Yingying's Biography

The Biography of Ying-ying (traditional Chinese: 鶯鶯傳; simplified Chinese: 莺莺传; pinyin: Yīngyīng zhuàn), also translated as The Tale of Yingying or The Story of Yingying, by Yuan Zhen, is a Tang dynasty chuanqi tale.

His tale mixed narration, poetry and letters from one character to another to demonstrate emotion rather than describe it, making it in one sense an epistolary novel.

[2] Yingying's Biography was one of three Tang dynasty works particularly influential in the development of the caizi-jiaren (scholar and beauty novels).

[3] The young man, known only as "the student Zhang", is living in a rented dwelling in a Buddhist compound in the countryside some distance from a small city when a recently widowed woman, her daughter and son with an entourage befitting their wealth move into another rented dwelling in that compound.

The widow Cui and her group are made much more secure as a result of the student Zhang's pulling of strings.

He arranges an indirect conduit through which he sends two "vernal" poems that the author of the story indicates would have conveyed no indecent propositions.

Yingying responds with a poem that indicates romantic interest in "my lover", and invites him to come to her apartment after midnight.

The student Zhang thinks that "his salvation [is] at hand", i.e., that he will at last find an end to the long dearth of affection in his life.

After some months of the functional equivalent of young married life, the student Zhang has to go to the capital to take the yearly civil service examination that will determine whether he will be able to get a good job in the government.

She refuses to see him, but sends him a poem that indicates that she is thoroughly miserable, and that this sorrowful state of affairs is all Zhang's fault.

Some days later she sends him a poem of farewell, saying that he should direct his energies toward making a good relationship with his wife.