Huaben

A huaben (Chinese: 话本; pinyin: huàben) is a Chinese short or medium length story or novella written mostly in vernacular language, sometimes including simple classical language. In contrast to the full length Chinese novel, it is generally not divided into chapters and recounts a limited number of characters or events. The earliest huaben are reported in the 12th century during the Song dynasty but the genre did not flourish until the late Ming dynasty, and after the mid-17th century did not produce works of originality. In the development of Chinese fiction, the huaben are heirs of the bianwen (Buddhist tales) and chuanqi of the Tang dynasty, and are the predecessors of the stories and full-length novels of the Ming.

The pleasure districts of the two Song dynasty capitals, Kaifeng and Hangzhou, hosted a range of entertainment, including storytelling. The storytellers were specialized by theme and topic. Some told historical tales, often drawn from the history of the Three Kingdoms (220–265) or the Five Dynasties (907–960), in several sessions, sometimes over several weeks. Others specialized in Buddhist stories, heirs of the bianwen. There was also a class of storytellers whose tales took one sitting. These stories were divided into subgenres, such as the stories of bandits, fantastic stories of ghosts and demons, love stories, and such. Scholars of the genre have disproved the early theory that huaben originated in the promptbooks or "cribs" used by these storytellers, but huaben did grow from the oral style and story-telling conventions of these early tales.

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