Western Han: A Yangzhou Storyteller’s Script

edited by Vibeke Børdahl and Liangyan Ge, with illustrations by Yalong Wang

Western Han is a major contribution to the study of Chinese literature, making available to scholars a rare storyteller’s script from the late Qing period. The script is published in its complete form, both in facsimile and transcription, with an annotated English translation. Its publication is of high importance not only to preserve knowledge about one of the famous oral traditions of China, but also as a unique documentation of the interplay between orality and literacy in Chinese storytelling. The book is also the first translation into a European language of this popular semi-historical narrative. Moreover, this storyteller’s version is unique and entertaining. The work is an ideal classroom source for students studying Chinese history, literature, oral literature, storytelling, etc. 

Vibeke Børdahl, Ph. D., D. Phil., senior researcher at NIAS, has been described as one of the most accomplished scholars in the study of Chinese oral literature.

Liangyan Ge is Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame.

Wang Yalong, with an M.A. from the Department of History, Sichuan University, is currently a doctoral student at the Research Center on Chinese Paleography and Excavated Classical Documents at Fudan University. His scholarly interest lies mainly in Chinese philology and excavated texts from early China.

Publication year: 2017
752 pp / 274mm x 188mm
330 illustrations
ISBN: 978-87-7694-214-4, Hardback

NIAS Press