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Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor

A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection

By Aina the Layman. With Ziran the Eccentric Wanderer. Robert E. Hegel

Written around 1660, the unique Chinese short story collection Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor (Doupeng xianhua), by the author known only as Aina the Layman, uses the seemingly innocuous setting of neighbors swapping yarns...

Further Adventures on the Journey to the West

By Master of Silent Whistle Studio. Translated by Qiancheng Li and Robert E. Hegel . Introduction by Qiancheng Li

As the audacious Monkey King battles his way through a landscape of inexplicable places and unfamiliar passions, Further Adventures on the Journey to the West offers a wry, revisionist critique of the late-Ming fascination with...

Slapping the Table in Amazement

A Ming Dynasty Story Collection

By Ling Mengchu. Translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang. Introduction by Robert E. Hegel

Slapping the Table in Amazement is the unabridged English translation of the famous story collection Pai’an jingqi by Ling Mengchu (1580–1644), originally published in 1628. The forty lively stories gathered here present a broad picture...

Writing and Law in Late Imperial China

Crime, Conflict, and Judgment

By Robert E. Hegel and Katherine Carlitz

In this fascinating, multidisciplinary volume, scholars of Chinese history, law, literature, and religions explore the intersections of legal practice with writing in many different social contexts. They consider the overlapping concerns of legal culture and...

True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China

Twenty Case Histories

By Robert E. Hegel

The little-examined genre of legal case narratives is represented in this fascinating volume, the first collection translated into English of criminal cases - most involving homicide - from late imperial China. These true stories of...