Ch’ing, a Chinese Book of Love: From Early Times to the Modern Age

This landmark anthology brings together, for the first time in English, the rich tradition of Chinese writing on love - sensuous, romantic and ecstatic - from early classics like the Book of Songs to twentieth-century modernist verse.Challenging the stereotype of Chinese literature as stiffly Confucian, it celebrates instead the Taoist embrace of physical passion as cosmic harmony.The selections span lyrical hymns, bawdy tales, singsong-house ballads, philosophical musings and a bedside manual, revealing a long, diverse literary culture of erotic and emotional expression.High-quality translations preserve both elegance and clarity, while exquisite seventeenth-century erotic woodblock prints provide visual echoes of the texts’ spirit.This anthology offers a rare and revelatory window on to the pleasures, desires and poetic sophistication of Chinese love literature through the ages.