Daria Berg

Carnival in China: a Reading of the Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan (China Studies, Vol. 1) Daria Berg

As if under the satirical magnifying glass, the "Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan", an anonymous traditional Chinese novel, portrays local society and provincial life in 17th-century China in comic and grotesque close-up. A dystopian satire, the novel provides insights into the popular culture and wild imagination of men and women in late imperial China. Using an array of sources - fiction, poetry, texts on medical ethics, religious thought, political and philosophical treatises, morality books and local gazetteers - this work develops a style of reading that explores how 17th-century Chinese citizens perceived their world. Through their eyes, we gain access to their desires, dreams, fears and nightmares.