The Golden Lotus

Jin Ping Mei
The Plum in the Golden Vase

Wanli Era Edition
Author	Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng ("The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling", pseudonym)
Original title	金瓶梅
Country	China (Ming dynasty)
Language	Chinese
Publication date	~1610
Media type	Print

Jin Ping Mei (Chinese: 金瓶梅; pinyin: Jīn Píng Méi) — translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus — is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The author took the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (蘭陵笑笑生), "The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling," and his identity is otherwise unknown (the only clue being that he hailed from Lanling County in present-day Shandong). The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596, and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610. The most widely read recension, edited and published with commentaries by Zhang Zhupo in 1695, unfortunately deleted or rewrote passages important in understanding the author's intentions.

The explicit depiction of sexuality garnered the novel a notoriety akin to Fanny Hill and Lolita in English literature, but critics such as the translator David Tod Roy see a firm moral structure which exacts retribution for the sexual libertinism of the central characters.

Jin Ping Mei takes its name from the three central female characters — Pan Jinlian (潘金蓮, whose given name means "Golden Lotus"); Li Ping'er (李瓶兒, given name literally means, "Little Vase"), a concubine of Ximen Qing; and Pang Chunmei (龐春梅, "Spring plum blossoms"), a young maid who rose to power within the family. Chinese critics see each of the three Chinese characters in the title as symbolizing an aspect of human nature, such as mei (梅), plum blossoms, being metaphoric for sexuality.

Princeton University Press, in describing the Roy translation, calls the novel "a landmark in the development of the narrative art form – not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context...noted for its surprisingly modern technique" and "with the possible exception of The Tale of Genji (c. 1010) and Don Quixote (1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature."