Stephen Marche praises David Tod Roy’s translation of the fifth volume of The Plum in the Golden Vase, or the Chin Ping Mei. “The book is 400 years old, but its moment is right now,” says Marche, who illustrates that claim by quoting a sex scene “enfolded into domestic and even Imperial politics in a fascinating way”:
She pumped it in and out of her mouth unceasingly, until white saliva overflowed from her lips, and rouge stains appeared on the stem of his organ. Just as he was about to ejaculate, the woman questions Hsi-men Ch’ing, saying, “Ying the Second has sent invitations inviting us to his place on the twenty-eighth. Are we going to go, or not?”
This is the Chin Ping Mei’s gift to the literature of the world. It shows, better than any other novel, the integration of sex into the quotidian. Erotica tends to focus exclusively on one dimension of the human experience. But the thing about sex is that it happens in ordinary life; just like the scene above, sex happens while working out the family schedule. The Hollywood summary of Chin Ping Mei might well be Jane Austen meets hardcore pornography.
The Dish 