ABSTRACT
By the end of the eighteenth century, China had produced six major novels that are now generally regarded as classics of world literature. These six are The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo zhi yanyi [San-kuo chih yen-i]), Outlaws of the Marsh (Shuihu zhuan [Shui-hu chuan]), The Journey to the West [Xvyou ji [Hsi-yu chi]), Jin Ping Mei [Chin P’ing Mei], The Scholars (Rulin waishi [Ju-lin wai-shilh]), and A Dream of Red Mansions (Honglou-meng [Hung-lou meng], also known in translation as The Story of the Stone). The last two were written during the Qianlong [Ch’ien-lung] period (1736–1796), when the Qing [Ch’ing] dynasty was enjoying its last period of prosperity before its military weakness was exposed by the encroaching European powers. As is well known, starting with the disastrous Opium War (1839–1842) with Great Britain, China suffered a long series of defeats from the European powers and Japan during the remainder of the nineteenth century. These national humiliations, in turn, accounted for the rising numbers, in some Northern provinces, of the so-called Boxers, who hated the foreigners in their midst and believed that with their fists and swords they could remain invincible even against the guns of the West. Incredibly, Empress Dowager Cixi [Tz’u-hsi] welcomed the Boxers in June 1900 to the capital city of Beijing [Peking] where they began a prolonged assault on the legation quarters of the foreign diplomats and their families. This event led eight affected powers, including Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States, to send an expeditionary force to punish China. Upon the fall of Beijing in August, the Empress Dowager, the puppet emperor, and his court fled in precipitate haste for the ancient city of Xian [Sian] in Shaanxi [Shensi] Province, somehow hoping that the more enlightened Chinese officials left behind would be able to negotiate another face-saving treaty with their conquerors. But for the American insistence on preserving the territorial and governmental integrity of China, the eight Allied Powers might have partitioned the country forthwith.
