The Mandarin Duck Needle
Yuanyang Zhen - English Edition
A man buys a seat in the examination hall, steals another man's essay, and
climbs. The essay's true author is left with nothing but the truth, and the
truth is worth less than a bribe.
About the Book
This short seventeenth century novel is a cold, funny, furious book about the
one institution that decided every Chinese life of consequence: the imperial
examination. Xu Biyu, styled Pengzi, is a poor licentiate from Hangzhou with
talent and no money. Ding Xiegong has money. What passes between them, a
borrowed brush, a purchased place, a stolen composition, sets off a chain that
runs through a missing maidservant, a murder charge, a wife carried off on a
grain boat, and finally to the household of the Grand Secretary Yan Song
himself, where the corruption at the top is shown to be the same corruption as
in the county school, only better dressed.
The prologue is one of the sharpest short pieces in the genre: two anecdotes
about examination fraud, one with a ghost who exposes it, one with a giant who
simply takes what he wants, set as a frame before the main story begins.
About This Edition
This complete English translation presents the prologue and all four chapters,
rendered directly from the Chinese text. The prologue is restored to its proper
place at the front of the book, where it belongs, though the surviving text
carries it at the end. Examination ranks and official titles are translated
consistently, the inset poems are set as verse, and nothing is abridged.
Chapter titles are supplied by the translator, since the original has none.
Themes and Legacy
- The imperial examination system and the industry of cheating that grew on it
- Bought degrees, ghostwritten essays and the men ruined by both
- Yan Song and Yan Shifan, the real faces of Ming corruption
- Marriage, abduction and the vulnerability of a scholar's household
- A rare short novel that names the mechanism instead of moralising about it
For Readers Who Love
The Scholars (Rulin Waishi) - Yu Jiao Li - The Carnal Prayer Mat - Ming Dynasty
History - Chinese Literature in Translation - Satire
"The examination was fair. Everything around it was for sale."
At a glance
About the series
Rediscover the great epics, mysteries and chronicles of dynastic China: gods and generals, swindlers and scholars, courtesans, ghosts and emperors, in complete English translations.
