Ling Mengchu
1580–1644
Biography
Ling Mengchu (凌濛初, 1580–1644) was a Chinese writer of vernacular fiction and an official of the late Ming dynasty. He came from Wucheng, a county of Huzhou prefecture in Zhejiang, and he wrote in the colloquial style of the storytellers who entertained town audiences. Today his name rests almost entirely on his fiction, which still holds an honoured place in the history of the Chinese short story.
His two great collections are Slapping the Table in Amazement, the First Series (初刻拍案驚奇) and the Second Series (二刻拍案驚奇), each of forty tales. The title recalls the table-slapping of storytellers who tried to startle their listeners, and the stories mix comedy, the marvellous, moral warning and close observation of merchants, scholars, wives, lawsuits and swindles. They draw on the older storytelling tradition, and they were popular in his own day.
Both collections are on this site under their Chinese titles. The First Series gathers tales of fortune and misfortune, and the Second Series adds forty more of the same kind, each one a short episode with its own twist. Together they give a vivid picture of urban life at the end of the Ming dynasty and of the period's appetite for the surprising and the sensational.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
二刻拍案驚奇
by 凌濛初
The second Slap series by Ling Mengchu: forty further stories of cunning marriages, lawsuits and swindlers, ending with a short play on Song Jiang. The book shows the late Ming taste for the sensational. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period as written; the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.初刻拍案驚奇
by 凌濛初
Ling Mengchu's first collection of forty tales, which opens with the luckless merchant who makes a fortune from a basket of oranges. Strange and comic happenings among merchants, scholars and wives fill each short chapter. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.