San Sui pingyao zhuan 三遂平妖傳 (The Three Sui Quash the Demons' Revolt, hereafter “Three Sui”) is generally considered to be one of the earliest of Chinese novels; it was printed around 1600 but may have been compiled earlier in the Ming period. Like many other early texts, it disappeared soon after publication, to be discovered only in the twentieth century.
Like others among the early novels, Three Sui is curious: it refers to historical persons and events, but it follows its sources so erratically as to render facts quite inaccurately; many of the events it narrates are clearly fantastic; its structure is inconsistent; it takes up serious moral and political questions and then apparently trivializes them with gross humor. Its has been attributed to Luo Guanzhong, the hard-working playwright of the Yuan-Ming transition period who reputedly penned Sanguo zhi tongsu yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and other lengthy prose narratives. Neither the prefacer, Tong Changzuo, nor the person to whom he attributes the novel, Wang Shenxiu, are well known, leaving uncertainties about their relationships to the text as it now stands.
As translator Lois Fusek persuasively demonstrates, the work was cobbled together from six independent shorter stories, with minor adjustments to make the characters of one reappear in the next. If this loose structure were the only criterion, she would be hard pressed to consider the text a novel. She admits, “I found the ironic, witty tone of the narrator and the comic buffooneries in the acting very entertaining” (p. xi); although it is not the consistently “comic novel” she declares it to be, many of its earlier adventures smack of light-hearted absurdity. Its descriptions of violence can be overly graphic, however: in Chapter 13 a fellow falls from the top of a tower, his head crushed as it hits the ground (p. 118). The Three Sui shares a number of characteristics with other early novels, making it important for its place in the development of the novel; its flashes of wacky humor and unpredictable plot line make it quite entertaining in itself.
Fusek devotes nearly eighty pages of appendices to a fine-grained investigation of all facets of the text. She insists that Three Sui must be connected to the legendary writer Luo Guanzhong, yet the evidence she finds makes this attribution virtually impossible: references in the novel and its preface point to specific events of the late sixteenth century and locate its production in Nanjing.
Another appendix convincingly traces all leads to the author (pp. 249–56). Wang Shenxiu was the grandson of Wang Shou (d. 1550, jinshi 1526), a wealthy and prominent member of Suzhou literary and art circles that included Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) and Tang Yin (1470–1524). Wang Shou was also a close friend of Yuan Zhi (1502–1547), who was the father of Yuan Zunni (1523–1574) and a daughter whom he married to Wang Shou's elder son Wang Zigong; this couple were the parents of Wang Shenxiu. Yuan Zunni earned the jinshi degree in 1565 and thereby maintained the Yuan family prestige for another generation while the Wangs declined. Wang Shenxiu apparently earned no civil service honors; he was termed a shanren 山人 (mountain man) because he declined to serve in government, whether or not this was a totally free choice. Financial need might have prompted this publishing venture (p. 255).
This is a wonderfully produced book, free from typographical errors. The text presents innumerable challenges of interpretation. For example, the Preface is so terse as to be hard to follow, and Fusek's translation is a bit loose. Even so, her translation and extensive study of the novel are both bolstered by copious references to original texts and secondary sources.
The translation is lucid and convincing; it incorporates both the strangeness and the familiar elements of the original novel with consistent success. I would disagree with Dr. Fusek on only a very few points. Fusek notes that many phrases are borrowed from Shuihu zhuan, but the most prominent is actually a parody of one of its most famous lines: sihai zhi nei jie xiongdi ye, “All within the four seas are brothers.” Here the line reads, sihai zhi nei jie xiangzhi ye, “All within the four seas are acquaintances” (pp. 69, 104, where Fusek renders it as “Within the four seas, everyone is my friend” [see also pp. 265, n. 9]). Three Sui also shares phrases with stories and novels; other elements parody classic philosophical and historical texts such as Yijing and Shiji, not all of which the translator identifies explicitly.
In sum, Lois Fusek has provided a fine translation of an intriguing text from the late Ming, and has contextualized it solidly with extensive, even exhaustive, notes on every oblique reference or unclear passage. Her work sheds considerable light on the early history of the novel in Chinese, which will make it valuable for students of late imperial China in a variety of disciplines and for those who wish to carry on serious comparative study of the novel as a global literary and cultural phenomenon.
