Érnǚ Yīngxióng Zhuàn 兒女英雄傳
A Tale of Sons, Daughters, and Heroes by 文康(清小說家) (撰)
About the work
Érnǚ Yīngxióng Zhuàn 兒女英雄傳 (A Tale of Sons, Daughters, and Heroes) is a Qīng vernacular novel in 40 surviving huí (of an original 53), composed by Wén-kāng 文康 (pen name Yānběi Xiánrén 燕北閑人, “The Idle Man North of Yān”). This is the first of two Kanripo editions; the second is KR4k0106. The novel combines adventure, chivalric romance, and Confucian domestic comedy, centering on the xìa-heroine (nǚxiá 女俠) “Shísān Mèi” 十三妹 (“Thirteenth Sister”), the timid scholar Ān Jìshuǐ 安驥水 and his son Ān Gōngzǐ 安公子, and the resolution of loyalty, marriage, and social hierarchy in early Qīng Banner society.
The preface by Mǎ Cóngshàn 馬從善 (Gǔliáo Lǎngpǔ 古遼閬圃), dated Guāngxù Wùyín 戊寅 (1878), states that the original manuscript contained 53 huí (each huí = one juàn), but that by the time of printing only 40 juàn were legible; the remaining thirteen, suspected to be by another hand, were excised. This edition corresponds to the catalog ref Er4ny3_ying1xiong2_zhuan4.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
The source file opens with the 1878 preface by Mǎ Cóngshàn, followed by a table of contents (緣起首回 + huí 1–39), and then the text. The preface provides key biographical information on the author and the transmission of the manuscript.
Abstract
Érnǚ Yīngxióng Zhuàn is one of the major Qīng full-length baihua novels, distinguished by its setting in the world of Manchu-Bannermen (qírén 旗人) society, its comic-domestic tone, its elaborate narrative meta-commentary (the narrator “Yānběi Xiánrén” frequently intrudes), and its bold female protagonist. The author Wén-kāng 文康 (fl. 1842–1851; see person note) was a Manchu Bannerman who composed the novel as a means of “self-consolation” (zì-qiǎn 自遣) in his impoverished old age.
The preface by Mǎ Cóngshàn (dated 1878) records that Wén-kāng was: the grandson of the great minister Lèbǎo 勒保 (Grand Secretary, with posthumous name Wén-xiāng 文襄公); that he served as a zhòng-zīlǎng 理藩院郎中 (department director in the Court of Colonial Affairs) by purchase, rose to prefect and then circuit intendant, and was appointed Resident-General in Tibet but died before he could take up the post. He wrote the novel in his final years in poverty after his sons dissipated the family fortune. The preface writer obtained the manuscript from a mutual friend and published it to preserve the author’s memory.
The heroine “Thirteenth Sister” (Shísān Mèi 十三妹; real name Hé Yùfèng 何玉鳳) is a masked xìa-heroine who rescues the weak scholar Ān Gōngzǐ 安公子, engineers his marriage to the resourceful Zhāng Jīnfèng 張金鳳, and eventually herself marries into the family — a comedic resolution of the tension between xìa independence and Confucian domestic order. Wilkinson notes the novel’s setting in food culture and social life (Wilkinson §36.21.2) and cites a character from the novel in his discussion of Qīng fictional protagonists. The Érnǚ Yīngxióng Zhuàn has sometimes been compared to the Jīnpíng Méi 金瓶梅 in terms of its depth of social observation of a particular social stratum.
Translations and research
Shadick, Harold. 1975. A First Course in Literary Chinese. Cornell University Press. (Includes excerpts with annotation.)
Hanan, Patrick. 2004. Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Columbia University Press. (Discussion of the novel’s place in late Qīng fiction.)
Widmer, Ellen. 2006. The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China. Harvard University Asia Center. (Discussion of female readership and the novel’s heroines.)
Lévy, André. 1978. Inventaire analytique et critique du conte chinois en langue vulgaire, vol. 2. Paris: Collège de France. (Bibliographic entry.)
Other points of interest
The novel is notable as one of the rare Qīng novels set primarily in the Manchu Banner social world (as opposed to a notional Hàn gentry milieu), and its narrator’s intrusive self-commentary is unusually elaborate even by Qīng fictional standards. The original manuscript (53 huí) is lost; the printed text (40 huí) is the sole authoritative version.