Tale of the Red Silkworm Weaving Sorrow

Gu MingdaoNov 2024

Rating 3.5
Word count
107K words
Chapters
21

Tags

Social Fiction Social ObservationFate and FortuneLove EntanglementsMoral DilemmaTurbulent EraRepublican Society

Summary

Red Silkworm Weaves Regret tells a story full of twists and turns. It features the protagonist's sorrows, adventures, and emotional entanglements, villains' schemes that wrongly incriminate the hero, and passages of romantic warmth. After events such as warlords waging war and a frail woman seeking refuge, the protagonist ultimately dies of illness, and the story closes on an ethereal note. The novel presents love, suffering, intrigue, and other elements, reflecting the social realities and complex emotions of its time.

Editor's review

Red Silkworm Weaves Regret is one of Gu Mingdao's representative romance novels. Its title sets the book's tone in four characters: love threads are like silk threads, tangled into a cocoon from which escape is ultimately impossible. The novel places romantic attachments against a chaotic backdrop of warlords at war and a frail woman fleeing danger, drives the plot through intrigue and false accusation, and closes the whole with an ethereal ending, preserving a concern for the hardships of the era beyond the readability of popular fiction. Gu Mingdao excels at writing lingering, sorrowful love and laments over a drifting life; in this book the protagonist's sorrow, adventures and emotional entanglements advance in interwoven fashion, and although the devices of villains setting traps and the hero being wronged are common in popular fiction, the author's delicate touch makes them feel real. For readers who enjoy Republican-era popular literature and want to understand the narrative texture of old-school romance fiction, this book is a suitable sample. As you read, note how the author threads the imagery of the silkworm and silk through the whole, and the sense of fatalism behind the ethereal ending.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening and closing chapters first to feel the echo between the imagery of "weaving regret" and the ethereal ending, then return to the middle plot.
  2. As you read, jot down the key points of the protagonist's wrongful accusation and adventures to trace how the intrigue is laid out.
  3. Read alongside Gu Mingdao's other romance novels and note his habitual way of combining emotional writing with the background of the times.

Contents

  1. 版权信息
  2. 第一回 碧海茫茫清言霏玉 柔情渺渺噩梦惊心
  3. 第二回 忧愁困苦独坐思前尘 滑稽突梯信口讲赌经
  4. 第三回 受诱惑侈言社交 为谴责顿萌短见
  5. 第四回 筑新冢伤心埋玉 会名园击鼓催花
  6. 第五回 惊耗报到哀哉苍天 伊人不归杳如黄鹤
  7. 第六回 半途遇险误入樊笼 绝处逢生幸脱虎穴
  8. 第七回 乘风破浪何来巨舰 轻歌曼舞忽逢美人
  9. 第八回 意绵绵酒楼小宴 情切切病榻谈心
  10. 第九回 转危为安名医施妙手 有胜无败健儿逞奇能
  11. 第十回 绿意红情风光细腻 慧心粲齿况味温存
  12. 第十一回 别绪万端美人憔悴 骊歌一曲名士飘零
  13. 第十二回 杨令娴邀功做蹇修 胡粹芳游春遇恶痞
  14. 第十三回 为鬼为蜮故搞毒谋 违法违良潜污娇女
  15. 第十四回 入邻室枉费心机 蒙奇冤难明贞节
  16. 第十五回 片言释憾同调重赓 几番索酬作恶自毙
  17. 第十六回 借名园大开画会 览佳作巧遇丽人
  18. 第十七回 驾轻车纳凉饶逸兴 办画报细语获罪戾
  19. 第十八回 鼙鼓动地军阀鏖兵 烽火连天弱女避难
  20. 第十九回 香温玉软快缔良姻 雨冷风凄痛遭大故
  21. 第二十回 多病多愁魂归忉利 是空是色迹隐名山

FAQ

Is this a martial arts novel or a romance? This book belongs to Gu Mingdao's line of romance fiction. Its core is the protagonist's emotional entanglements and the twists of her origins. Although it involves a background of warlord warfare and a frail woman taking refuge, it lacks the martial arts combat and martial-world sect descriptions common in wuxia novels; read it as a romance.
Is the ending tragic? According to the materials, the protagonist ultimately dies of illness, and the story closes in an ethereal way, with an overall tone leaning toward tragedy and melancholy. If you expect a happy ending, be prepared; but it is precisely this resolution that allows the book's emotional tension and sighing over the times to come through fully.
I haven't read other works by Gu Mingdao. Can I read this one directly? Yes. The story is relatively self-contained and does not depend on prior events from other works. However, Gu Mingdao's language has the characteristics of Republican-era vernacular and the old-style chapter novel, so the pace may feel slow at first. It is advisable to read the first few chapters to get used to the language before entering the main plot.

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About the author

Gu Mingdao Author · Chinese · 1897–1944

Gu Mingdao (1897–1944), whose original name was Gu Jingcheng, was a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu, and a Republican-era writer of martial arts and romance fiction. A member of the Xing Society (Star Society) of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school, he was known together with Wen Gongzhi and Yao Min'ai as one of the "three stalwarts of the martial arts world." He first made his name writing social romance fiction under the pen name Mei Qian Nüshi, and rose to fame in 1929 when his novel The Heroine of the Wild River was serialized in the supplement Kua Huo Lin (Happy Forest) of the newspaper Shen Bao. The work pioneered a path of romance-infused martial arts fiction combining chivalry and sentiment. Martial arts fiction was the mainstay of his output, though he also wrote social romance. Over his lifetime he produced eighteen martial arts novels, and among his other works are Records of the Crying Cuckoo, What Can Be Done, and Red Tears at the Thatched Gate. Crippled in childhood by bone tuberculosis, he long kept late hours writing, and he died of illness in Shanghai in 1944.