1 h 13 minAudiobook2 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 if a dream awakens a love that the waking world has no place for?
In Tang Xianzu’s Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion, Du Liniang grows up under the rules of her father, the strict official Du Bao. A garden visit with her lively maid, Spring Fragrance, awakens her senses. Then a dream brings a love she cannot dismiss when ordinary life returns.
Liniang longs to recover the young man and the feeling her dream reveals. Meanwhile, the scholar Liu Mengmei’s path draws him toward her world. Through garden scenes, songs, ghosts, and family conflict, this romance asks whether private desire can claim a place against public duty—and challenges the boundary between life and death.
What you’ll discover
- A garden of awakening Flowers and spring weather stir Liniang’s awareness of beauty, desire, and passing time.
- A daughter beyond duty Follow a sheltered young woman whose longing reaches beyond the life her education prepares her for.
- Love before waking life Liniang and Liu Mengmei’s connection asks whether feeling can be true before ordinary life allows it.
- Songs beside sorrow Songs carry feelings ordinary speech cannot settle, while comic passages interrupt the sorrow.
- A world beyond rules Servants, officials, religious figures, and supernatural powers surround a deeply personal struggle over love.
Who will love it
For readers who love dreamlike love stories, outspoken heroines, and supernatural drama, with private longing set against family authority and public conflict.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Poetry stirs feelings beyond a daughter's sheltered world
- A garden dream awakens Liniang’s desire
- Liniang’s longing consumes her health
- Desire reaches beyond the limits of ordinary life
- A young woman’s desire challenges accepted limits
Who’s who
- Du LiniangA sheltered official’s daughter whose dream awakens a love she cannot leave behind.
- Liu MengmeiA young scholar whose life becomes bound to Liniang through dreams, desire, and her portrait.
- Spring FragranceLiniang’s lively maid helps her step beyond the limits of lessons and household routine.
- Du BaoLiniang’s father represents official authority and the family duties that stand against her private desires.
- The garden and the dreamThe garden awakens Liniang’s senses, while the dream gives her a love absent from her waking life.
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- Audiobook
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Il padiglione delle peonie
by Tang Xianzu · 1598
After visiting a spring garden, Du Liniang dreams of a love that challenges family rules and the boundary between life and death.
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In short
The Peony Pavilion is a Chinese opera by Tang Xianzu about Du Liniang, a sheltered young woman whose dream of love becomes more powerful than the rules governing her life. Written in 1598, it brings gardens, ghosts, poetry, and family conflict into a love story that challenges the boundary between life and death.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Poetry stirs feelings beyond a daughter's sheltered world
Du Liniang grows up in the household of a strict official, Du Bao. Her education prepares her to be a proper daughter, not to choose a life of her own. Lessons, family expectations, and the walls around her home keep her world small. Yet the poetry she studies speaks of feelings that her carefully managed upbringing cannot explain or contain.
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What is The Peony Pavilion about?
The Peony Pavilion follows Du Liniang, a young woman who dreams of a lover and cannot return to her former life afterward. Her story joins romantic longing with supernatural events, while questioning whether family authority and ordinary reason can account for the strength of love.
Who wrote The Peony Pavilion, and when?
Tang Xianzu, a Chinese playwright of the Ming dynasty, wrote The Peony Pavilion in 1598. The drama combines song, movement, and poetic language across fifty-five scenes.
What does the dream mean in The Peony Pavilion?
Liniang’s dream gives shape to desires that her sheltered upbringing has left unspoken. Tang treats the feeling it awakens as real and consequential, even though the encounter occurs during sleep. The dream challenges the idea that only waking experience can establish emotional truth.
The author
Tang Xianzu
1550–1616 · Chinese Ming dynasty playwright
Tang Xianzu (1550–1616) was a Chinese playwright who lived during the Ming dynasty. He was born in Linchuan, in what is now Jiangxi province. He served as a government official and wrote plays and poetry. His plays include The Peony Pavilion, completed in 1598. He died in Linchuan.
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