The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei (2012)

Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume 4: translated by David Roy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. Pp. lxvii+959. Illustrations.Jin Ping Mei was completed in the late sixteenth century, and is considered to be masterpiece of Chinese fiction. This 100-chapter novel depicts the rise and fall of Ximen Qing, wealthy merchant, and his relationships with number of women. This novel has received great deal of critical attention during recent decades in western academia. David Roy, professor emeritus of the University of Chicago, is well-regarded Jin Ping Mei scholar. Roy is most renowned for his work on Plum in the Golden Vase or, Jin Ping Mei ^hereafter abbreviated as Plum), monumental translation in progress of Jin Ping Mei.The book under review is the fourth volume of Roy's projected five-volume translation. first three volumes were published by Princeton University between 1993 and 2006. subtitles of the first three volumes are The Gathering, The Rivals, and The Aphrodisiac respectively. fourth volume, which is translation of chapters 61-80 of Jin Ping Mei, is subtitled The Climax, probably because these twenty chapters depict the deaths of two protagonists, Li Ping'er, Ximen's favorite concubine, and Ximen himself. demise of Ximen marks the collapse of his entire family.Roy stated the goal of his translation in the introduction to his translation published in the first volume of Plum. He intended to translate everything in the cihua MIE edition of Jin Ping Mei (xxi). Roy delivered on his promise. He meticulously translated almost every sentence in Jin Ping Mei. This is not an easy task, given that the body of the novel includes texts drawn from diverse literary genres such as poetry and song suites in addition to vernacular prose narrative. Rendering these non-prose narratives into English can often be daunting. However, Roy successfully preserves both their formalistic features and their meanings in Plum. This demonstrates Roy's deep grasp of the text of Jin Ping Mei and his excellent translation skills.However, Roy's translation consists of more than just everything that appears in Jin Ping Met. Each of his volumes of Plum includes an extended section of annotations and lengthy bibliography. notes and the bibliography in the fourth volume occupy 206 pages, which is almost one-third of the length of the translation of chapters 61-80 (688 pages). Most of these notes intend to provide the sources of the quoted materials in Jin Ping Mei. Roy's rationale is that a knowledge of these sources is germane to our understanding of the story itself.2 Roy did an extremely thorough job of identifying these sources. Consider Roy's note regarding zhiguo bigai kuxt'jf speech attributed to the Buddhist monk Daokuang (10th century), Zutang ji, juan 13, p. 289, 1. 11; speech attributed to the Buddhist monk Shanning (11th century), Wudeng huiyuan, vol. 3, juan 16, p. 1060, 1. 11; Yuanqu xuan. 2:467, 11. 15-16; Yuanqu xuan waibian, 1:211, 1. 20; Mulian jiumu quanshan xiwen, juan 1, p. 62a, 1. 8; Pujing rulai yaoshi baojuan, 5: 172, 1. 4; Datang qinwang cihua, vol. 1, juan 2, ch. 14, p. 53a, 1. 1. (796)I agree with Shuhui Yang who reviewed the third volume of Plum that this type of notes demonstrates Roy's extraordinary breadth of ... erudition.3 However, zhiguo bigai, which Roys translated as [i]f one is aware of fault one must correct it, (380) is common Chinese phrase, and it is not used within special context on this occasion. …