Asian Addicts Anonymous

I’m currently about halfway through “The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei: Volume Two: The Rivals”, and I thought I’d mention it in case you were looking for an insane book to enjoy.

The tale, technically, is about the various exploits of Hsi-men Ch’ing, a rich fellow who has more than his fair share of the douchebag market cornered. He’s got a wife, a handful of concubines, a nasty habit of injuring or killing people who annoy him, a libido the size of Texas, and a streak of corruption nine miles wide. He’s just not the sort of dude you wanna hang around with. …But he sure is fun to read about!

I say “technically” because, really, the most interesting parts of the story (so far) (for me, anyway) center on two of his concubines: P’an Chin-lien and Li P’ing-erh. (Chapter 27, by the way, manages to employ both of them in quite the series of, um, fascinating situations.) They’re not the most innocent and frail of women – far from it, in fact. Neither one of them is above doing what it takes to get what they want, and perhaps it could be said that they occasionally go way overboard in their enthusiasm.

On the other hand, it’s a fascinating look into what life in ancient China would do to a woman. They sort’ve have to act the way they do in order to get anything. Just standing around and being meek and mild doesn’t really accomplish much in their universe. Hsi-men Ch’ing isn’t a nice guy, and he’s not easily swayed by anything other than his own random whims… If Chin-lien or P’ing-erh want anything, they’ve got to get it from him, and they’ve got to make him feel like it was his own idea in the first place.

Anyway, this story is dirty, violent, nasty, and dirty. Did I mention dirty? It’s pretty dirty. It’s got a really weird and slow start like “A Dream of Red Mansions“, and it randomly drags on mercilessly for chapters at a time, but it’s so worth the slog in order to get to the good parts: this book packs a punch! People are drugged, beaten, improperly imprisoned, and even murdered. Extravagance and corruption run rampant. And it’s dirty. Did I mention it’s dirty? It’s really dirty. (I’ve also found it way more accessible than “The Tale of Genji“, by the way. So if you’re trying to get into classical Asian literature, maybe start here!)

Also: the translation is brilliantly bloody awesome. I’m a footnote kind of girl, and based on (what I assume are the) thousands of footnotes, the translator seriously took his task to heart. He wasn’t phoning this project in. It feels like he was married to it every waking moment.