These cultural references were completely alien to me and the transparent translation, which preserves the semantics of the Chinese names, was very pleasurable indeed.

The descriptions of courtship, the scholar’s life, the constant allusions to other scholars, poetry, temples and prayer, make it very different from a traditional erotica text. But the descriptions of sex, where they occur are extremely detailed, and the author is also liberal with his advice on the merits of this way of doing it vis-a-vis somme other way. The story is thus framed in a moral fable. How low contemporary morals have sunk! But if you write a moral tract exhorting people to virtue, will you get no one to buy itĪccording to Amitabha Mukerjee (2010), Yu’s strategy is to captivate readers with erotic material and then wait for some moment of absorbing interest before suddenly dropping in an admonitory remark or two to make them grow fearful and sigh, “Since sexual pleasure can be so delightful, surely we ought to reserve our pleasure-making bodies for long-term enjoyment instead of turning into ghosts beneath the peony blossoms. Ah! Now that I have your attention, let me tell you about this excellent snake oil. The prefatory chapter provides a motivation for the story, which reminds one of the old marketing joke: The story is set in the culturally complex background of Yuan dynasty (14th c.) China, although it was published in 1657. The prologue states that, ‘sex is healthy when taken as if it were a drug, but not as if it were ordinary food.’ This 300 odd year old wonderfully crafted work of prose is regularly censored and at times outright forbidden reading! literary critics (those at liberty to read and comment upon unexpurgated copies) see its unabashed pornographic nature as an allegoric attack on Confucian puritanism.

The Carnal Prayer Mat, by Li Yu (1693) is a wonderfully crafted work of prose that is regularly censored and sometimes outright forbidden reading! literary critics (those at liberty to read and comment upon unexpurgated copies) see its unabashed pornographic nature as an allegoric attack on Confucian puritanism.

The Carnal Prayer Mat by Li Yu