Western Han: A Yangzhou Storyteller’s Script (NIAS Monographs, 139)

Western Han is a major contribution to the study of Chinese literature, making available to scholars a rare storyteller’s script from the late Qing period. The script is published in its complete form, both in facsimile and transcription, with an annotated English translation. Its publication is of high importance not only to preserve knowledge about one of the famous oral traditions of China, but also as a unique documentation of the interplay between orality and literacy in Chinese storytelling. The book is also the first translation into a European language of this popular semi-historical narrative. Moreover, this storyteller’s version is unique and entertaining. The work is an ideal classroom source for students studying Chinese history, literature, oral literature, storytelling, etc.

Dr Vibeke Børdahl, a senior researcher at NIAS, has been described as one of the most accomplished scholars in the study of Chinese oral literature. As well as doing much research on the interplay of oral and written traditions in Chinese popular literature and performance culture, over the past decade she has translated the full work of Jin Ping Mei into Danish.

Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame, Liangyan Ge is seen as being at the forefront of current research on Chinese storytelling. His research interests also include premodern Chinese vernacular fiction.