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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-sixty-seventh issue:

“Bai Xingjian and His Dream World of Sex and Love,” by Qianheng Jiang. 

http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp367_Bai_Xingjian_Sex_Love.pdf

ABSTRACT

The work that brought Bai Xingjian, a less-famous Tang novelist, to modern attention was “Rhapsody on the Great Joy of the Intercourse of Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang,” found at Dunhuang. The authorship is somewhat questionable due to its explicit sexual descriptions. Through a comparative analysis of Bai's thematic consistency in his fictional works, “The Tale of Li Wa” and “Stories of Three Dreams,” both of which explore sex and love as innate human desires, we see that Bai appears more plausibly to be its author. Li Wa is an unconventional woman figure divergent from Confucian norms and perceived as a dream lover among the Tang literati. “Rhapsody on the Great Joy” is influenced by Buddhism's recognition of human nature and is a departure from conservative attitudes toward sex. Regrettably, Bai's pioneering ideas exceeded the societal norms of his time, resulting in the suppression of his visionary discourse on sex and love. Nonetheless, Bai's work has been adapted in later generations, serving as a bridge connecting people's explorations of human desires. 


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Bai Xingjian (776-826) was the younger brother of Bai Juyi / Po Chü-i (772-846), the famous Tang poet and statesman.  Bai Xingjian's rhymed prose-poem, "Tiāndì yīnyáng jiāohuān dàlèfù 天地陰陽交歡大樂賦") ("Rhapsody on the Great Joy of the Intercourse of Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang"), studied and translated here, may be thought of as a precursor of the celebrated erotic vernacular novel, Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 (The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus), which has a complete, magisterial translation by David Tod Roy (1993-2013).  An earlier translation by Clement Egerton (1939) had the explicit portions rendered in Latin.

Selected readings

• "Tiandi yinyang jiaohuan dalefu" (Wikipedia)
• "Disappearing readings of Sinoglyphs: focus on Bo (–> Bai) Juyi / Haku Rakuten" (9/18/22)
• "Modals, idiolects, garden-path sentences, and English translations of a ninth-century Chinese poem" (2/22/24)
• "On the overt verbal expression of romantic love as a modern habit" (2/14/17)
• Victor H. Mair, ed., "Speaking and Writing: Studies in Vernacular Aspects of Middle Period Chinese Culture", Sino-Platonic Papers, 353 (August, 2024), 67 pages.

September 10, 2025 @ 3:58 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and gender, Language and literature

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