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續金瓶梅

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Text ID
KR4k0218
Date
1660–1665
Dynasty
清

Xù Jīnpíngméi 續金瓶梅

Continuation of the Gold Vase Plum by 丁耀亢 Dīng Yàokàng (撰)

About the work

Xù Jīnpíngméi 續金瓶梅 is the best-known and most substantial of the Qīng sequels to the Ming novel Jīnpíngméi 金瓶梅 (KR4k0216). It is a work of 64 huí 回 composed by 丁耀亢 Dīng Yàokàng 丁耀亢 (1599–1669), a celebrated Shāndōng literatus of the early Qīng. The Kanripo text runs to approximately 20,951 lines.

Tiyao

No tiyao found in source.

Abstract

The Kanripo source opens with three prefaces. The first, by 燄隱道人 Yànyǐn Dàorén (a pseudonym), proclaims the work “an unprecedented marvel-book of past and present” (古今未有之奇書), characterizing it simultaneously as a “correct book” (zhèng shū 正書) and a “great book” (dà shū 大書) in which a Zhuangist literary imagination (qīyuán zhī huǎnxiǎng 漆園之幻想) illuminates Buddhist truth (qiánzhú zhī zhēnzōng 乾竺之真宗). The second preface, by 南海愛日老人 Nánhǎi Àirì Lǎorén, frames the novel within the Buddhist Fǎhuá 法華 and Chán traditions, warning against the misreading that takes its erotic content at face value. A third preface (Xù Jīnpíngméi jí xù 續金瓶梅集序) situates the novel within the tradition of the “three great marvels” (sān dà qíshū 三大奇書) — Shuǐhǔ zhuàn 水滸傳, Xīyóu jì 西遊記, and Jīnpíngméi — and explains that Xù Jīnpíngméi was composed in obedience to an imperial rescript (zūn jīnshàng shèngmíng bānxíng 遵今上聖明頒行) condemning the licentious original, though this claim is conventional rather than literally accurate.

丁耀亢 Dīng Yàokàng (CBDB id 70713) was a native of Zhūchéng 諸城 in Shāndōng. His birth date is given in CBDB as 1599 and death as 1669, though the CBDB note records a range of scholarly opinions on his dates (1589–1669, 1598–1669, 1599–1671, 1607–1678, 1602–1671), citing Kē Yùchūn’s 柯愈春 study in Wénxiàn 1996.4; the dates 1599–1669 are adopted here as the CBDB “standard opinion” (通說). He was a jǔrén 舉人 who served briefly in minor offices under the Qīng but spent most of his career as a literatus-writer. He was arrested in 1661 in the Zhuāng Tínglong 莊廷鑨 literary inquisition case (tangentially implicated) and imprisoned, though eventually released. He is known for his dramas, poetry, and this novel.

The novel’s own preface in the Kanripo text (by the author himself, who writes “予生平詩文襲彩炫世，未有可以見閻羅老子者，我將借小說作《感應篇》注”) identifies his aim as writing a Buddhist-Confucian Gǎnyìng piān 感應篇 commentary in the form of fiction — a moralistic karmic register superimposed on the erotic-realist world of the original. The narrative continues from the end of the Jīnpíngméi into the next generation: Xīmén Qìng’s 西門慶 reincarnated soul, now embodied as the monk Xiào Gē’ér 孝哥兒, wanders through the Buddhist cycle of retribution. The novel’s 64 chapters end with all karmic accounts settled.

Xù Jīnpíngméi is set partly in the historical context of the Song-Jin transition — the original Jīnpíngméi’s setting — but the Buddhist cosmology and moral concern with karmic retribution give it a quite different character from its source. The novel was suppressed multiple times by Qīng authorities for its erotic content despite its ostensibly didactic framing, and was placed on the imperial banned-books list. Its date of composition is generally placed in the early Kāngxī period, ca. 1660–1665.

Translations and research

  • Lévy, André, tr. La merveilleuse histoire de Hsi-men avec ses six femmes. Continuation du Jin Ping Mei. Partial French translation. Gallimard, 1985.
  • Carlitz, Katherine. The rhetoric of chin p’ing mei. Indiana University Press, 1986. (Covers both original and early reception/sequel tradition.)
  • McMahon, Keith. Misers, shrews and polygamists. Duke University Press, 1995.

Other points of interest

Dīng Yàokàng’s claim that the sequel was composed as a response to an imperial directive (bānxíng 頒行) condemning the original Jīnpíngméi illustrates the paradox of late-imperial fiction censorship: moral suppression of erotic content generated a tradition of “corrective” sequels that reproduced the very content they purported to condemn. The three prefaces in the Kanripo text are among the most sophisticated pieces of late-imperial literary-critical writing in the sequel-fiction genre.

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