"Jane Austen meets hard-core pornography" in a dirty Ming Dynasty classic, now fully accessible to English readers. For the past 40 years David Toy Roy, professor of Chinese Literature at the Univeristy of Chicago, has been working on an English translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅).

This is a book The New York Times describes aptly as, "An infamously pornographic tale of the rise and fall of a corrupt merchant, written by an anonymous author in the late 16th century. " The title, which may refer to some of the characters' names, can also be analyzed as homonymous for "penis in the vagina."

Roy first sought a copy of the book when was a teenager living with missionary parents in a China just liberated by Mao Zedong. Like any healthy adolescent, he was simply on a hunt for some good porn. He found a copy in a second-hand Nanjing book shop. The novel was likely discarded by its original owner due to Mao's crackdown on "politically incorrect" items.

Today, hard copies are still hard to come by although digital versions are passed around online by like-minded healthy Chinese adolescents. A 2008 film adaptation also appeared out of Hong Kong called Sex and Chopsticks (as seen in photos below) and Chinese model Gong Yuefei stars in a 3D film version of the book which came out this year (photo above).

The recent publication of the fifth volume of the translation, called The Dissolution, brings Roy's project to a close, completing 3,000 pages of explicit writing that dates back four centuries. Including, according to The New York Times, a notorius Chapter 27, "in which the merchant, named Ximen Qing, puts his most depraved concubine to particularly prolonged and imaginative use."

In his review of the book, Stephen Marche shares this scene (NSFW) to exemplify the book's notoriety and how the author integrates graphic sex into day-to-day life:

She pumped it in and out of her mouth unceasingly, until white saliva overflowed from her lips, and rouge stains appeared on the stem of his organ.

Just as he was about to ejaculate, the woman questioned Hsi-men Ch’ing, saying, “Ying the Second has sent invitations inviting us to his place on the twenty-eighth. Are we going to go, or not?

While all the aphrodisiacs, depraved copulation and strange sex toys get the book most of its attention, the novel isn't all smut. The detailed descriptions of everyday life do depart from raunch to cover everything from clothing, jewelry and meals.

This treasure chest of historical content is what motivated Roy to complete the project. His abundant annotations are lauded by scholars and are one of the features that differentiates his piece from previous translation attempts.

The novel's detailed descriptions, sexual or not, also underscore the significance of the book as the first realist long-form Chinese narrative – no magic monkey heroes or fictional lands. "The novel, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of the narrative art form – not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context," Amazon.com summarizes.

So what's the moral of the story? The corruption in this novel mirrors social issues in today's China The New York Times piece says and Marche claims he reads about people like Ximen all the time. Bo Xilai comes to mind.

"It's his [Ximen's] over indulgence in sexual activity that brings him to death and destroys his household. As well as destroying his favorite concubine. He insists on having sex with her while she's in her menstrual period and that produces hemorrhaging which causes her death," Roy said in an interview with CBC Radio, dropping a major spoiler. Read at your own discretion.

The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei: Volume Five: The Dissolution is available on Amazon.com

Email: nickrichards@thebeijinger.com

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Photos: posters.imdb.cn, bookdepository.co.uk, maydaily.com