This is Chapter One of the original twenty chapter Ping yao Zhuan of the early Ming, attributed to Luo Guanzhong and others. Stylistically a bit earlier and has a few older conventions, such as ending each paragraph with a storyteller's expression meaning "And that was that." It is somewhat embellished in plot by Feng to fit in with his elaborate foreplot and overall story thread. The ending of the chapter, including the downfall of Lei Chonggong and Ding Wei, and Zhang Ying's journey to Boping, Shandong, was added by Feng. Interestingly, while adding quite a bit Feng does little abridgement of Luo's original older text, not even smoothing out the somewhat awkward first apprearance of Zhang Ying, already well known to readers of the two previous chapters. The next chapter is entirely Feng's, but then Chapter Eighteen is basically Chapter Two of the early shorter work.

The "football" here is a traditional Chinese game played with an inflatable ball or a small balloon. I will try to post more on this little detail of sport in traditional China.

Erudite sounding paraphrase of the Book of Poems, "Zhizhi qiyi, Buzhi qier" (Xiao Ya, Xiao Min) quite elegant actually. This is in Luo Guanzhong's prose, in the original (Wang) version.

In Song times tea leaves were dried into cakes or pellets to be immersed in the hot water.

(To be continued) Table of Contents Back to Chapt 16