Writers › Writer / Poet
Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng
Pen name of the unidentified author of the late Ming novel Jin Ping Mei, known only from the preface to the earliest surviving edition
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Xiao Xiaosheng
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng, roughly the Scoffing Scholar of Lanling, is the pen name under which the late Ming novel The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei) was written, known from the preface by Xinxinzi to the Jin Ping Mei cihua, which says that Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng wrote the book. The novel grows out of the episode of Ximen Qing and Pan Jinlian in the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) and follows the rise and fall of Ximen's household; its heavy use of Shandong speech has led most readers to think the author had Shandong ties, and Lanling was an old place name used both in Shandong and near Wujin in Jiangsu. Yuan Hongdao mentioned reading a manuscript copy in a letter to Dong Qichang in 1596, and the oldest surviving printed edition is the Jin Ping Mei cihua of the late Wanli years. Dozens of candidates have been proposed for the author, including Wang Shizhen, Li Kaixian, Tu Long, Jia Sanjin and Xu Wei, and none has been proved.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; author of Jin Ping Mei