Liánchéng Bì Wàibiān 連城璧外編
A Jade of Incomparable Value — Supplementary Volume
by 李漁 (撰)
About the work
Liánchéng Bì Wàibiān 連城璧外編 is a six-juǎn 卷 companion volume to Lǐ Yú’s 李漁 twelve-story collection Liánchéng Bì 連城璧 KR4k0174. The wàibiān 外編 (“outer/supplementary compilation”) adds six further huàběn-style stories that were apparently not included in the main collection, treating comparable themes of marriage, jealousy, loyalty, and moral paradox. The Kanripo text opens with a lyric (cí) followed immediately by the opening of the first story (Juǎn 1: 落禍坑智完節操 / 借仇口巧播聲名), and continues through six juǎn in the same format as the main collection.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Prefaces
No separate preface is preserved in the Kanripo text for this companion volume; it continues the pagination sequence of the main Liánchéng Bì (the first page of text bears a continuation page number: 271), suggesting the two volumes were originally published as a set.
Abstract
The Wàibiān 外編 is by Lǐ Yú 李漁 (1611–1680; CBDB 65737) and shares the authorial voice, moral preoccupations, and narrative techniques of the main Liánchéng Bì KR4k0174. The dating and publication history of the two-volume set are the same: c. late 1650s, from Lǐ Yú’s Nanjing period. The six stories in the Wàibiān are:
- Juǎn 1: 落禍坑智完節操 / 借仇口巧播聲名 (woman preserves chastity by cunning in disaster)
- Juǎn 2: 仗佛力求男得女 / 格天心變女成男 (prayer for a son yields a daughter; Heaven relents)
- Juǎn 3: 說鬼話計賺生人 / 顯神通智恢舊業 (ghost stories and the recovery of a lost livelihood)
- Juǎn 4: 待詔喜風流趲錢贖妓 / 運弁持公道舍米追贓 (barber ransoms a courtesan; military official pursues a thief)
- Juǎn 5: 嬰衆怒捨命殉龍陽 / 撫孤煢全身報知己 (a man dies for a male lover; orphan care as repayment)
- Juǎn 6: 受人欺無心落局 / 連鬼騙有故傾家 (unwitting entrapment and ghost-trickery causes a family’s ruin)
Juǎn 5 is particularly notable for its treatment of male same-sex love (lóngyáng 龍陽), in which the protagonist sacrifices his life to avenge his male partner — an unusual piece of sympathetic treatment of male homoeroticism within the huàběn tradition.
The Wàibiān is normally treated together with the main Liánchéng Bì in scholarly discussions of Lǐ Yú’s fiction. See KR4k0174 for the main scholarly literature.
Translations and research
- Patrick Hanan. The Invention of Li Yu. Harvard University Press, 1988. Covers both the main collection and the Wàibiān.
- Vitiello, Giovanni. The Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China. University of Chicago Press, 2011. Discusses Juǎn 5 (the same-sex loyalty story) in the context of late-Míng/Qīng male love narratives.