Love Tales of Ancient China

Love Tales of Ancient China tells stories with happy endings as well as sad endings, all with a touch of the exotic, the colors of a very different time and place. While the stories are familiar to Chinese people, this is the first time they have been presented in English translation for the benefit of American readers interested in Chinese culture and history and, of course, a good story.First, the dramatic tale of the famous beauty Yang tells of her life as Concubine of a Tang dynasty emperor, the grandson of Empress Wu the Great. After the mayhem that followed the collapse of the Han Dynasty in AD 220, the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) finally emerged as the second greatest empire in the region. The great Emperor Xuanzong succeeded to make important administrative reforms, cleaning up the finances and simplifying the swollen and corrupt bureaucracy. Then he fell for the famously attractive concubine Yang. Although he perhaps deserved a beautiful reward for his successes, the drama X. L. Woo outlines cannot have been what the Emperor had in mind.“The Tale of White Snake Genie” is a legend about the love of a genie who could never forget the young man who saved her life a thousand years ago. Seven love stories in all, these bring to the American reader characters well-known to all Chinese people through movie and drama as well as literature.