The Peach Blossom Fan

The Peach Blossom Fan (Chinese: 桃花扇; pinyin: Táohuā shàn; Wade–Giles: T'ao-hua shan; Jyutping: Tou4faa1 sin3) is a musical play and historical drama in 44 scenes that was completed in 1699 by the early Qing dynasty playwright Kong Shangren after more than 10 years of effort.

The play depicts the drama that resulted in the 1644 collapse of the Ming dynasty. The play recounts the death of the Ming dynasty through the love story of its two main characters, young scholar Hou Fangyu and a famous geji named Li Xiangjun. The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature has called it "China's greatest historical drama".

An English translation by Chen Shih-hsiang (Chinese: 陳世驤; pinyin: Chén Shìxiāng) and Harold Acton, K.B.E. with Cyril Birch collaborating, appeared in 1976. Wai-yee Li published another translation with Oxford University Press in 2024.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.