Acknowledgments  

Preface   

Part One: Practices  

1. Jin-ology   

2. The Manic Preface: Jin Shengtans (1608-1661) Shuihu zhuan  

3. A Cure for Melancholy: Yuan Hongdao (1558-1610) and Qifa (Seven Stimuli)  

4. Tears of Resentment: Zhang Zhupos (1670-1698) Jin Ping Mei  

Part Two: Intervention  

5. Seduction: Tiger and Yinfu  

6. Red Shoes, Foot Bindings, and the Swing  

7. A Cat, a Dog, and the Killing of Livestock  

8. Very Close to Yinfu and Enu; or, How Prefaces Matter for Jin Ping Mei (1695) and Enu Shu (Taipei, 1995)  

Notes  

Glossary  

Works Cited  

Index  

"This . . . is a significant book, both for Taiwan and for contemporary Chinese studies as a whole. The author is to be complimented. . . ."

—Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times

"[A] highly original study of one of China's most important novels. . . . this is an outstanding study of an important novel and its traditions of 'legitimate' readership (as well as a remarkable 'illegitimate' challenge to these traditions). It will inform scholarship on classical fiction well into the future and any students or academics working on masculinity, femininity and sexuality in literature will find the insights in Obscene Things invaluable."—Louise Edwards, Intersections

"[T]he first major reading of the sixteenth-century novel Jin Ping Mei in terms of the material and social-symbolic conditions that allowed it to emerge in the Ming. . . . Besides exposing gender politics in the writing and reading of Jin Ping Mei, Ding's book provides a number of detailed and historically sensitive readings of episodes in the novel. . . . With her book . . . Jin Ping Mei will become more accessible to us. . . ."- > ."
—Keith McMahon, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

"[A] highly sophisticated study of gender politics; it offers a nuanced rereading of Jin Ping Mei in terms of reader positionality in relation not only to gender difference but also to class and socioeconomic status."—Karl Kao, The China Review

"Obscene Things is an important book. It features a wealth of original insights and poses a number of crucial questions that point at previously uncharted critical directions within Jin Ping Mei studies, while contributing at the same time to a growing body of scholarship on late Ming and early Qing culture, in particular on the emergence of the book market and the role that intellectuals played in it. . . . For the wealth of its provocative insights and inspiring tactics, for its critical originality and theoretical subtlety, Obscene Things will be read and discussed for years to come."—Giovanni Vitiello, China Review International

"Ding's scholarship is ever so impressive; she has a formidable command of all that has been written about JPM in Chinese and English, as well as a thorough familiarity with the JPM text in its many editions. . . . One of her major contributions is doing a feminist interpretation of the text and its commentaries. . . . [A] landmark in Jin-ology."—Nicholas Koss, Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy

"This . . . is a significant book, both for Taiwan and for contemporary Chinese studies as a whole. The author is to be complimented. . . ."

—Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times

"[A] highly original study of one of China's most important novels. . . . this is an outstanding study of an important novel and its traditions of 'legitimate' readership (as well as a remarkable 'illegitimate' challenge to these traditions). It will inform scholarship on classical fiction well into the future and any students or academics working on masculinity, femininity and sexuality in literature will find the insights in Obscene Things invaluable."—Louise Edwards, Intersections

"[T]he first major reading of the sixteenth-century novel Jin Ping Mei in terms of the material and social-symbolic conditions that allowed it to emerge in the Ming. . . . Besides exposing gender politics in the writing and reading of Jin Ping Mei, Ding's book provides a number of detailed and historically sensitive readings of episodes in the novel. . . . With her book . . . Jin Ping Mei will become more accessible to us. . . ."- > ."
—Keith McMahon, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

"[A] highly sophisticated study of gender politics; it offers a nuanced rereading of Jin Ping Mei in terms of reader positionality in relation not only to gender difference but also to class and socioeconomic status."—Karl Kao, The China Review

"Obscene Things is an important book. It features a wealth of original insights and poses a number of crucial questions that point at previously uncharted critical directions within Jin Ping Mei studies, while contributing at the same time to a growing body of scholarship on late Ming and early Qing culture, in particular on the emergence of the book market and the role that intellectuals played in it. . . . For the wealth of its provocative insights and inspiring tactics, for its critical originality and theoretical subtlety, Obscene Things will be read and discussed for years to come."—Giovanni Vitiello, China Review International

"Ding's scholarship is ever so impressive; she has a formidable command of all that has been written about JPM in Chinese and English, as well as a thorough familiarity with the JPM text in its many editions. . . . One of her major contributions is doing a feminist interpretation of the text and its commentaries. . . . [A] landmark in Jin-ology."—Nicholas Koss, Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy

“Ding’s reading of Jin Ping Mei is unique and extremely important. By reading this novel as a cumulative accretion of text and commentary and as a cultural icon, she shows how all of us who read it from an aesthetic perspective are implicated in covering up its disturbing and hatefully misogynist core. This is a true coup.”— Maram Epstein, University of Oregon

“Those who read Ding’s investigation will never look at critical interpretations of Chinese fiction with the same complacency again.”—Robert E. Hegel, author of Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China

“In this absorbing study of the multiple lives of a literary classic that is also a popular pornographic text, Naifei Ding steals across the border between cultural studies and feminist/queer literary criticism. Bringing a gendered social history of modern print culture in China into a ‘porous intimacy’ with both a critique of interpretive power and a feminist ‘counter-ethics’ of reading, Obscene Things is a scholarly work of exceptional creativity. Ding herself is a wonderful storyteller, and her critical narration of the fortunes of Jin Ping Mei will inspire anyone concerned with the how of studying historical modalities of gender, sexuality, status, and cultural power.”—Meaghan Morris, Lingnan University

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought