Jin Ping Mei

Jin Ping Mei, translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus, is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the latter half of the 16th century, in the late Ming dynasty. Consisting of 100 chapters, it was published under the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng, the Scoffing Scholar of Lanling, with the only clue to the author's identity being that he hailed from Lanling County in present-day Shandong. The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596 and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610, with the most widely read recension edited and published with commentaries by Zhang Zhupo in 1695. Jin Ping Mei takes its name from its three central female characters, Pan Jinlian, Li Ping'er and Pang Chunmei, and the translator David Tod Roy called it a landmark in the development of the narrative art form, ranking it with The Tale of Genji and Don Quixote among the earliest works of prose fiction of comparable sophistication in world literature. It is considered one of the six classics of Chinese novels.