Daniel Hsieh has written a book with wide-reaching implications, primarily taking up the subject of love and women in Tang chuanqi. He discusses a wide range of materials from earlier narrative traditions (particularly zhiguai) and from later novels and drama. One of the first problems in addressing such a subject is that of definition: What is meant by “love” in the Chinese context? Hsieh restricts his scope to heterosexual “romantic love”; however, he does not seriously address what it means to borrow a Western concept (which already has a complicated history) and to use it in this way. He notes that “no single or exact term for romantic love existed in the culture,” citing a number of terms that might “convey the idea of love or certain of its aspects” (p. 5). Yet the terms that Hsieh lists, including ai 愛, si 思, qing 情, lian 戀, and huai 懷, cut across grammatical categories and may be used with reference to one's friends and kin as well as one's lover. This lack of conceptual clarity is, unfortunately, characteristic of much of the monograph.

Hsieh's thesis is that the elite literary tradition prior to the Tang was largely silent on the subject of romantic love, but that the post–An Lushan Rebellion period witnessed an “explosion of interest in and writing on love” (p. 9). Hsieh argues that zhiguai and chuanqi “became a medium through which to look more closely into the nature of women” (p. 35). In the book's five chapters, he examines, in succession, the question of male anxieties toward women, fantasies about women, the feelings and sufferings of women, stories of romantic success, and stories of romantic failure. These topics lead Hsieh to discuss some of the most famous Tang tales, such as Renshi zhuan, Huo Xiaoyu zhuan, Li Wa zhuan, and Yingying zhuan, alongside more obscure stories. This careful literary contextualization is one of the most valuable aspects of the study, and it sheds much light on the construction of medieval narrative topoi.

However, Hsieh often muddles the picture, as when he attempts to yoke together a number of tales under the “swan-maiden motif” (the folkloric motif in which women who can transform themselves into birds are forced into marriage by men who steal their feathered garb). While one story from the Soushen ji fits into this category, the other examples are tangential at best. These include the legendary Chang'e, a mother who can turn into a turtle, and a woman who is really a gibbon. In a related vein, he sometimes brings up stories that have nothing to do with romantic love, such as the flower-spirit story Cui Xuanwei (pp. 121–23, 227). Such problems are indicative of the book's loose organization. The work in places repeats earlier points and circles back to subjects and texts discussed in earlier chapters. For example, the famous fox story Renshi zhuan is discussed in the introduction, as well as in the first, second, and fourth chapters, with previously made points repeated in the fifth chapter. Ghosts and foxes have chapter subheadings in both the first and second chapters (and are mentioned prominently in other chapters), whereas animal grooming (or husbandry) stories are discussed in both the first and third chapters.

Further, Hsieh's treatment of chuanqi as fiction is deeply problematic and heavily indebted to Lu Xun's anachronistic attempts to discover the origins of modern fiction in the traditional past. As Andrew Plaks (“Towards a Critical Theory of Chinese Narrative,” in Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. Plaks [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977], 309–52) and Sarah Allen (“Tang Stories: Tales and Texts,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2003), have convincingly argued, chuanqi are less concerned with fictionality than with the representation of private life. Other problems include simplistic distinctions between folk and wenren traditions, usage of the terms “Confucian” and “Daoist” to describe fixed cultural identities, and a number of naive generalizations about men and women.

Better editing could have resolved many of this book's problems. That being said, the work is valuable for its wealth of information on material rarely discussed. Hsieh's diligence in marshalling a wide range of evidence alone makes the volume worth consulting for the Chinese medievalist or the specialist in narrative and fiction.