Peony Pavilion

Author: Tang Xianzu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: Among all women in the world, who can rival Du Liying? In her dreams, she falls ill, and her illness deepens until she sketches her dream lover and shares it with the world before her death. Three years after her death, she is able to find what she dreamed in the realm of the unknown and return to life. Such a woman as Liying can truly be called a person of deep affection. Love knows no bounds—it arises without knowing how and deepens without end. A living person can die, and a dead person can be reborn. Those who cannot be reborn even if they live, or who cannot return to life even if they die, are not truly in love. Love in dreams—why must it not be real? Are there not many people in the world who exist only in dreams! Those who must marry only after sharing a pillow, or who must become intimate only after hanging their caps, are bound by the constraints of the body. The story of Du Prefect is similar to the tales of Li Zhongwen, the prefect of Wu County in Jin, and Feng Xiaojiang, the prefect of Guangzhou. I slightly altered and expanded upon it. As for Du Prefect interrogating Liu Sheng, it is like the story of Cuiyang Wang interrogating Tan Sheng in the Han Dynasty. Alas! The affairs of this world cannot be fully understood by worldly logic. Unless one is a wise and perceptive person, they are often constrained by reason! It is said that what reason deems impossible may not exist, but what does one know about what the heart deems possible!