Fragrance of Another Kind

Fragrant Encounters (Bie You Xiang) is a collection of vernacular short stories in the huaben style, compiled in the Ming dynasty by an author signing as Taoyuan Zuihua Zhuren (The Drunk Flower Master of Peach Spring). The original work comprised four volumes and sixteen chapters, but only a nine-chapter fragment of the Ming printed edition survives today. It is the sole surviving copy in the world, held in the collection of Liu Shide at the Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. According to the preface, the book may have been printed during the Tianqi or Chongzhen reign, or else completed in the Southern Ming period. The compiler's real name is unknown. In 1994, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Taiwan's Britannica Inc. published a typeset edition of the surviving fragment under the series title Siwuxie Huibao, and this book is the volume of that series. The nine extant chapters stand as independent tales, sharing one conspicuous thematic feature: most concern erotic encounters between humans and spirits. Three chapters—The Bald Lecher Battles the Wanton Widow, The Child Falls Prey to Hidden Lures, and Moon Sorrow Covets Flowers in the Fallen-Flower Quarter—draw on everyday life. The other six tell of plant spirits such as the peach, plum, and chrysanthemum, and animal spirits such as the fox, dragon, and snail, coupling with scholars or women. Beyond their elaborate depiction of desire, the stories often carry the conventional didactic edge of huaben fiction: they affirm the remarriage of widows, advocate moderation in sexual life, and oppose excessive indulgence that harms the body. Because the base text is incomplete, chapters one, two, three, seven, eight, and nine are entirely lost, surviving only as chapter titles or leaving no trace at all. The book is therefore not a story collection to be read from cover to cover, but rather a physical specimen for the study of late Ming popular fiction. Its value lies in its rare edition form, its distinctive thematic orientation, and the primary text it provides for research on late Ming fiction of manners and sexual culture.