孽海花——晚清变局中的风流与政治A Flower in a Sinful Sea: Romance and Politics in the Late Qing

In his A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, Lu Xun counted A Flower in a Sinful Sea among the four great novels of exposure of the late Qing, praising it as "ingeniously constructed and brilliantly written". The novel is a roman à clef built on real people and events. Its cast includes famous scholars and celebrated courtesans, high officials and great ministers, servants and pageboys, and even the Qing emperor, European royalty, Japanese rōnin and the commander of the Eight-Nation Alliance. Written from the point of view of the upper-class intellectuals of the day, it is a remarkable book that records love affairs, gossip and anecdotes, and above all the turning of history and the currents of politics. Questions for discussion: Several love affairs and the politics of officialdom: The talented scholar and the princess The famous scholar and the famous courtesan The general and the Miao girl The Qingliu official and the young lady of good family The puppet emperor and his beloved consort and confidante. The old Qing loyalists vie to pass around the Qingye lu: Eileen Chang's testimony. Topics of interest: How did the son of Gong Zizhen, who wrote "choose talent without regard to convention", become the first man to guide a foreign invader? Did the famous courtesan Sai Jinhua save China through her romance with Waldersee, commander of the Eight-Nation Alliance? Is this the ancestor of plot devices common in palace-intrigue dramas, martial arts novels and fanciful historical romances?