Carnival in China: A Reading of the Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan

As if under the satirical magnifying glass, the Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan , an anonymous traditional Chinese novel, portrays local society and provincial life in 17th-century China in comic and grotesque close-up. A dystopian satire, the novel provides insights into the popular culture and wild imagination of men and women in late imperial China. Using an array of sources - fiction, poetry, texts on medical ethics, religious thought, political and philosophical treatises, morality books and local gazetteers - this work develops a style of reading that explores how 17th-century Chinese citizens perceived their world. Through their eyes, we gain access to their desires, dreams, fears and nightmares.