Fēngyuè Mèng 風月夢
Dream of Wind and Moon by 邗上蒙人 (撰)
About the work
Fēngyuè Mèng 風月夢 (Dream of Wind and Moon) is a 32-chapter Qīng vernacular novel set in the pleasure quarters of Yángzhōu 揚州. It depicts the dissipation and moral ruin of young men who frequent brothels, written in a moralizing vein to warn against the lure of the demimonde. The author uses the pseudonym Hán Shàng Méngrén 邗上蒙人 (“the Deluded/Ignorant Person of the Han River shore,” i.e., Yangzhou).
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The author’s preface, signed by Hán Shàng Méngrén 邗上蒙人 and dated “the day after the winter solstice in Dàoguāng wùshēn 道光戊申” (i.e., 1848), written at the “Hóngméi Guǎn 紅梅館 south window,” is autobiographical in tone. The author confesses that he squandered over thirty years in the entertainment quarters, encountering beautiful, ugly, passionate, and fickle women, spending “countless strings of copper cash” for “empty love and counterfeit affection.” Looking back, he sees his pleasures as a dream, and composed this novel both to warn his own descendants and to serve as a general moral caution (jǐng yú xǐng shì 警愚醒世). The preface plays on the paradox “dream is reality, reality is dream.”
The novel is set in Yangzhou, then still a major commercial and entertainment center. It follows several young men, particularly “Yuán Yǒuyīng 袁友英” and his circle, through the pleasures and pitfalls of the brothel world (yānhuā chǎng 煙花場), tracing their financial ruin, domestic conflict, and eventual moral awakening. Hán Shàng Méngrén’s identity is unknown; “Hán Shàng” (邗上) designates the Yangzhou area, the ancient state of Hán/Yú 邘 being associated with the region. The novel is one of a cluster of late Qīng qīnglóu 青樓 (pleasure quarter) novels, sharing generic conventions with Pǐnhuā Bǎojiàn 品花寶鑑 and Hǎishàng Huā Lièzhuàn 海上花列傳, though earlier and more overtly didactic in framing.
Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual) does not list this novel individually.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
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