The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin Ping Mei, vol. 5: The Dissolution.

• Author: Sibau, Maria Franca
• Position: Book review

The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin Ping Mei, vol. 5: The Dissolution. Translated by DAVID TOD ROY. Princeton Library of Asian Translations. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013. Pp. lxviii + 556. S39.95.

The immensity of David Tod Roys achievement in the field of literary translation can hardly be overstated. Indeed, the publication in 2013 of this final installment of The Plum in the Golden Vase or Jin Ping Mei has been covered not just in the usual sinological venues (with an especially fine review by Scott Gregory in Ming Studies), but also in the New York Times and on digital media. One can begin approaching this monumental achievement by way of numbers, as Perry Link and Carla Nappi have done: five volumes, nearly 2,500 pages covering 100 chapters, accompanied by 567 pages of over 4,400 endnotes, published over exactly twenty years (the hardcover edition of the first volume appeared in 1993) and bearing the fruits of twenty-five years of research and teaching before that.

Speaking of numbers, readers may be struck by the relative thinness of this last volume (624 pp.), especially when compared to the intimidating fourth volume (1032 pp.). But this is actually deliberate and reflective of the original. To use Roys metaphor, this last volume represents the post-ejaculation shrinking of the penis after the "climax" of the aptly titled volume 4. The main hero Ximen Qing is dead by the beginning of the volume, and his absence is deeply felt; the narrative tempo speeds up. If the previous four volumes together covered roughly six years of Ximen Qing's life, from the first fatal encounter with Pan Jinlian to his unforgettably graphic death at age thirty-three, this last volume alone spans an arc of about ten years, until the fall of the Northern Song in 1127, and concludes with a brief account of events after that (including the death of Wu Yueniang at age sixty-nine). The (in)famous detailed descriptions of sexual acts become sparser, especially after the death of Pan Jinlian. Affairs continue to happen with the same frequency, but the text does not linger on them, proceeding instead with a quickened pace toward the conclusion. This is also the volume that brings all the narrative threads to a resolution, and that most patently displays the moral purport of the whole book.

Reviewers of volume...