In a certain sense, there has never been a break in the literary tradition of China. A Chinese scholar of today, when he learns of the death of a friend,will turn aside from his research on Finnegans Wake to compose an obituary couplet whose language would have been acceptable to a fifteenth-century forebear, and whose content will probably include allusions to the Bookof Songs of the sixth century before Christ. In another sense, the literary history of the past seven hundred years is a record of continual upheavals, of the periodic emergence of new forms, of the frequent substitution of one classical model for another, and (for the past half-century) of iconoclasm and innovation on the largest scale. The literature of China has been one of the most glorious achievements of the imagination of man.

Cyril Birch has been Chair of the Department of Oriental Languages of the University of California at Berkeley. His many translations include Stories from a Ming Collection, which prompted Library Journal to declare "we are indebted to Cyril Birch . . . for his felicitous translation," and his Anthology of Chinese Literature, Volume I: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century, which was described by the New Yorker as "a remarkable Chinese banquet indeed--drinking poems and didactic biographies, cynical love stories and operatic plays, philosophical letters and lyrical religious tracts--it is all a delight.

INTRODUCTION

          YUAN DYNASTY (1280-1367)

SONGS OF THE YUIAN DYNASTY

Two Anonymous Songs

   Tune: "Magpie on the Branch"

   Seeking a Mate

Kuan Han-eh'ing

   Tune: "Reining in to Listen"

   Bedroom Seene

   Song Set: Defy Old Age

   Song Set: Get Out While You Can

Hu Chih-yv

   Thoughts of Love

Ma Chih-yvan

   Tune: "Plum Blossoms in the Breeze"

   Tune: "Sand and Sky"

Chang Yang-hao

   T'ung Pass

Teng Yii-pin

   Taoist Songs

Hsii Tsai-ssu

   Thoughts of Love

Tu Tsun-li

   To a Pretty Girl with a Mole on Her Cheek

Chou Wen-chih

   Autumn Sadness

Ch'iao Chi

   A Waterfall Revisited

Chang K'o-chiu

   The Waterfall Temple at T'ien-t'ai

          MING DYNASTY  (1568-1644)

GHOSTS AND OTHER MARVELS

The Jade Kuan-yin

Ch'v Yu

   A Record of the Land of the Blessed

Ma Chnng-hsi

   The Wolf of Chung-shan

A POET OF THE EARLY MING

Kao Ch'i

   Preface to His Own Poems

   On Hearing the Sound of Oars, When Leaving the

     East Gate of the City at Dawn

   The Song of the Man of the Green Hill

   Written on Seeing the Flowers, and Remembering

     My Daughter

   Called for the Compilation of the Yiian History and

     about to Leave for the Capital, I take Leave of My

     Wife

   Winter Hardship in the Capital

   Four Poems from the Eastern Cottage

A HILARIOUS BUDDHIST ALLEGORY

Wu Ch'eng-en

   The Temptation of Saint Pigsy

A MASTERPIECE OF MING DRAMA

T'ang Hsien-tsu

   From Peony Pavilion

……