Posted 2016/9/7
Sanyan and Erpai,collections of short stories that have been quite popular since the late Ming Dynasty in China,take a quite important position in the history of Chinese literature.
Sanyan refer to Instruction Stories to Enlighten the World, Lasting Stories to Awaken the World, and Comprehensive Stories to Admonish the World compiled by Feng Menglong (1574-1646) of the Ming Dynasty, and Erpai refer to Amazing Stories: Vol. I and Vol. IIcompiled by Ling Mengchu (1580-1644) of the Ming Dynasty. Because of the similarity of contents and the closeness of the compiling time, the two collections are generally called by later generations as Sanyan and Erpai, and include more than 4 million words and 200 stories.
Sanyan is the first large-sized collection of short stories written in colloquial style in Chinese literature history and a monument that signals the changes from folk artists' spoken literature to literati’s written form in the development of colloquial short stories. The stories, no matter old stories that were popular in the Song and Yuan Dynasties or the new ones that were created in the Ming Dynasty, were edited and polished by Feng Menglong to different extents. They are wide in topic range and complex in content, reflecting from various aspects the lives and thoughts of common civilians at that time. Of all the stories the most popular ones include Jiang Xingge Remeets Pearl-shirt, and Du Shiniang Throwing Treasure Box into River with Resentment.
Erpai is a collection of stories that are complied and composed by Ling Mengchu according to anecdotes, classical novels and some social affairs at that time. The stories mirror people’s pursuit of wealth and indulgence as well as their anticipation for love and fairness since the budding of capitalism in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
The masterpieces in Sanyan pay equal attention to the wholeness of the story, the complexity of plots, the richness of details and the variety of techniques to depict the characters' personality. Their publication boosted the development and prosperity of short stories and signified the formation of colloquial-style short stories in China. As for Erpai, generally speaking, they are inferior to Sanyan in terms of the overall artistic charm though they still attract readers for their organized plots and vivid expressions.
