Dreaming Away Society's Expectations: A Translation and Analysis of "Yingtao qingyi"

For thousands of years, Chinese literature has been marked by an evolving preoccupation with dreams and their philosophical implications. In the era of political instability following the dissolution of the Eastern Han dynasty... [ view full abstract ]

For thousands of years, Chinese literature has been marked by an evolving preoccupation with dreams and their philosophical implications. In the era of political instability following the dissolution of the Eastern Han dynasty circa 220 CE, there emerged among literati a newfound obsession with informal narrative writings reporting “the strange,” culminating in both the abrasive, staccato form now known as zhiguai, or “accounts of anomalies,” and later, by the time of the Tang, in the more fleshed-out, flowery, multi-event narratives now referred to as chuanqi, or “transmitted marvels”; both forms were host to a great wealth of tales about dreams and, especially, tales of the dream adventurer. Among these is “Yingtao qingyi” (“The Cherry Maid”), a ninth-century chuanqi tale wherein a young aristocrat struggling to pass the imperial examinations one day unwittingly embarks on a lifelike dream journey manifesting the decorated career of Confucian officialdom to which he so aspires. Only when the protagonist awakens from his dream life, returning to “reality” with nothing to show for all his accumulated status and wealth, does he realize the emptiness of the material successes prioritized by the societal forces that surround him.