Now 60, the self-taught scholar and sometime businessman spends much of his time poring over “Jin Ping Mei,” a novel known in English as “The Plum in the Golden Vase.” Claiming to have solved one of China’s most enduring literary riddles — who wrote the book? — and also to have found a way to boost the economy here in Anhui province, Pan has come to a conclusion that has appalled his wife and shocked his neighbors: This sleepy farming village and the torrid tales in “Jin Ping Mei” are intimately entwined.
Local officials, torn between avarice and alarm, have flip-flopped on whether to shun Pan’s findings or to try to cash in on his claims that the fictional account of moral decay in imperial China is rooted in real-life events in Xixinan.
Promoting ties to celebrated classic texts such as “The Analects of Confucius” or the Tang Dynasty poetry of Du Fu has long been a good way to make money in China: Tourists flock to literary shrines. Marketing “Jin Ping Mei,” however, has so far brought Xixinan more trouble than profit, as well as competition from two villages in Shandong province that make rival claims on the book.
The wrangling over a novel first published in 1608 reflects a tension that bedevils China’s sprint to modernity: a struggle between the temptations of an anything-goes economy and the diktats of a Communist Party that, though gnawed by graft, still trumpets itself as a guardian of morality.
More problems than profit
Written by an unknown author, or possibly authors, in the late 16th century, “Jin Ping Mei” is widely regarded by scholars as a literary triumph and as an indictment, rather than a celebration, of immorality. But so graphic are its descriptions of debauchery that a 1939 English translation rendered big chunks of the text into Latin to avoid causing offense.
Communist leader Mao Zedong, like his imperial predecessors, proscribed the novel. (He read it eagerly himself.) It is still banned for the general public in mainland China, though expurgated versions are available and scores of academics now study the full text. It’s sold in Hong Kong — sealed in cellophane with an obscenity warning.
What makes the novel so sensitive, however, is not just sex, explained Pan, who has set up a one-man research center in his living room, crammed with “Jin Ping Mei”-themed books, paintings and knickknacks. “The ruling class censored the book not because it was pornographic but because the author revealed their corruption and exposed their ugly faces to the sunlight,” Pan said. “The corruption today is worse than what is described in the book.”
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