“Can high seas offer an alternative interpretation of late Ming vernacular fiction?” Yuanfei Wang poses this intriguing question in her book, Writing Pirates: Vernacular Fiction and Oceans in Late Ming China. To answer this question, Writing Pirates explores a diverse range of texts that are rarely considered together and casts new light on them.

From the start, it is important to note that Wang has employed an uncommon concept of “fiction.” She writes: “I broaden the concept of ‘fiction’ to include both unofficial histories and novels and short stories” (8). Similarly, the term “pirates” in the book “signifies bandits, smugglers, outlaws, sea marauders, maritime merchants, emigrants, and sea people of different races and ethnicities. Notably, the term ‘pirates’ also signifies disenfranchised scholars and officials” (9). Because the author also intends to underline “the agency of pirates and authors in the writing process to form discourses,” the word “pirates,” as the author puts it, “also stands for authors and compilers of ‘low genres,’ which in traditional China included unofficial histories, travel writings, vernacular fiction, folk songs, foreign languages, glossaries, and even pirated editions” (9). These “low genres” all appear in the discussions in this book. The unusually broad concepts of “fiction” and “pirates” employed in this book have revealed new findings, while they may at the same time bring new challenges.

Writing Pirates is composed of three parts, each of which focuses on one maritime region, includes two chapters, and examines a specific set of texts. Part I focuses on Southeast Asia, particularly Siam and Java. Chapter 1 centers on The Water Margin and its most important sequel, Chen Chen’s (1615–1670) The Sequel to The Water Margin (1664). Paying particular attention to the maritime-related narratives in both novels, this chapter offers an insightful analysis of how the late Ming fictional narratives of pirates are superimposed on the history of Chinese emigration to Siam. Chapter 2 examines unofficial histories, such as Yan Congjian’s (jinshi 1559) Records of Surrounding Strange Realms, and vernacular fiction, like Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyages on the Western Ocean (1574), to illustrate Sino-Java relations and discuss how the late Ming literati viewed maritime commerce, the tributary system, immigrants, and foreign peoples.

The maritime region discussed in Part II is Japan. Chapter 3 investigates practical texts regarding Japan, including military geographical treatises, bilingual glossaries, and translations of Japanese waka poems. Chapter 4 focuses on the vernacular story “Old Eight Yang’s Strange Encounter in the Country of Yue” (1620) by Feng Menglong (1574–1646), illustrating how a Chinese trader transforms into a captive, into a Japanese pirate, and then back into a Chinese subject. In Part II, the author emphasizes the Japanese racial and ethnic differences in the texts, as well as the fluid boundaries between different maritime identities.

Part III centers on the Jiangnan region in China. Differing from the previous two parts, which discuss a range of figures and events, Part III concentrates on the two famous pirate kings, Wang Zhi (d. 1559) and Xu Hai (d. 1556). Chapter 5 examines four historical narratives of the pirate raids and the Ming commander Hu Zongxian’s (1512–1565) strategies to quell the pirates, and compares the discrepancies in the records. Chapter 6 shifts to the fictional narratives of the pirate kings, particularly how the romance novels portray them. Additional focal points in Chapter 6 are the commercial publishing industry in Jiangnan and the concept of “authenticity.”

As shown above, Writing Pirates has examined a wide array of sources in various genres, and the richness of these sources is one commendable feature of the book. Wang often provides one or two sentences to introduce the authors of the sources, but at times, readers may crave more detail. Given that the sources employed for a single subject can be very different in nature, additional context regarding the production of those sources—and, even more importantly, their target audiences—would probably reveal clearer layers of the “discourses” that the author presents. Wang does a very good job of comparing sources in Part III and explaining how the nature of the sources led to different narratives. Parts I and II would benefit from more analysis of this kind, especially since those sections deal with even more subjects and diverse sources.

The discussion of a vast range of sources allows Writing Pirates to address a variety of subjects, including race and ethnicity, loyalty and Confucian values, trade and the tributary system, marginal groups, languages and translations, the private and public spheres, publishing, authenticity, emotions, and women. The author demonstrates an impressive breadth of knowledge by engaging with the scholarly literature relevant to these subjects. The advantages of this approach are clear: many scholars will find topics that appeal to them, and it also showcases the vast possibilities of studying “pirates.” However, that breadth comes at the cost of the internal coherence of the book. Some of the discussion legitimately concerns the cited sources, but stray from the main narratives of the book. For example, in Chapter 6, the section “Appraising the Authentic Self: The Pirate Scholar and the Virtuous Prostitute” discusses the cult of love/qing in the scholar–beauty novels at length, after the chapter has already provided an in-depth investigation of the pirate kings in the romantic narratives. A briefer discussion on such occasions would have kept the focus on the main narrative. Additionally, readers may appreciate more cross-references to the authors of sources or similar topics appearing in different chapters. For instance, Zheng Ruozeng’s (1503–1570)’s The Edited Collection of Maps of Japan (1561) is discussed in Chapter 2, “Learning the Barbarian Tongue,” while his Pictorial Compendium of Governing the Sea (c. 1562) is examined in Chapter 5, “Historical Narratives of the Pirate Kings,” where there is no mention of Zheng Ruozeng’s previous appearance. Some comparison or joint discussion would likely enhance the coherence of the entire book.

Writing Pirates is beautifully illustrated. The book contains seventeen colorful figures that nicely complement the textual descriptions of the sources. Many readers will appreciate the side-by-side composition of the original Chinese texts and the English translations. The author’s translations are generally fluent and easy to read, but there are a few problems. On page 24, “心雄欲摘驪珠” is translated as “driven by his ambition, he wants to gather pearls on Mount Li.” However, “驪珠” actually refers not to pearls on Mount Li but to the precious bead hidden in the jaw of the black dragon that lived at the bottom of a deep pool. Thus, the original text contains a maritime or at least watery aspect that is lost in the translation. Another case is in the preface to A Survey of Japan, where the original sentence is “日本乃東夷一種, 遐隔大海, 習俗妍醜, 固不足為軒輊.” The translation reads: “Japan is one kind of eastern barbarian. The seas separate them from China. Its customs and culture are ugly. Therefore, they are unimportant” (92). The second half of the sentence is perhaps better translated as “Their customs and culture contain goodness and badness, which originally are not worthy of comparison with ours.” Omitting the “妍” in the phrase “習俗妍醜” may alter the original tone of the passage.

Besides illustrating the Ming discourse on Chinese pirates, Writing Pirates has another goal: “to delineate late Ming Chinese sea fiction as a parallel of Western sea fiction” (6). In the Conclusion, the author further notes: “Examining these uncharted waters has revealed parallel themes and differences in Western and Chinese pirates” (203). A comparative approach would be suitable and very interesting for this subject during this time period, and the author deserves credit for this insightful idea. But she did not carry it out in this book. Perhaps the only detailed comparison in the book is comparing “Old Eight Yang’s Strange Encounter in the Country of Yue” with Shakespeare’s Othello (110). As the author mentions, this book is her “first and modest step into this comparative early modern seaborne literature, early modern literary production, and colonial and postcolonial studies” (202). I look forward to her future studies on these subjects.