The Phoenix-Summoning Flute

Set against the shifting political and cultural world of the Song dynasty, The Phoenix-Summoning Flute (引鳳蕭) is a richly embroidered Chinese novel of talent, poetry, withdrawal, loyalty, and destiny.

At its center stands Bai Yin, styled Yunxi, known as Meixin - a gifted young scholar of rare literary brilliance, refined sensibility, and little taste for official ambition. Retreating from the noise of the city to his family’s villa, he devotes himself to poetry, friendship, snow-bound gatherings, plum-blossom excursions, and the cultivation of a life shaped by beauty and thought. Yet the world does not easily release men of talent. Around him gather signs, prophecies, strange visitors, and gifts whose meaning will only unfold with time.

Behind this graceful surface lies a sharper current. Meixin’s father, Elder Bai, a principled court official, becomes entangled in the fierce controversies surrounding reform, remonstrance, and power. As the novel moves between secluded gardens and the machinery of state, it opens into a wider drama of moral courage, political persecution, exile, gratitude, and extraordinary rescue. Scholars, magistrates, recluses, immortals, brigands, and officials all move through a world where verse and destiny are never far apart.

Distinguished by its lyrical openings, vivid seasonal imagery, and elegant narrative voice, The Phoenix-Summoning Flute offers modern readers a rare encounter with a work that is at once poetic, dramatic, philosophical, and deeply rooted in the literary culture of premodern China. Snow-lit banquets, red plum blossoms, memorial steles, hidden loyalties, Taoist hints, and acts of chivalric repayment all combine into a story of unusual charm and force.

This edition presents 引鳳蕭 by Banyunyou in a first complete English rendering by Valentin Sarić, making this little-known Chinese novel newly available to English-language readers.

Rediscover the great epics, mysteries and chronicles of dynastic China: gods and generals, swindlers and scholars, courtesans, ghosts and emperors, in complete English translations.