The Romance of the Western Chamber

A young scholar sees Cui Yingying in a monastery courtyard and falls in love; her clever maid Hongniang carries letters, a bandit army besieges the temple, and a mother breaks her promise. The Romance of the Western Chamber is the most famous love story of the Chinese stage. Witty, lyrical and frank, it was loved and banned for centuries and inspired the Dream of the Red Chamber. 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.