A New Account of Tales of the World

A drunk poet strips naked in his house and asks visitors what they are doing inside his trousers. A general hears of his army's victory while playing chess and goes on playing. A scholar sets off by boat at night to visit a friend, reaches the door at dawn, and turns back home because the mood has passed. The New Account of Tales of the World collects over a thousand anecdotes of the aristocrats, wits, eccentrics and Pure Conversation philosophers of the Han, Wei and Jin, arranged in thirty-six chapters from Virtuous Conduct to Enmity and Estrangement. It is the wittiest book of early China. This complete new English translation gives all thirty-six chapters. Names are given in modern pinyin, offices and titles are rendered plainly, and the narrative runs as continuous English prose, so the book can be read straight through by anyone curious about China's past, not only by specialists.