Home » Images » 0007 Pictures From History » CPA0003463

China: A female character from the Ming classic 'Jin Ping Mei' or 'The Golden Lotus'.

Jin Ping Mei or The Plum in the Golden Vase (also The Golden Lotus) is a Chinese novel composed in the vernacular (baihua) during the late Ming Dynasty. The author was Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng. Jin Ping Mei is sometimes considered to be the fifth classical novel after the Four Great Classical Novels. It is the first full-length Chinese fictional work to depict sexuality in a graphically explicit manner, and as such has a notoriety in China akin to Fanny Hill or Lady Chatterley's Lover in English. Jin Ping Mei takes its name from the three central female characters — Pan Jinlian, whose name means "Golden Lotus"); Li Ping'er (literally, "Little Vase"), a concubine of Ximen Qing; and Pang Chunmei ("Spring plum blossoms"), a young maid who rose to power within the family. Within more conservative Chinese societies, Jin Ping Mei is considered to be pornographic material, due to its contents.