The Dragon King’s Daughter

Ten Tang Dynasty Stories

Foreign Language Press Peking, hardcover with dustjacket, illustrated.
Name on endpaper.


FOREWORD

The Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) was a golden age of poetry and short stories. In the brief span of two hundred and ninety years many outstanding poets and story writers appeared, including men like Li Po, Tu Fu, Pai Chu-yi, Li Kung-tso and Pai Hsing-chien, who have left works which will live for ever. Over fifty thousand poems and over four hundred stories of Tang Dynasty are extant today, reflecting glory on China;s ancient civilization and constituting no mean contribution to world literature.
The short story can be found in embryo form in China during the Six Dynasties (222-589 A.D.), when a number of interesting anecdotes and tales appeared. But whether describing spirits or famous men, most of these stories were merely rough sketches or simple anecdotes. Hu Ying-ling (1551-1602), a Ming Dynasty critic, has written: During the Six Dynasties we find many weird tales, most of them not deliberately invented but based on hearsay and misconceptions. Only in the Tang Dynasty did men start writing such tales for themselves.
The Tang Dynasty, then, was the time when Chinese began to write highly imaginative stories in polished language and with a wealth of detail, giving a truthful and moving picture of the people and society of the time. Poetry and the short story were the two most highly developed forms of literature of the period. As Hung Mai {1123-1202) of the Sung Dynasty wrote: We must study the Tang stories. Even small ………….. ………………. …………