Wǔ Fèng Yín 五鳳吟
Song of the Five Phoenixes by 雲間嗤嗤道人 (撰)
About the work
Wǔ Fèng Yín 五鳳吟 is a Qing-dynasty vernacular romance novel in 20 chapters (huí 回) by the pseudonymous author 雲間嗤嗤道人 Yúnjiān Chīchī Dàorén — “The Chuckling Daoist of Yunjiān [Songjiang].” Some secondary sources spell the pseudonym as 雲陽嗤嗤道人 (Yúnyáng Chīchī Dàorén); the Kanripo source file consistently uses 雲間嗤嗤道人. The work belongs to the cáizǐ jiārén 才子佳人 (scholar-beauty romance) genre, though it incorporates erotic elements common in yànqíng 豔情 fiction and was listed among the “ten banned books” (shí dà jìnshū 十大禁書) in some Qing-era censorship records. The novel is set during the Jiajing reign (1521–1567) of the Ming dynasty.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The narrative follows Zhù Qióng 祝瓊 (styled Qíshēng 琪生), the son of a retired official from a gentry family in Dinghai 定海, Ningbo prefecture, Zhejiang. Zhù Qióng studies alongside two friends — the upright Zhèng Fēiyīng 鄭飛英 and the scheming Píng Jūnzàn 平君贊 (nicknamed “the Date-Pit Nail,” 棗核釘, for his small stature and sharp character). The “five phoenixes” of the title are the five women who become romantically entangled with Zhù Qióng and his circle across twenty chapters; the novel traces their intersecting destinies through a sequence of romantic intrigues, legal machinations, official persecution, and final resolutions typical of the genre. The text also includes erotic passages.
The terminus ante quem for the text’s composition is 1754: the Japanese bibliographic catalog Hakusai Shomoku 舶載書目 (compiled during the Japanese Hōreki Jiǎxū year, corresponding to Qianlong 19, i.e., 1754) records the work as among books imported to Japan, establishing that it was in circulation by that date. Composition is most plausibly placed in the early to mid-Qing period (Kangxi–Yongzheng, c. 1700–1735). The earliest extant Chinese edition is the Cǎoxiántáng 草閑堂 block-print edition (at the Dalian Library), attributed to 雲陽嗤嗤道人; other editions survive at Harvard University and Japan’s Asakusa Bunko 淺草文庫.
雲間嗤嗤道人 is otherwise unidentified; the pen name locates him in the Songjiang 松江 (雲間 being a literary name for Songjiang prefecture, present-day Shanghai area) cultural sphere. No biographical information beyond the pseudonym survives.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature in Western languages located.
Other points of interest
The variant pen name 雲陽嗤嗤道人 appears in the Harvard and Asakusa Bunko editions, while the Kanripo source uses 雲間嗤嗤道人. The two names may reflect different transmission branches of the text or simple scribal variation. The designation 雲間 (Yúnjiān, “Amid the Clouds”) was a prestigious literary sobriquet for the Songjiang cultural region, home in the late Ming to the famous Yúnjiān poet group 雲間詩派.