The Qingfeng Sluice

Introduction

A Yangzhou pinghua story that Pu Lin shaped in the Qianlong era from his own life, centred on the street figure Pi Wu

The Qingfeng Sluice is a traditional book of Yangzhou pinghua storytelling, of the court-case and gallant kind, made by the Qianlong-era storyteller Pu Lin. Li Dou's Yangzhou Pleasure Boats records that Pu Lin, styled Tianyu, had a short, twisted right hand that gave him his nickname, lost his father as a child, begged in the city and later swept the streets for a living. Hearing a neighbour who lived by pinghua rehearse, he decided the art was not hard to learn, put his own life into a story under the name Pi Wu, and so created The Qingfeng Sluice. He was good at catching the voices of women of the street, so that his listeners now laughed and now shivered, and his telling carried satire and moral warning. The national heritage listing for Yangzhou pinghua says the book created a gallery of people from the bottom of society, led by Pi Wu the Hot Pepper, and was widely influential.