SOURCE: Wang, An‐chi. “Ching‐hua yuan.” In Gulliver's Travels and Ching‐hua yuan Revisited: A Menippean Approach, pp. 77‐100. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.

[In the following excerpt, Wang contends that Li Ju‐chen's novel, like Swift's Gulliver's Travels, should be considered a work of Menippean satire.]

In Chinese literature, Ching‐hua yuan is most celebrated for the story of T'ang Ao and his adventurous travels to the bizarre and exotic overseas countries in ancient legends (chapters 7‐40). This part makes Ching‐hua yuan a Chinese counterpart of Gulliver's Travels, and has become the focus of many affinity studies in comparative literature. To re‐evaluate the significance of their striking resemblance is the project of my study. But I wish to go beyond studying the adventure and satiric themes; I would like to focus on their literary and cultural background, and to include their other common features such as the pedantic style, encyclopedic form, utopian yearning, cultural critique, and especially their attitudes toward the established authority. Before embarking on that grand topic we need to confirm again the status of Ching‐hua yuan in the history of Chinese literature.

Ching‐hua yuan represents a unique style of prose fiction and an unsurpassed display of pedantic scholarship in Chinese literature. It is original in many aspects: it contemporizes ancient myths and legends, claims for the equal rights of women, covers miscellaneous subjects and learnings, contains unprecedentedly abundant wit and humor, and so on. To pass a value judgment, Ching‐hua yuan is certainly not a first‐rate masterpiece; there are considerable flaws in it, which have resulted in a certain degree of misreading and misinterpretation. Praising its highly creative imagination and originality, critics have also mentioned several of its defects: uneven quality, inconsistent effect, rambling narrative, tedious erudition, encyclopedic diffusion, irrelevant digressions, incoherent and fragmentary structure, and so forth. If we take a closer look, we may find that most of these unfavorable comments are resulted more or less from measuring Ching‐hua yuan against the standard of conventional Chinese prose narrative or other related genres, or even against the criteria of Western novels. But, if we have in mind the notion of a Menippean genre according to what I have shown in the previous chapters, whether in Western or in Chinese version, we will realize that many of these disadvantages and shortcomings of Ching‐hua yuan are actually Menippean characteristics, and that all these favorable and unfavorable remarks are also the typical reactions aroused by works of Menippean satire.

Critics often complain about the complicated features of Ching‐hua yuan, saying that the work often fails to meet their expectation of many of the genres which they consider applicable. Ching‐hua yuan is not genuinely an allegory or a romance, nor is it a pure specimen of utopianism, feminism, patriotism, nihilism, social criticism, political satire, historical novel, science fiction, etc. Yet it contains and combines a great number of the characteristics of all these genres or subgenres. Besides, Ching‐hua yuan is a mixture of many traditional forms and contents, a blend of many conventional literary motifs and themes. This mixed multi‐styled, multi‐voiced form and content of Ching‐hua yuan have puzzled insightful critics as well as common readers. Under a wide range of diverse interpretations, Ching‐hua yuan has become one of the most controversial works of Chinese literature. Here again, if we have some idea about the critical history of Menippean tradition, we will understand that such interpretive problems are the usual reception of Menippean works.

Ambivalent authorial attitude is another point of critical complaint. Li Ju‐chen's joking manner and playful irreverence toward authoritative traditions has made critics feel both very comfortable and very uneasy. For instance, Ching‐hua yuan presents a view of human life that blends the Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist beliefs, but Li Ju‐chen does not embrace any of them in particular. He glorifies and challenges them in turn. In fact, the central problem is that Li Ju‐chen is both traditional and anti‐traditional, both conventional and anti‐conventional. Like many other Chinese novelists, he clings to traditional cultural norms and values, yet consciously or unconsciously he is also motivated by the desire to search for a reconciliation between the prevailing social norms and the need for reform. This skeptical attitude toward established value systems is also one of the major features that characterize Ching‐hua yuan as a work of Menippean satire.

Pedantry is also a trait for which Li Ju‐chen is both praised and condemned. Like other scholar‐novelists of his time who devote a lifetime to composing one single work, Li Ju‐chen is also ambitiously cramming his encyclopedic knowledge into Ching‐hua yuan. Biographical evidence shows that Li Ju‐chen had long committed himself to the idea of writing a book to display his extensive learnings of various subjects, and that it took him nearly twenty years to finish Ching‐hua yuan. His intention of writing such a work is revealed on several occasions in Ching‐hua yuan. The most expressed is found in the words spoken by Lin Chih‐yang in Chapter 23; that is, someday he is going to write a book (which he jokingly called Shao‐tzu to rival the Taoist Lao‐tzu) about everything and with nearly as many subjects as covered by “the Miscellaneous Philosophies and the Hundred Schools” (chu‐tzu pai‐chia). And he intends the book, besides entertaining readers with games and word‐plays, to convey moral teaching through allegory, to exert the function of moral instruction (165).

This passage is meaningful in three aspects. First, Li Ju‐chen endeavors consciously to give his work an encyclopedic dimension covering a variety of subjects and learnings. The “Miscellaneous Philosophies and the Hundred Schools,” as is widely known in China, refer to the totality of all branches of studies in Chinese philosophy and literature. Second, by acknowledging the equal values of all branches of studies, he rejects the idea of favoring any single school of philosophy at the expense of other minority studies. In this, he allows both dominant and marginal voices of his time to speak for their own. He even attempts to challenge the authoritative classic, the Taoist Lao‐tzu. Third, he announces that he is following the ancient feng‐hua feng‐ts'u tradition, which emphasizes the conveying of moral teaching through allegorical devices and rhetorical strategies. Underlying this tradition is the central belief that instruction is achieved through delightful adventurous tales and illustrative exemplary stories.

Indeed Ching‐hua yuan proves to be a comprehensive composite of Li Ju‐chen's visions and comments on the various schools of learnings and philosophies that have dominated the Chinese mode of thinking and living for centuries. Through dramatic presentation, Li Ju‐chen highlights especially those aspects of traditional Chinese culture that have dominated human experience of understanding to an absurd brink. In the Menippean terms of Frye, these are the celebrated “glorious philosophies” which present a vision of the world in terms of one single intellectual pattern, and have thus bred fossilized beliefs and superstitions among the elite class as well as in social customs. Ching‐hua yuan does endorse some of the ideal values of the Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist doctrines. But Li Ju‐chen does not attack the doctrines themselves; he attacks instead the perverted values and behaviors, the misuses and abuses of those originally ideal doctrines, and the blind fervor of those doctrinaire bigots and enthusiasts.

For instance, the perverted Confucian values and scholarship are ruthlessly caricatured, because they are greatly responsible for creating what Frye has called “the maddened pedantry” in their society. The elite Confucian gentlemen are often portrayed as too perfect to be true, too erudite for their young age, and too stubborn to be reasonable. Yet some readers of Ching‐hua yuan still naively believe that those extremely modest and honest gentlemen living in the Country of Gentlemen, where the buyers insist on paying the highest prices for the worst quality of merchandise while the sellers insist on accepting the lowest prices for the best quality, are the perfect examples of the Confucian gentility and courtesy. Such readers, ignoring the common sense of logic and human nature, seem to pay very little attention to the strongly ironic and hyperbolic tone implied in the description of these gentlemen's artificiality and affectation. This Country of Gentlemen is more likely intended to be a parody of the naive Confucian ideal of a utopian world where people can live up to the principle of polite manners.

Throughout Ching‐hua yuan, the honorable Confucian scholars are invariably depicted as pretentious hypocrites, learned cranks, obsessed crackpots, and rotten pedants that stink and speak a “sour” archaic language. These intellectuals, whose mentalities and approaches to life obviously correspond to what Frye has described as a “maddened pedantry,” are responsible for causing the whole society to adore pseudo‐scholarship. All the male and female characters in Ching‐hua yuan regard reading classical texts and taking the Civil‐Service Examination as the ultimate and exclusive goal of human existence, just like those characters sickened by the Examination syndrome in Ju‐lin wai‐shih and other contemporary works. The ridicule of this maddened pedantry, defined and symbolized by these Confucian bigots and virtuosi, can readily make Ching‐hua yuan a good example of Frye's intellectual satire.

Ching‐hua yuan is one of the most diversely interpreted works in Chinese literature; its critical reception reveals how the book has fascinated readers of all levels and tastes. Lu Hsun calls Ching‐hua yuan a novel of erudition and literary elegance, a comment that has become one of the most authoritative in the critical history of the book (A Brief History of Chinese Fiction 329‐30). C. T. Hsia echoes Lu Hsun's view, saying that Ching‐hua yuan is a novel by one of the so‐called “scholar‐novelists” in Chinese fiction, who utilize the form of a long narrative “not merely to tell a story but to satisfy their needs for all other kinds of intellectual and literary self‐expression” (“Scholar‐Novelist” 266‐68). Both Lu Hsun and C. T. Hsia are impressed by Li Ju‐chen's comprehensive knowledge and display of erudition. Such pedantic tendency in the Menippean tradition is called the satirists' “magpie instinct,” a characteristic asserted by Frye as related to the encyclopedic form of Menippean satire.

C. T. Hsia says that Ching‐hua yuan is essentially “an allegorical romance in total support of Confucian morality and Taoist wisdom,” “a celebration of feminine virtue and talent in strict accordance with traditional morality” (266). For Hsia, Ching‐hua yuan is not satiric enough for all its reputation as a satire, because Li Ju‐chen “has long abandoned his role as a satirist to engage in a full‐scale celebration of the ideals and delights of Chinese culture” (267). Here, what Hsia means by satire is the type of satire conventionally associated with the notion of criticism or attack on human folly and social evils. Actually, in his whole essay, which is one of the most enlightening critical studies on Ching‐hua yuan, Hsia works on an interpretive scheme that resembles closely the Menippean approach of satire, a satire that does not intend so much to attack evils and follies as to re‐examine from a scholarly novelist's point‐of‐view the status quo of contemporary society.

C. T. Hsia's research on the scholarly features of Ching‐hua yuan proves to be a typical application of the Menippean method. For instance, Hsia observes that Li Ju‐chen shares with his contemporary scholar‐novelists the “tendencies toward allegory, talkiness, and playful innovation” (271), as well as “a wide‐ranging sympathy and a distaste for the kind of pseudo‐learning and narrow morality usually identified with the examination system and orthodox Neo‐Confucian thinking” (272). This distaste for “pseudo‐learning” and “narrow morality” marks a typical Menippean theme. However, these scholar‐novelists are still enchanted with their own cultural heritage, and prefer to embrace the Confucian ideal of eremitism rather than to challenge the established orthodoxies. Hsia treats Ching‐hua yuan in the same manner as he treats Ju‐lin wai‐shih. He regards both authors as still endorsing, implicitly or explicitly, the Confucian code of morals; they deplore the censurable customs of their society only as aberrations from an ideal state of Chinese culture. From the above remarks we can see that C. T. Hsia's focus is on the intellectual and cultural aspects of Ching‐hua yuan. From a Chinese‐Western comparative perspective, he believes that, since the intellectual or erudite novels in the West are habitually associated with a critical and satiric intelligence, the Chinese scholar‐novelists likewise articulate their wide‐ranging concern with their own social and cultural states.

Moreover, Hsia contends that if Li Ju‐chen could have dropped the design of an allegorical romance, Ching‐hua yuan would have become an excellent satire “in the Swiftian or Peacockian mode” (282). What Hsia means by this phrase is a very important remark pertinent to the Menippean mode. Swift is noted for satirizing man's abuse of reason as reflected in political, social, and academic institutions, whereas Peacock is known for parodying Romantic cliché and contemporary figures by letting a group of disguised eccentrics converse ridiculously. Their satire is undoubtedly the Menippean mode. Here Hsia seems to imply that without the allegorical framework Ching‐hua yuan would have been an excellent work of intellectual satire.

In a later essay, C. T. Hsia openly calls Liang Ch'i‐ch'ao's Hsin Chung‐kuo we‐lai chi an “anatomy” because of the book's shapelessness and miscellaneous content. Although he defines Ching‐hua yuan mainly as a scholarly novel, his treatment shows an intellectual bent for the anatomy. He concludes that Ching‐hua yuan shares some affinities with the Western tradition of “self‐consciously ‘manipulative’ novelists from Cervantes to Nabokov” (302), and these novelists are now generally acknowledged in Western literature as representative writers of the Menippean tradition.

Ching‐hua yuan is nostalgic in tone for an ideal world in the good old past, and is claimed to contain a considerable portion of utopian or dystopian elements.¹ First, the description of some overseas countries seems to illustrate Li Ju‐chen's ideal state of living and admirable standard of scholarship. Second, many characters are presented exemplary models, as royalists who vindicate the traditional Chinese ideals of loyalty and filial piety (chung‐hsiao), courtesy and righteousness (li‐yi). Third, the scene is set in the T'ang dynasty, a time and place far remote from the present and an era traditionally believed to be the most prosperous in Chinese history. It is also a golden age of literature and feminism. Fourth, T'ang Ao's retreat to the Little P'eng‐lai Mountain is a celebrated act that embodies and combines the utopian ideals of both the Confucian eremitism and the Taoist escapism.

Undoubtedly Ching‐hua yuan does contain utopian yearnings and throughout the book Li Ju‐chen has really envisioned in the quest of his characters an image of the ideal society, where they can fulfill their dreams of living like the ancient sages. But this utopia is absolutely neither any of the overseas Countries nor the seemingly acceptable reign under Empress Wu Tze‐t'ien (690‐705). In many of the adventurous episodes, Li Ju‐chen has made his satiric intention obvious by showing clearly what he is depicting. Yet, in such notable episodes as the Countries of Gentlemen, Blackteeth, Scholars, and Women, his norms become ambivalent and controversial, leaving readers in puzzling confusion.

Li Ju‐chen certainly longs for a world in which people can live in natural simplicity and be sincerely modest and compliant to one another. But this ideal world is surely not the one like the Country of Gentlemen where, in order to fulfill the true Confucian ideals of courtesy and righteousness, people become so unduly and unnecessarily humble that they appear to be affected and hypocritical. Likewise, neither the Country of Blackteeth nor the Country of Scholars is the ideal place Li Ju‐chen expects for the honorable Confucian gentlemen and scholars. His ideal type of intellectual community is revealed now and again in his descriptions of these two countries, but some of the situations described here are incredible and even absurd. For example, how can the teenage girls be so immensely knowledgeable? how can the waiters of a tavern be so bookish and pedantic? why do genuine scholars must have ugly black skin and black teeth? As for the ideal state of true equality and freedom between the two sexes, the Country of Women certainly does not achieve that level. After enjoying the greatest amusement derived from the vicarious sufferings and punishments afflicted upon the male characters, readers will discover that Li Ju‐chen is not revenging against men, but is actually implying that women, once in power, can be equally inhuman and can turn back to torture men as well.

When we put these ambivalent norms together, we will realize that Li Ju‐chen has only offered a utopian mirage rather than an attainable genuine utopia. Some critics would prefer to call it a dystopia. In a conference paper delivered at the 1988 ICLA Congress, Terry Siu‐han Yip classifies the countries in Ching‐hua yuan into two groups, the utopias and the dystopias, and points out among them several pairs of sharp contrast. In contrast with the Country of Blackteeth, which exemplifies honesty and learning, the Country of White Men shows people who are good‐looking yet totally ignorant. The Country of Big Men embodies righteousness, whereas the Country of Petty Men is a place of hypocrites and liars. The Country of Laborers represents diligence and longevity, while the Country of the Intelligent has aggressive and sophisticated, yet short‐lived, people. Yip thus concludes that the juxtaposition of utopias and dystopias in Ching‐hua yuan produces an equilibrium, which reveals Li Ju‐chen's wish “to propose changes to improve their own societies and to arouse the readers' awareness of the evils—be they of a socio‐moral or political‐economic nature—existing around them” (471). Though questionable is her viewing of the Country of Gentlemen and the Country of Women as utopias, Yip's essay has the virtue of pointing out the sharp contrasts among different types of ideologies.

Ching‐hua yuan celebrates the traditional Chinese virtues of loyalty and filial piety, which are commonly regarded as the greatest and primary virtues for all civilized people. Yet, as for whether it is worthwhile to serve an incompetent king or to respect a fatuous father, the predicament is never questioned. In Ching‐hua yuan, the heroine T'ang Hsiao‐shan is considered to be a virtuous model, because she has fulfilled her roles both as a dutiful daughter and as a literary genius. She shows determination and perseverance in searching for her lost father, who, as will be known later, escapes from this world to become a hermit. She also shows filial piety in following her father's will to take the Civil‐Service Examination, to bring honor to her family, and to change her name into T'ang Kuei‐ch'en (which means literally “a maiden minister of the T'ang dynasty”), whereas her father puts himself on a voluntary exile seeking personal peace. The motivation of his becoming a hermit is not given, but the chances are high that he is unwilling to submit himself to a notorious queen, Empress Wu.

Empress Wu does not appear in Ching‐hua yuan so tyrannical and condemnable as history books have generally shown her to be. She has managed to rule quite well, but she is still not considered by her people, as well as by Li Ju‐chen, a decent heiress to the orthodox throne, only because she is a usurper and a female. No matter how hard she tries to be a good ruler, the loyalists still place charge against her, because she is deemed, in the political‐allegorical framework of Ching‐hua yuan, as a symbol of the Man‐chu government which is to be overturned by the royal courtiers and soldiers of the late Ming dynasty. In general, the Empress Wu in Ching‐hua yuan is a controversial figure, possessing the good and bad qualities simultaneously, and Li Ju‐chen's attitude towards her is not very consistent throughout the book. Many critics cannot tolerate Li Ju‐chen for his treating an important historical figure in such an irreverent manner and also for imposing new interpretation on the significance of her role.

Frankly speaking, Empress Wu, one of the two rare empresses in the whole Chinese history, is actually a woman of literary genius and political strategies, yet she is often condemned by Confucian historians as ruthless and illegitimate. Ching‐hua yuan gives this notorious empress an image drastically different from the one we get from orthodoxical history books. Despite many readers still disagree with Li Ju‐chen's treatment of this historical figure, the case proves to be an ambiguity that illustrates an idea of Bakhtin's menippea—historical events and figures are treated different from what they appear in history books, which sometimes leads to the awareness of questioning the validity of history books themselves.

Under such circumstances the overseas worlds are not altogether the ideal places to live in, and the present world under Empress Wu's reign is unorthodox and waits to be overthrown. Here Li Ju‐chen's utopian endeavors seem to fail, for the utopian world he has envisioned is nothing but a mirage. It seems that Li Ju‐chen is both confident and skeptical of the possibility of a utopian world; he longs for a harmonious prosperous world of the ancient sages, but he doubts if it can come true in the present reality world. He has a stronger motivation to use this utopian mirage as a foil to criticize and to re‐examine the traditional moral codes and philosophical doctrines of Chinese culture. This ambivalence toward the established traditional authorities and this utopian yearning for an ideal “other” world also characterize Ching‐hua yuan as a Menippean work of satire.

One of the most controversial critical issues about Ching‐hua yuan is its unprecedented feminist ideas.² With the upheaval of feminist criticism in the past decades, many recent critics employ it to interpret Chinese literature, and especially Ching‐hua yuan. They pick readily the Country of Women episode as a striking example where they can further develop gender‐crossing and subversive purposes. But strictly speaking, Ching‐hua yuan is not an exclusively feminist novel as many critics would like to prove; it does not meet the requirements of a feminist work in the eyes of contemporary feminists critics. Although there is strong evidence showing that Li Ju‐chen is the first Chinese male writer speaking on behalf of women's rights, his utmost purpose is not to magnify women or to belittle men. He is, from beginning to end, always treating women from his position as a male author; he has never crossed the gender border. Even in the most famous Country of Women episode, he has never suggested or implied that women are after all superior or inferior to men, more suitable or less for rulership, or have specific feminine qualities that men lack. In this episode, Li Ju‐chen puts men into women's place, squeezing them into women's attires, binding their feet and piercing their ears; all these are merely to let men realize how they have been torturing women. He also puts women into the ruler's throne, but women turn out to be equally cruel, arrogant, tyrannous, and even “female‐chauvinistic.” His overall intention here is to let men and women reverse sexual roles, not only to form sharp contrasts but also to shift each other's perspective. If Ching‐hua yuan is an examination of all the hereditary Chinese culture, then the problem of women's rights must be one of the most problematic issues to be explored. Li Ju‐chen's attitude towards women reflects his discerning speculations over the long‐standing problem of sexual discrimination in Chinese society. Sexual discrimination in China is mainly a result of the strictly patriarchal social structure of traditional culture; it turns rigidly anti‐feminist in the hands of the Neo‐Confucianists. Yet, instrospective as he is, Li Ju‐chen is not avant‐garde in feminist thinking. He still embraces the conviction that women, no matter how talented, virtuous, independent, and distinguished, should always be subordinate to men and should complement men in their actions to support a male‐dominant orthodoxy.

Hu Shih's view of Ching‐hua yuan is profound and pungent from a moralistic point of view. His exhaustive research has marked a new critical epoch by reading the book as a combination of satire, feminism, allegory, and utopianism. He is probably the first modern critic to point out its resemblance to Gulliver's Travels in using imaginary adventures to dramatize the satiric intent. Among the major social problems treated in Ching‐hua yuan, Hu Shih thinks the maltreatment of women is the most serious; the social customs of foot‐binding, forced marriage, illiteracy, prostitution, etc. should all be abolished. Hu Shih argues that the Country of Women and the Country of Blackteeth, where women have equal chances for politics and education, are the utopian places for all the oppressed women in the world. The “double standard” problem in the Country of Double Faces is a ridicule not only on human hypocrisy, but also on the Chinese ethical norm that requests fidelity from wives yet allows husbands to keep concubines.

Sharon Hou, in her essay “Women's Literature,” holds the observation that foot‐binding and denial of education are the two major social customs responsible for women's inferior position in Chinese society, the former disabling them physically and barring them spiritually from the outside world, the latter stifling female talent and perceiving female intelligence as not only unbecoming but also actual signs of depravity (175‐92). Hou's essay shows how in Ching‐hua yuan Li Ju‐chen castigates foot‐binding, gives women equal opportunity for education, and finally proves that women, if given the opportunity, can exercise freely and fully their talents for all sorts of artistic learnings (music, painting, chess, calligraphy, poetry) as well as domestic skills (sewing, weaving, embroidery, housekeeping).

If Li Ju‐chen could have maintained this radical feminist stance to subvert the traditional male‐female power structure in Chinese society, Ching‐hua yuan would certainly have become the first feminist novel in Chinese literature. Yet, unfortunately Li Ju‐chen still relishes those traditional values concerning women's virtues and duties. Ching‐hua yuan begins by quoting a passage from a well‐known textbook of female education, which defines the essential virtues proper to her sex and illustrates them through biographies of admirable women. Li Ju‐chen's women characters in Ching‐hua yuan are ordinary types of Chinese women; what makes them distinguished and have individual personality is that they are given back the human dignity and the right for education, of which the great majority of Chinese women have been deprived by a male‐chauvinist society. The one hundred women characters in Ching‐hua yuan do not act unduly heroic or feminine; they are just lucky enough to be born into the reign of a shrewd queen who bequeaths them the right for education and for competing in examination, and thus are allowed to act as they truly are. They are as rational and intelligent as the men of their times, and they are also moderate and pliant, willing to support their fathers and husbands and brothers in whatever actions they take. At this moment, readers cannot help wondering why these women are so ungrateful as to fight against a queen who bequeaths them the things they have been deprived of. For all her violent character, Empress Wu does not appear in Ching‐hua yuan as a tyrannical ruler that deserves to be overturn. It seems that, for these women, their position is to help, to cooperate, and to unite with their fathers and husbands and brothers for a mission which the men deem as holy and noble whereas the women just conform blindly. Therefore if Li Ju‐chen presents these women too idealistically, it is because he wants them to serve as foils to their male counterparts, not as unique heroic characters that are treated fabulously as unusual superwomen. And for this reason they cannot be counted as genuine feminist heroines.

If Li Ju‐chen is really a feminist novelist, he would not contradict himself by claiming for women's equal rights whereas at the same time disposing Empress Wu of her rulership. In the first half of Ching‐hua yuan, Empress Wu seems to be a rather competent queen and an emancipator of oppressed women, but in the later half she becomes a target of attack and a symbol of evils. Besides, after they have been given the chances to pass the Examination by Empress Wu, the one hundred talented women do nothing particularly worthwhile except helping their husbands and fathers to fight against her. So, all the female characters are not individualist heroines in the heroic sense; they are simply mouthpieces of the ideas they represent, the counter foils of the male sex. In Ching‐hua yuan, Li Ju‐chen deliberately reverses the stereotyped sexual roles in Chinese cultural tradition, not entirely to attack the oppression and injustice under old social institutions, but more to require his male readers to think in the alternative perspective of the women.

Throughout Ching‐hua yuan Li Ju‐chen has never disparaged the heroic exploits of his male characters. He supports morally these royalists' endeavor to overthrow a queen who has usurped her throne from a male‐dominated dynasty, and this endeavor certainly needs the support from their wives and daughters and sisters whose willingness to participate is never questioned. Here Li Ju‐chen seems to have dropped aside the problem of these women's free will, and turns to focus on their contribution to the achievement of a great political event. The great history of the restoration of the T'ang dynasty is not produced by men themselves alone; women have their share of honor too. Li Ju‐chen writes about these talented women's political activities simply because he believes that they deserve entering history too. He seems to suggest that the official history is somehow too male‐dominated and incomplete, and needs to be complemented by an unofficial history written from the alternative female perspective. Women can also devote themselves to the service of their country.

The Country of Women episode can be seen as a Chinese version of the world myth of the Amazon women, who represent the ability of women to establish a utopian and self‐sufficient society of their own. Amazonian stories have always been popular in the West, especially in seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century England: Samuel Butler's Hudibras is a prototype; Samuel Johnson translates a French dissertation on the Amazons. The Amazonians are usually presented as frightful monsters, strong and powerful yet silly in their passions and sexual desire. Usually the presentation of powerful and frightening Amazonian communities is not intended to argue for female supremacy or women's right to rule; it is rather a satire on the women who usurp the rule of men and thus go against the law of nature. But Li Ju‐chen's purpose in creating the Country of Women is more compassionate; he means to let the male sex realize how inhuman they have been to women. The torture of foot‐binding is comically exaggerated to highlight the inhumanity and cruelty of many generations of Chinese men who have invented and defended such an eccentric custom.

In her recent essay on the rise and impact of late Ch'ing feminist novels, Lai Fang‐ling regards Ching‐hua yuan as their predecessor because it is a book that first takes the problem of women rights seriously and first offers a blueprint for reformation (55‐72). She proves that, before Li Ju‐chen and even back to the age of Chu Hsi's Neo‐Confucianism, several scholars have advocated similar feminist ideas from a humanistic point of view, but their views fail to stand against the overwhelming flood of male‐chauvinism. Lai's observation is correct when we take a look at the history of Chinese literature, and we can see that there are also a lot of literary works that celebrate women characters and their heroic deeds, for instance Erh‐nu ying‐hsiung‐chuan and many others, but these works have never constituted a trend qualified to be called feminist novels. Hong‐lou meng deals with women characters and their activities, but it does not exert influence on later generations since Ts'ao Hsueh‐ch'in concentrates mostly on their particular feminine qualities.

Although Ching‐hua yuan is not a pure feminist novel in modern standards, it marks as the first Chinese literary work that takes women seriously as decent human beings. Its mind‐opening influence on the feminist movement of later generations is indirect yet huge. Fourteen years after the book's publication, foot‐binding was banned by the Ch'ing government; twenty years later, the first girl's school was founded in China by a British priest. Li Ju‐chen's feminism is the result of his own independent thinking and profound contemplation over the problems of traditional Chinese ethics and culture, a culture perverted and cankered by the Confucian canons. The feminism in Ching‐hua yuan is only one of the many different aspects of Chinese culture and ideology which Li Ju‐chen questions and challenges.

Ching‐hua yuan is notorious for being one of the most allusive and pedantic works of Chinese literature. Its allusiveness serves at least three basic functions: first, a genuine display of Li Ju‐chen's knowledgeable erudition; second, a renewal and revitalization of ancient Chinese myths and legends; third, a satire on the bigotry and pedanticism in contemporary culture.

Li Ju‐chen's penchant for meticulous pedantry is invariably justified and defended by critics as a very ordinary feat for scholars of his time, an age that has suffered too much from strict censorship. Li Ju‐chen is a typical example of the traditional virtuoso scholar, whose diversified interests and encyclopedic knowledge found expression in three other non‐literary works: a phonological treatise Yin‐chien, a chess manual Shou‐tzu p'u, and a dictionary of dialect Kuang fang‐yen.

Ching‐hua yuan exploits extensively the materials from documentary records of myths and legends such as Shan‐hai ching, Huai‐nan tzu, Shih‐yi chi, Po‐wu chih. It also alludes to Hsi‐yu chi, resembles Hong‐lou meng and Ju‐lin wai‐shih in texture and themes. Many textual researches have shown that Li Ju‐chen takes from them the names of many strange lands and adds to them a great amount of details through imagination to express his own social, cultural, and literary criticism. Some critics complain that Li Ju‐chen overuses mythological and legendary materials at the expense of the creative originality of his book, and that his indulgence in interminable erudition interferes seriously the flow of development. For instance, Lu Hsun blames him for devoting too much space to discussing the classics and the miscellaneous arts, and henceforth “his great learning turns out to be a handicap too” (330). These critics are right in saying so, for many parts of Ching‐hua yuan really sound boring. But Li Ju‐chen's achievement should be measured by his ability to renew and re‐organize old materials and thus to contemporize them.

In Ching‐hua yuan, Li Ju‐chen not only quotes classical texts copiously but also imposes personal opinions and visions on them. Ancient myths and legends are thus transformed, contemporized, and sometimes even distorted deliberately to form sharp contrasts with the various situations of the contemporary reality world, to achieve additional satiric effects. In his hand, these old myths and legends are refreshed, revitalized, and in Bakhtin's terms they create a dialogical inter‐penetrative relationship between the old and new versions. As a result, new meanings are generated to enrich the old versions, and the old ones provide contextual background for the new, thus they end in cross‐fertilizing intertextuality.

Besides, if we inspect the tone of Li Ju‐chen's narration, we may find that the author's attitude towards ancient classics is not wholly identical with that of his characters. All the characters in Ching‐hua yuan take the ancient classics as divine oracles, as absolute truths, as something sacred that can even transcend their own experiences in the real world. They intentionally try to think and act in the manner of the honorable ancient wise and sage, speak and quote clichés from the classical texts, and surrender their own instincts to a cult of bookish authority. Throughout Ching‐hua yuan Li Ju‐chen comments on the pseudo‐Confucian scholars and their bookish stubborn approaches to life, and, in the words of Frye, overwhelms “his pedantic targets with an avalanche of their own jargon” (311).

Li Ju‐chen's pedantic inclination has been more disparaged than praised. He is criticized for committing errors of anachronism, for indulging in irrelevant digressions, for trapping himself in an unmanageable mess, and so on. Against this unanimous charge of pedanticism, Frye's Menippean method can defend him rather congenially. The magpie instinct of famous artists to collect facts in order to be more convincing and persuasive is fully illustrated in Li Ju‐chen's case. As a Menippean satirist dealing with intellectual themes and attitudes, Li Ju‐chen is showing his exuberance in intellectual mode, by “piling up an enormous mass of erudition about his theme” (311). His target is more than ever the pervading misconception of the general public and their indiscriminate adoration of classical learnings.

From the manner Li Ju‐chen treats his historical and mythological materials, we can see that he is intentionally making his book a meeting ground of diverse learnings and philosophies, a hotchpotch of all palatable and unpalatable dishes, disregarding which are orthodox or not. Only readers with the intellectual bent similar to his are capable of understanding his intention. The last two lines of the book is something of a revelation:

The mirror can reflect the true genius,
All stuffs are from old unofficial histories.

Yueh Heng‐chun is one of the few Chinese critics who can detect the deliberately exaggerated mock‐heroic, mock‐serious tone of the narrative voice in Ching‐hua yuan. This obvious mock‐serious language seems to add an atmosphere of verisimilitude to the stories, but reveals, on the contrary, Li Ju‐chen's distrust in the mythic frame he himself has constructed. According to Yueh, the mock‐serious is a cynical mockery as well as a kind of paradoxical irony. Consciously disrespectful, Li Ju‐chen distorts classical myths and legends into something contrary to their original implications. His purpose, Yueh maintains, is to destroy the unity of primitive myths and thus to demonstrate that they are merely fictional fabrication. Likewise Li Ju‐chen's own allegorical construction is fictional and untrustworthy too. Even human existence in the world is itself nothing but an endless game of mythologizing.

Yueh's nihilistic reading, a reading she has applied likewise to Ju‐lin wai‐shih, is focused on the appearance/reality and fiction/representation qualities in Ching‐hua yuan. She sees human activities in this secular world as pre‐ordained games which are manipulated by an absolute authority of the divine sphere. All efforts to live a meaningful life is in vain, and the universe is nothing but a huge mirage. Life is a dream, and the whole Ching‐hua yuan is a great tantalizing artifice.

In her article, Yueh offers a brief comparison of Ching‐hua yuan and Gulliver's Travels. She says, Gulliver gets deeply involved with each of the worlds he visited, so when he castigates the debased human beings as Yahoos, he scorns with a concerned heart. But T'ang Ao is like a tourist, an outsider, watching cold‐heartedly the social evils he himself needs not to suffer. Yueh's observation of T'ang Ao has given her article a style of its own, which is quite divergent from the general views of other Chinese critics.

Another literary legacy of the Chinese tradition that Ching‐hua yuan has inherited is the extensive use of metaphorical and allegorical symbolism. One of the most notable is the poetic convention of using fragrant herbs and virtuous beauty to signify loyalty and virtue. The one hundred virtuous talented girls are originally the heavenly fairies of one hundred species of flower. This poetic convention is the so‐called “hsiang‐ts'ao mei‐jen” tradition in Chinese literature, a classical tradition derived from Ch'u Yuan's. In this poetic tradition, fragrant herbs and flowers represent the conscientious sages; virtuous beauty represents the faithful yet forsaken love. Both are symbols of the loyal courtiers who have lost favor from their emperor. Ching‐hua yuan's relation to this poetic tradition is observed by Yiu Hsin‐hsiung, who claims that Ching‐hua yuan is, in essence, a “patriotic novel” intended to awake the conscience of the oppressed Ch'ing scholars (symbolized by these one hundred girls) to win back their orthodox emperor and to restore their native ex‐Ming dynasty. Empress Wu represents the tyrannical Man‐chu government which shows lip‐service favor to Han scholars by giving them the chances to compete in the Civil‐Service Examination but offering them no official governmental positions. The names of those leading characters in Ching‐hua yuan also carry strongly symbolic meanings that imply their wish to recover the golden age of the T'ang dynasty. Yiu therefore concludes that Ching‐hua yuan is a novel which expresses the author's patriotic concern by showing how an idealistic conscience struggles against the social evils and political oppressions of the reality world.

To read Ching‐hua yuan as a patriotic novel may sound obscure to many readers of modern literature, but it is not strange for some traditional Chinese readers and scholars to read the literary works of the early Ch'ing period in the manner of reading political allegory, especially to read those works written by the authors who have suffered quite much from the imperialistic invasion and the strict censorship system of the Man‐chu government in the early Ch'ing dynasty.³ This manner of reading does bear certain truth but it more often imposes on literary works, no matter pertinent or not, a political framework so intricately associated with current events and political issues that it seems to miss the full flavor of the fictional creativeness and comicness of Ching‐hua yuan.

Ching‐hua yuan reveals a deep concern for topical issues and political situation, and it also contains a great amount of political satire, but it is definitely not a political novel or a historical novel. Li Ch'en‐tung also asserts that Ching‐hua yuan displays a strong sense of racial consciousness of the men‐of‐letters under political suppression of the alien Man‐chu government. He points out that the female characters in Ching‐hua yuan all have names that are more or less meaningful to the roles they play in the political campaign for recovering national integrity. He blames Hu Shih for mistaking the book to be a feminist novel, saying that Li Ju‐chen could not be so keenly aware of the problem of women's rights. He insists that Li Ju‐chen portrays the female characters only out of his personal disgust with the sordid filthy men of his time, just like his contemporary novelist Ts'ao Hsueh‐ch'in did in Hong‐lou meng.

Yet, judging from the derisive farcical tone of the narration, we understand that Li Ju‐chen may have a sort of sour grape psychology for the fame and fortune he fails to achieve through passing the examination, but he is never so politically conscious as some Marxist critics claim him to be. He is pessimistic from time to time about his own academic career, but most of the time he delights more in displaying his talents and learnings, manipulating familiar myths and legends, creating hilarious or obscene jokes, justifying his own unique way of thinking and living.

Ching‐hua yuan has also been termed as a scientific novel, for its extensive knowledge in science, mathematics, medicine, etc., which is also a particular feature it shares with Gulliver's Travels. Readers, however, will find it easy to prove that the abundant scientific knowledge in Ching‐hua yuan is not the whole content of the book but is merely one of the many encyclopedic catalogues of Li Ju‐chen's erudition.

Ching‐hua yuan is not a historical novel, although it has its scene set in a certain historical period, historical figures for characters, and historical events for plots. It is neither a fairy tale, for the fairy‐tale frame is functional only for the book's allegorical structure. It is neither the type of popular stories known as ts'ai‐tzu chia‐jen hsiao‐shuo, for it lacks the formulaic plot, romantic characters and love themes. Least possible is its being a novel of the absurd, or being a picaresque novel, in the modern sense of the terms. The extremely wide range of subjects and interests covered in Ching‐hua yuan has led H. C. Chang to a well‐phrased description that the work is indeed “an inimitable blend of mythology and adventure story, fantasy and allegory, satire and straight instruction, throughout informed with learning and sustained by wit, with an admixture of games and puzzles for the unhurried readers” (Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama 405). Chang's remark reveals pertinently the multifarious nature and encyclopedic contents of Ching‐hua yuan.

Ching‐hua yuan does not belong to any of the above‐mentioned genres or subgenres, yet it contains observable elements of all of them. In the current Chinese system of generic classification, there is not yet an adequate and ready‐made generic label for such a type of writing that is so encyclopedic in scope and philosophical in theme. In the Western critical system, works so complex and comprehensive in ideological matters are usually called “novels of ideas,” and a great many of them in literary history have now been enlisted as works of Menippean satire.

Ching‐hua yuan is called a “novel of ideas” by Hsin‐sheng C. Kao in her book‐length study Li Ju‐chen (1981),⁴ for its highly personal and idiosyncratic nature and for the complexities represented by its multifaceted structure and viewpoint. In a later essay, she labels it a “metaphysical novel” or “philosophical novel” (“Narrative Digression” 82, n. 21), for its thematic concern with the illusion/reality dualism and its contents of philosophical and ideological matters.

Kao is one of the very few critics who has noticed the digressive, cataloging/encyclopedic, metaphysical/philosophical features of Ching‐hua yuan, and she announces that Ching‐hua yuan, “at once modern and traditional, thus stands unapproachable by any one system of critical evaluation” (Preface i). In her book, Kao examines many of the criticisms of Ching‐hua yuan and makes the pungent comment that most of them are biased, over‐simplified, focusing on single aspects respectively and failing to read the book as a whole (36). Many of Kao's observations have constituted a Menippean critical point‐of‐view. For instance, she indicates that Li Ju‐chen is indebted to the intellectual movements of his time, a time when the political world of China was turning from the Ming dynasty to the Ch'ing dynasty, a time that was marked by “extreme polarities and sweeping changes” (15). All his life he is seeking a way to reconcile between the two dominant schools of thought in his time: the School of Han Learning and the School of the Mind (18). What Kao has observed here about Li Ju‐chen's social and cultural background is surely one of the features of the Bakhtinian “menippea”—an epoch in transition. Kao also explains very sensibly Li Ju‐chen's indulgence in cataloging, which on the one hand testifies “his inexperience in relating the raw data of knowledge to art,” and on the other hand is reflected in his characters' bookish approaches to life, “a very common disease of civilized man, the belief that wisdom amounts to a sum total of data.” This belief consequently “leads to the sheer accumulation of facts through artificial acquisition processes such as rote memorization” (38). Besides, Kao points out that Li Ju‐chen's characters are created “to symbolize dichotomized human nature,” rather than one‐dimensional caricatures (44). All these are obviously the features of Frye's “anatomy.”

Kao regards Ching‐hua yuan as a “satirical anatomy” of the cultural turmoils of China in the nineteenth century, just like Ju‐lin wai‐shih is one that analyzes and ridicules “the isolation felt by the intellectual class” of the eighteenth century (76). Ching‐hua yuan becomes the “most revolutionary in its criticisms of traditional China” when it depicts the moral self‐contradiction and hypocrisy of a culture that espouses simultaneously both the lofty, other‐worldly Taoist principles and the shrewd, mean materialism (76‐78). Kao therefore claims that Li Ju‐chen is not a “natural utopian” like Thomas More, but rather “a skeptical utopian who neither totally undermines the value systems of Chinese tradition nor ignores the aura of unreality of most utopias” (87).

Puzzled by the particular form of mixed genres and miscellaneous subjects of Ching‐hua yuan, a critic in Mainland China, Heh Man‐tzu, recently in 1987 invented a completely new term of “tza‐chia hsiao‐shuo” (the miscellaneous novel) to designate it, a genre that has never existed before in Chinese fiction. By that term he means a special type of prose narrative that covers almost all the major subject matters contained in old masterpieces. Works of such a type are usually produced in the aftermath of great masterpieces and by creative writers who are in an anxiety to surpass the predecessors, to make heroic breakthrough, and to display their unrecognized talents. This type of writing is characterized by an attempt to reconcile between the established aesthetics of an old masterpiece and the new one that is under its influence. To him, Ching‐hua yuan represents the special type of writing that is under the influence of such masterpieces as Hong‐lou meng, Ju‐lin wai‐shih, and so on (251). On the other hand, in terms of “novels of erudition,” Ching‐hua yuan surpasses the other two, Yeh‐so p'u‐yen and T'an‐shih, which follow the old stereotypes of shen‐muo hsiao‐shuo, whereas Ching‐hua yuan creates a new type by synthesizing skillfully a great variety of other old types. In this manner Li Ju‐chen creates a novel of erudition of its unique type, a type that cannot be classified under any category of the current system; therefore Heh has to invent a new label for it to accommodate its particular features (251).

Though the new term tza‐chia hsiao‐shuo is a new invention and has not yet been acknowledged by other critics as a legitimate genre in Chinese literary criticism, at least it reveals Heh's intention of giving a really more pertinent label to Ching‐hua yuan and of distinguishing this type of writing from other traditional types. However, his new term does carry some conviction for two reasons. First, he uses the term to describe very well the nature of the miscellaneous contents and multifarious philosophies of Ching‐hua yuan. Second, he attempts to specify furthermore the formula that constitutes the Chinese conception of shiao‐shuo, that is, the way of referring it to all the insignificant minor writings other than those classical orthodoxical ones of ching, shih, chu‐tzu, and wen‐fu. Judging the situation by Bakhtin's theories of serious and comic‐serious genres, we can see that these minor writings form a striking contrast to the classics and histories. And by adding the stylistic variations of comic parody and farcical distortion to the classical writings, the minor writings seem to imply a challenge against the authority of such serious orthodoxical writings. As for whether Ching‐hua yuan was composed in an anxiety of influence under great masterpieces, the chances are high to a certain extent, although we understand that as a native Chinese critic Heh is quite unlikely to know anything about the Western critic Harold Bloom's idea of the “anxiety of influence.” But on the other hand, if the so‐called “miscellaneous novel” could be admitted to Chinese literary system from now on to designate a special type of writings that are encyclopedic in scope, miscellaneous in subjects, pedantic in style, and most important of all, ambitious to rival orthodox masterpieces, then the Menippean satire would also have a chance to claim its validity in interpreting Chinese works of literature.

For centuries critics have been trying to find in Chinese literary system a more adequate label for the genre of Ching‐hua yuan, yet till now they have not settled down with one. Likewise, if I venture to impose the foreign genre of Menippean satire on Ching‐hua yuan, it would sound alien to them too. The only thing I can count on at the moment is that, with the progressive evolution of more and more critical concepts and theories, we are coming to understand much more efficiently the significance of many literary works. Especially after I have built up an over‐all theoretical framework of Menippean satire in the Western tradition and its counterpart in the Chinese system, I sincerely wish readers of Chinese literature will be ready to accept the Menippean satire as a universal literary phenomenon. Keeping this generic idea in mind, readers may discover more and more specific virtues and features in Ching‐hua yuan and finally recognize its inherent values. Though not a work of the first rate, Ching‐hua yuan represents the composite of Chinese creative imagination from ancient to modern.

To say that Ching‐hua yuan is not a first‐rate masterpiece does not mean that it is not worth reading. Ching‐hua yuan is a considerably misunderstood and misinterpreted work of literature; many of its virtues are still unrecognized. With the re‐discovery of new critical theories that are more able to accommodate certain types of literary works, Ching‐hua yuan may be given new inspiring meanings. After all, Ching‐hua yuan has been considered by both literary scholars and the general public as one of the most interesting and imaginative works ever produced in Chinese literature, a work unprecedentedly rich in wit and humor, fantastic adventures and experimentalism, mythological and contemporary references. In Chinese literary tradition, Ching‐hua yuan is not the best but is always the most popular and wide‐read work of literature.

On the surface, Ching‐hua yuan seems to celebrate full‐heartedly the traditional value systems it has inherited; in reality it subtly re‐evaluates the questionable aspects of them. A work so traditional yet anti‐traditional, so conventional yet anti‐conventional, certainly deserves the multi‐dimensional interpretation of the Menippean approach. Frye's theories of the analytic, dissecting power of the anatomy helps us understand that the satire in Ching‐hua yuan is of a higher intellectual level whose aim is to parody on pedants and bigots with their own jargon. Bakhtin's theories of the carnival humor and reduced laughter of the menippea enable us to realize the experimental fantasticality and adventurism of Ching‐hua yuan and its acceptance of traditional values with reservations. Payne's anti‐establishment theories that deny the possibility of any absolute standard allow us to doubt if Li Ju‐chen is really sustaining the Confucian ideals he himself seemingly supports. Kirk's observation that Menippean satire ridicules both glorious philosophies and glorious religions reminds us immediately of Li Ju‐chen's commentary on those Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist doctrines that have been complacently practiced too long in Chinese society. Kristeva's concept of intertextuality that explains the ambivalent phenomena of Menippean discourse further illustrates Li Ju‐chen's attitude toward classical texts and legendary myths.

In full, Ching‐hua yuan exhibits a great enough amount of Menippean characteristics: mixed form of traditional Chinese genres and styles, pedantry maddened by the Confucian ideology, encyclopedic dimension and miscellaneous subjects, the other‐world vs. present‐world structure, parody on classical clichés, extensive allusions and intertextuality, sexual roles reversal, pedantic display and irrelevant digressions, humorous jokes and laughters, and many others. All these characteristics in total make Ching‐hua yuan a Chinese version of Menippean satire.

To apply Frye's Menippean theories to Ching‐hua yuan, we find that the whole book of Ching‐hua yuan is a symposium of texts, books, ideas, traditions, philosophies, and ideologies. It is also one of the most critical and comprehensive surveys of traditional and contemporary Chinese culture ever found in Chinese fictional narratives. Following Bakhtin's central idea of the dialogical imagination, Ching‐hua yuan represents a literary work depicting the traditional Confucian ethical‐hierarchical ideology that is on the verge of disintegration. Two decades immediately after the publication of Ching‐hua yuan, the Ch'ing dynasty encounters the decadence and then the breakdown of a national myth which has been maintained for over two thousand years as the absolute truth and the totality of human experiences. The defects and blindspots of Chinese philosophy have never been so seriously highlighted and so comically derided before Ching‐hua yuan. Critics have been so puzzled by Li Ju‐chen's half‐serious and half‐playful manner that they tend to more or less misconstrue his intention, because his style of writing and his themes of ideological concern are unrecognized in Chinese literature. Like his predecessor Wu Ching‐tzu in Ju‐lin wai‐shih, he is paradoxically endorsing and challenging at the same time the Chinese cultural tradition, only in a much more fabulous and farcical manner. By inspiring more meaningful relevant insights and by accommodating many of the diverse critical opinions, the Menippean interpretation makes Ching‐hua yuan a much more fully and richly appreciated work of literature.

Notes

1. For studies on the utopian or dystopian elements in Ching‐hua yuan and in Chinese literature, see Wang Huang Pi‐twan, Yang Hsiao‐ting, Koon‐ki Tommy Ho, Chang Hui‐chuan, Terry siu‐han Yip, and others.

2. Almost all critical studies on Ching‐hua yuan mention the celebrated Country of Women episode, but by and large they treat the subject as a political issue of women's liberation, seeing the Country as a paradise where women are finally able to get a revenge on what men had tortured them before. For more advanced studies on the feminist topic of Ching‐hua yuan, see Hu Shih, Pao Chia‐lin, Sharon Hou, Lai Fang‐ling, Frederick P. Brandauer, Chang Hsiao‐hung, Cheng Ming‐li, and Li Yu‐hsing.

3. The manner of reading Ching‐hua yuan as political allegory or political satire still occupies the position of a major critical school in traditional literary criticism, especially in the hands of some old‐fashioned critics of the early Republican era and of Mainland China.

4. Kao's book, Li Ju‐chen, developed from her Ph. D. dissertation, “Allegory and Satire in Li Ju‐chen's Ching‐hua yuan” (U of California, 1977), contains an exhaustive research of extant critical studies and an extensive annotated bibliography.

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