Publisher Description

Top Graduate Zhang Xie is the first extant play in the Chinese southern dramatic tradition and a milestone in the history of Chinese literature. Dating from the early fifteenth century, but possibly composed earlier, it is the work of a writing club called the Nine Mountain Society.

The play relates the story of a talented scholar who sets off for the capital to take the imperial exams. On the road, he is robbed and beaten by a bandit. In a nearby village temple he meets an orphaned girl who nurses him back to health and whom he marries. Once he takes first place in the exams, however, he comes to regret the marriage, setting in motion a series of decisions with dire consequences. Underlying the drama are preposterous farce, a penchant for puns, and ingenious play on the conventions of theater.

This story of love, ambition, and betrayal speaks to the tensions created by the expectations that family, society, and state placed on the scholar. The examination system offered families the promise of social and economic advancement through an official position. The state relied on these men for the administration of the empire, and society expected that education in the classics would produce moral men. The play offers a critique of the scholar's ideal, the education system, and the ethical values this process was intended to instill.

This first full English-language translation of Top Graduate Zhang Xie features a detailed introduction that discusses the foundations of Chinese drama and the play's composition and performance.

Author Biography

Regina S. Llamas is associate professor in the humanities at IE University, Spain.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Regina S. Llamas
Top Graduate Zhang Xie
Appendix I. Dramatis Personae
Appendix II. Synopsis of Acts
Appendix III. Roles in Acts
Notes
Index

Review

Regina S. Llamas brings a lifetime of research and a flair for literary nuance to the translation of Top Graduate Zhang Xie to let the reader experience why this play made for great theater. Her rendition beautifully captures the riotous fun of the original, and her introduction is a tour de force in its own right. -- Patricia Sieber, author of Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000
The manuscript copy of Zhang Xie zhuangyuan is our only surviving complete example of a full-length southern play preceding the fifteenth century. It is a marvelous comedy, parodying all the conventions it employs. This sparkling translation by Llamas includes an extensive introduction that provides a detailed and critical discussion of the play and its genre. -- Wilt L. Idema, author of The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun
Having a complete English translation of Top Graduate Zhang Xie gives students and comparatists a far more comprehensive view of this performance form than ever before. Llamas's introduction and notes authoritatively situate the play historically, culturally, and in terms of textual creation and transmission. This is an excellent addition to the Translations from the Asian Classics series. -- Robert E. Hegel, cotranslator of A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China
Top Graduate Zhang Xie leaves the audience in stitches (or, as the Chinese would rather say, unstitched), while experts cherish it as a key to early Chinese theater lost in oblivion. Llamas brings these two worlds together with her vivid translation and erudite scholarship on the centennial of the play's rediscovery. -- Ling Hon Lam, author of The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to Theatricality
Regina S. Llamas' translation reads well, and Top Graduate Zhang Xie is a consistently entertaining play . . . This edition — with its lengthy, thorough Introduction — is a fine introduction to Chinese drama for those new to it. * Complete Review *

Review Quote

Top Graduate Zhang Xie leaves the audience in stitches (or, as the Chinese would rather say, unstitched), while experts cherish it as a key to early Chinese theater lost in oblivion. Llamas brings these two worlds together with her vivid translation and erudite scholarship on the centennial of the play's rediscovery.

Details