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Lao Can youji 老殘遊記 "The Travels of Lao Can"
by Liu E 劉鶚

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Written by Liu E 劉鶚 (1857-1909), this short novel is partly autobiographical and was published in a periodical. Lao Can is an itinerant medicine who during his journey through Shandong province encounters the evils that suppressive bureaucrats put on guiltless people. Through his good connections to official circles, Lao Can succeeds in pushishing at least one of the bad officials. In a vivid language, Liu E depicts scenes full of life, like the two dancings girl in the second chapter, and in a fantastic winter landscape. The book is a source for the daily life of peasantry in late Qing times 清.
Xunzi 荀子. Ximen Qing, acquiring an aphrodisiac, sets destruction upon himself, seeing his son and his favorite concubine dying. After his own death, his household disintegrates, paralleling the defeat of the Song armies by the intruding troops of the Liao empire 遼. Scholarship saw in this novel a harsh critic of the circumstances of the late Ming period 明. The technical virtuosity of the author, his using of a wide range of material, like classical quotations, songs, theatre, can not be fully enjoyed in modern editions because the descibing of a few sexual scenes lead to radical shortenings of the book.



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