Sold directly, from any country: secure checkout by Polar (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay; VAT handled at checkout). You get the PDF and EPUB downloads right after payment.
The Lute
Cai Bojie goes to the capital, passes the examinations and is forced to marry a minister's daughter; his first wife, Zhao Wuniang, cares for his parents through famine, buries them and travels to the capital with her lute. The Lute is a classic of devotion. It is a cornerstone of Chinese drama, admired for its realism and its moving portrayal of a faithful wife. This is a complete new English translation, with names in modern pinyin and the text rendered as plain, readable English prose. Stage directions and role names are kept, and the sung arias are rendered as verse, so the play can be read like a script or imagined on the stage. Chinese drama mixes speech, song, comedy and spectacle; the plays were performed for centuries, and their stories are still known to every Chinese reader.
