Translators’Preface

There are four important Chinese dramatic works written in rhyme from the 13th to the 19th century,namely, Romance of Western Bower,Dream in Peony Pavilion,Love in Long Life Palace, and Peach Blooms Painted with Blood .All these four works tell us love stories which reflect the times from Tang to Qing dynasties. Love in Long Life Palace is said to reflect the strife between love and power, Romance of Western Bower between love and honor, Dream in Peony Pavilion shows that love can revive the dead,and Peach Blooms Painted with Blood that political power can separate living lovers.

The hero of Peach Blooms Painted with Blood is Master Hou,patriotic intellectual of Ming Dynasty,and the heroine is Fragrant Lee,one of the eight famed songstresses in Jinling.They fell in love at first sight and he presented her a fan as token of love,on which he wrote the following poem:

The beauty of the Southern land

Holds you not in sleeves but in hand.

You follow her as summer fan

Brings her fragrant breeze when you can.

They were soon married.The last Ming emperor died as a result of the troubles within and without,a new emperor succeeded to the throne.As Hou did not support the new ruler,he was put in prison and Lee was forced to remarry another lord.She would prefer death to remarriage,so she dashed her head against the ground and her blood stained the fan,on which a peach blossom was painted,and that is why the fan was called peach blossom fan.When she sent him the blood-stained fan,she sang:

You see the blood in deep or light red

Densely or sparsely spread.

It is not cuckoo’s tears fallen in showers

But my own blood blent with peach flowers.

It pours out of my heart and from my face,

And leaves on icy silk its trace.

This story tells us the strife between love and power,and ends in the separation of the lovers.

Is there any love story in the West which reflects the rise or fall of an empire?In drama we have Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and in novel Scott’s Quentin Durward .Shakespeare’s play may be compared with Love in Long Life Palace ,while Scott’s novel reflecting the times of Louis XI,may remind us of Peach Blooms Painted with Blood .But in the Chinese drama almost all the characters are historic figures while in Scott all the heroes but Louis XI are created by imagination.Here we see realism in Chinese literature and romanticism in Western fiction.In Chinese works the heroes are glorified and the corrupt officials blamed,which shows Chinese idea of morality,while in the West,Louis XI may not be a good king,but he is not criticized.This shows another difference between the East and the West.But the love of beauty is common in the West as in the East,so Fragant Lee may rival Isabelle in Scott’s Quentin Durward .This tradition comes from the Book of Poetry in China and Homer’s epics in Greece.In the former more common people than heroes are glorified,which is also a difference between the East and the West.For instance,we may read A Home-coming Soldier after the War in the Book of Poetry composed about six centuries BC:

When I left here,

Willows shed tear.

I come back now,

Snow bends the bough.

Long,long the way,

Hard,hard the day.

My grief overflows.

Who knows?who knows?

In Homer’s Iliad ,when Hector left his wife for the front,he said:

Where heroes war,the foremost place I claim,

The first in danger as the first in fame.

This shows the difference between realism in the East and romanticism in the West.