Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor

"Editor Robert Hegel has assembled an erudite team of luminaries in late imperial translation and scholarship. . . . It is, in short, a valuable and comprehensive research tool for the original Doupeng xianhua in particular and for late imperial fiction in general. Being so many different things, the volume is accessible and useful to a number of audiences: casual readers looking to escape the heat of a summer afternoon reading; undergraduates familiarizing themselves with the breadth and depth of Chinese letters; and specialists in the field."—Nathaniel Isaacson, China Review International

"With ample paratextual material, a creative and skilled array of translators, and expert framing by the collection's key editor and translator, Robert Hegel, Idle Talk in its English translation conveys both the complex contents and the multilayered pleasures of its early Qing original."—Modern Chinese Literature and Culture

"Robert Hegel's rich and complex edition of Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor will be important not only for scholars of Chinese and comparative literature, but also for learning and teaching about Chinese culture at all levels."—Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) - Modern

"Employment of separate translators was a brilliant move since the stories are all told in different voices."—Stephen West, co-translator of The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays

"This use of a frame story has elicited frequent comparisons to the Decameron. . . . [And since the collection] was written shortly after the fall of the Ming, the stories offer a complex range of attitudes toward the values of dynastic loyalty and martyrdom."—Maram Epstein, author of Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engendered Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction

"A landmark collection of short stories from the early Qing, Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor brings sophisticated innovations to the vernacular storytelling tradition. Refreshingly shorn of the formulaic didacticism of its late Ming predecessors, these stories' pervasive irony, dark humor, subversive views of history and cynical exposure of moral bankruptcy are conveyed in a lively vernacular expertly rendered by the dedicated team of translators under Robert Hegel's seasoned editorship. Highly recommended. "—Grace S. Fong, author of Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China