1 h 49 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the hunger for money, rank, or pleasure grows stronger than the call of duty?
In The Sobering Stone, ordinary people, officials, and scholars face choices that set desire against duty. This collection of short stories from the last years of Ming China explores greed, lust, ambition, and pride. Writing under the pen name Donglugukuangsheng, the author brings these struggles into tales meant for a wide audience, where appetite has a price and loyalty faces real tests.
The title offers a sharp image: a stone that wakes the drunk. Here, the drunkenness comes from money, desire, and vanity as much as wine. The stories ask what keeps people faithful when temptation pulls them away. Confucian ideas of loyalty and service stand against selfish wants, while moral retribution gives each choice weight—even when no judge is looking.
What you’ll discover
- A stone that wakes Discover a vivid image that asks readers to wake from greed and vanity.
- The pull of appetite Follow people whose hunger for money, rank, or pleasure bends their good sense.
- Loyalty under pressure Explore the claims of duty and faithful service when personal desire pulls harder.
- Justice beyond the judge Enter a moral world where actions carry consequences, even when justice takes time.
- Everyday choices, clear lessons Meet ordinary people, scholars, and officials through stories that make moral questions concrete.
Who will love it
For lovers of short tales with clear morals, readers curious about daily life in Ming China, and anyone who enjoys clever judges, loyal sons, ghosts and schemers in one volume.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Hidden kindness is repaid in the open
- A loyal officer takes duty seriously
- Marriage promises face desire and power
- Jealousy-free loyalty can save a family line
- Pride in talent can ruin even a gifted man
- Greed in a father is inherited by his sons
- Lust brings ruin and generosity brings friends
- Bribes, delusions and broken promises haunt their makers
- Patience in hardship and wariness of friends
Who’s who
- Yao YixiangA generous clerk who gives to a stranger without asking his name and later looks after prisoners in Jiujiang.
- Liu LianThe bold young archer who serves beside his patrol officer father and makes trusted friends among the local fighting men.
- Cheng JuyingA well-read timber merchant's daughter, promised to a poor scholar, whose family refuses a rich suitor.
- Lady WuThe wife of Commander Yao, who picks his concubine herself and cares for the household with no jealousy.
- Li WeiA gifted Tang writer of imperial blood whose pride and bitterness grow as his career stalls.
- Wang QinA clever, handsome servant who flees his master's house and rises at court by painting, music and flattery.
- Pu ChunfuA grain dealer of Pingwang who gives silver to those in need and trusts his friend Dai.
- Mu QiongqiongA courtesan in Nanjing from a respectable family who hopes to buy her freedom and marry for love.
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- The same book in bigger, clearer type, once the book texts are online.
- Audiobook
- Read by Lucas Linden, complete. It opens once the recording is online.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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La piedra que despeja la embriaguez in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La piedra que despeja la embriaguez
A young man in Nanjing gives a wounded stranger his last silver, though his companions urge him not to help.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What does a man owe a stranger in need? The Sobering Stone, written by Donglugukuangsheng, gathers fifteen tales from Ming China, each built around a choice between virtue and appetite.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Hidden kindness is repaid in the open
The first tale argues that good done in secret lasts longest. Yao Yixiang of Shanghai is sent to Nanjing with his mother's savings to buy a place in the government school. Instead he drifts into the pleasure quarter and spends most of it.
At a feast on Yuhua Terrace, a ragged scholar begs for travel money after a robbery. Yao's companions mock the man, but Yao gives him everything he has left and never asks his name. Ashamed, he goes home, and his mother is furious.
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What is The Sobering Stone about?
It is a collection of fifteen tales, mostly set in Ming China, about justice, loyalty, greed, lust and kindness. Each story shows ordinary people, officials, wives and merchants making choices and living with the consequences.
Is The Sobering Stone a true story?
It is a work of fiction, though many tales use real eras and places such as Nanjing, Beijing and Jiangxi. One tale follows a gifted Tang scholar whose pride damages his career.
Who is Yao Yixiang?
He is the hero of the first tale, a clerk from Shanghai who wastes his mother's savings in a brothel but is kind to a stranger, and later oversees a prison in Jiujiang with great honesty.
The author
Donglugukuangsheng
Chinese Ming dynasty novelist
Donglugukuangsheng tells stories of officials, clerks, merchants and household life. He speaks to the reader directly, comments on his characters, and adds poems to mark the turns of the stories.
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