinese literature, but it's certainly one of the most interesting ones I've come across in some time, and it wouldn't hurt at all for it to have a wider reach in today's public knowledge: quite the opposite, in fact.
"His parents forced him to break the engagement, it wasn't his doing. You ought to make some allowances."I fully admit to this work being the type that I pick up because it's old enough/"foreign" enough/whenever there's a slow day at a book sale and the only words I recognize are the ones belonging to already overly bandied about works by white boys. Less than six months later, along comes a reading challenge category demanding something from the pre-18th century, and while I have plenty of the usual Shakespeare/Ancient Greeks on hand that most everyone would automatically turn to, I went with this far more singular work, first published in 1657, instead. Now that I've finished, I can say that the work's erotic reputation, while indeed accurate in many a section of the stories, is nowhere near as outlandishly ribald as what certain folks may expect in this HBO/STARZ/Netflix soaked age. As for the comedic aspect, I've never been much one for that particular genre, so it was only fitting that I was far more engaged with pulling apart the cultural customs/historical references/literary allusions than for laughing at the author's implausibly straight-faced delivery of humor. Perhaps I would have been able to more instinctively enjoy such if I had more than a surface level knowledge of 17th c. European/Asian relations, concubinage, "rear courtyard relationships," Chinese horoscopes, Taoist immortals, and Buddhist nuns as existed in the author's time period, but the translation was clear and the footnotes were timely enough to keep my interest going. It didn't hurt either that the queer rep I had been looking forward to came as promised, and honestly, supposedly forward thinking folks of today could learn a few things from that particular story that was penned nearly four hundred years ago.
"His parents could never have forced him into it if he hadn't been willing. The same moral laws apply to both of us, so why should I disobey my parents while he obeys his? The Four Virtues and Three Obediences were instituted for women, not men, but in this case it's the man who is apparently supposed to obey his father before marriage. Am I as a woman expected to obey my husband before I marry! That's even more ridiculous!
One of the blurbs calls this 'Rabelaisian,' and if that's actually accurate, that originating work is more toned down than I had imagine. Sure, there are descriptions of nudity and accompanying actions involving individuals as well as groups that delve in various degrees of explicitness (everything from 'snow-white body' to 'fondled each other's charms'), but the sex scenes themselves barely delve into what would merit an R rating for films in certain parts of the world. I suppose what the deal here is that, whenever the writer reached the portion of the narrative that detailed a physical relationship (most of these pieces revolved in one way or another around a marriage plot, and the ones that didn't involved either sex work or the "rear courtyard relationship" mentioned earlier) and/or plot point/theme hinging around the human body, there was no fade to black or other form of almost complete truncation of the events that were necessarily associated. Gratuitous as such was in parts, it also allowed the author to complicate the narrative in a much more straightforward fashion than would be allowed otherwise (imagine handling the final climactic scenes of various stories, such as a eunuch using his enslaver's skull as a chamber pot or a father recognizing his son through the progeny's possession of a single testicle, without that flexibility). I suppose the aforementioned queer rep (same sex and polyamory making for what would have been perfectly happy and healthy relationship were in not for a particularly nasty storyline) also has something to do it, but honestly, monogamists/cishets just need to get over themselves. Beyond that, there were interesting tidbits about crosscultural relations, technology, religions, social systems, and much else that characterized 17th c. China that I continue to build upon in an autodidact fashion. I'll never be a scholar about, but I did manage to recognize a 'Three Kingdoms' reference unprompted, and between that and a few other tidbits, I'm rather satisfied with the time I spent reading this.
For me, what this work does is cut through much of the mysticism that has accumulated both internally and externally with regards to that millennia-entity known as China. Reading this risqué but ultimately immensely straightforward and comprehensible collection of stories alongside a far more obscenely popular mid 20th c. WASP piece that uses its one Chinese character as exotic sounding board/everyman apologist for the class system (admittedly from which some rather interesting queer readings can be made) really hammered home how much Orientalist gunk has been handed down to the hegemonic cultural milieu of the modern day, and all largely because one text is so much older, so much harder to popularly market, and so much less of a romanticizing and self satisfied Puritan about major life themes. So, while this work is no 'The Story of the Stone' and co., much as was the case with Burney's [b:Evelina|37638|Evelina|Frances Burney|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1168976259l/37638._SY75_.jpg|3055922], it was rather revitalizing to travel so far back in literary times and find not only comprehension, but also relevance. I can't imagine that those taken in by the whole 'China hates gay people' that gets rolled out whenever a Euro film industry wants to get away with its cishetnormativity will find themselves reading this, but the sheer existence of these stories complicates conventional Anglo understandings of both the development of literature and the continued existence of China. It's almost certain that that was not what Li Yu set out to accomplish in writing his tales, but the fact that his work, orgies and all, translates over so well means that, once the reader typical to this website gets past their own hang ups regarding sexualized matters (and perhaps the odd footnote), they're in for an engaging time if they put in the effort. All in all, this certainly isn't a favorite work of mine, even among what I've read of Chinese literature, but it's certainly one of the most interesting ones I've come across in some time, and it wouldn't hurt at all for it to have a wider reach in today's public knowledge: quite the opposite, in fact.
jeeleongkoh's review against another edition
4.0
The Ming-Qing playwright, novelist and publisher Li Yu (1611-80) is an ingenious writer, and he is proud of his ingenuity. Time and again the narrator of his short story collection Shier Lou (Twelve Towers) praises his own inventiveness, especially in subverting some literary tradition, cultural assumption, or social hierarchy. In A Tower for the Summer Heat,, Patrick Hanan has selected and translated six of the twelve stories (or "towers"), enough to give a very good idea of Li Yu's range. I have read and enjoyed Silent Operas, Li Yu's earlier collection, but I think the Towers rise above the Operas.
The title story literalizes the imagination in the form of a Western optical invention, which a man deploys to court a local beauty. In the next story "Return-to-Right Hall," invention is embodied in a successful con man. The story proves that a reformed man is greater than a good man. In "House of Gathered Refinements" a homosexual ménage à trois runs afoul of a tyrant who also loves to play "in the back courtyard." The subversion here is not so much of hetero-normality as of class. The homosexual shopkeepers are cultured and refined whereas the tyrant betrays his moral corruption.
"The Cloud-Scraper" transforms a stereotype of the maidservant. Instead of acting as a corrupting pander to her mistress, Nenghong secures marriages for both her mistress and herself, to the same man! As an antidote to the romantic comedies in the collection, "Homing Crane Lodge" offers a stoic and bleak, but also profound, view of love and life. The last story "Nativity Room" gives such an amazing series of coincidences that it amounts to a parody of the idea of fate. Singular Yin may have only one testicle, but he leaves numerous descendants behind, each born with a single testicle. In him individualism (as opposed to communalism) is shown to be socially and culturally productive too.
The title story literalizes the imagination in the form of a Western optical invention, which a man deploys to court a local beauty. In the next story "Return-to-Right Hall," invention is embodied in a successful con man. The story proves that a reformed man is greater than a good man. In "House of Gathered Refinements" a homosexual ménage à trois runs afoul of a tyrant who also loves to play "in the back courtyard." The subversion here is not so much of hetero-normality as of class. The homosexual shopkeepers are cultured and refined whereas the tyrant betrays his moral corruption.
"The Cloud-Scraper" transforms a stereotype of the maidservant. Instead of acting as a corrupting pander to her mistress, Nenghong secures marriages for both her mistress and herself, to the same man! As an antidote to the romantic comedies in the collection, "Homing Crane Lodge" offers a stoic and bleak, but also profound, view of love and life. The last story "Nativity Room" gives such an amazing series of coincidences that it amounts to a parody of the idea of fate. Singular Yin may have only one testicle, but he leaves numerous descendants behind, each born with a single testicle. In him individualism (as opposed to communalism) is shown to be socially and culturally productive too.