Zhang Zhupo

At the age of 26, bitter at having failed the local examinations five times, Zhang turned to the task of editing and commenting on Jin Ping Mei.

Zhang is grouped with Mao Zonggang and Jin Shengtan as commentators and editors who interpreted novels using a vocabulary and critical standards which up to then had been limited to poetry and painting.

[2] In order to give their work credibility, Mao and Jin claimed to be "transmitting" long-lost editions and did not inform readers that they themselves had extensively rewritten the text or reworked the structure of the novel.

[5] Zhang opened his edition with dufa essays which expounded the theory of his interpretation and he inserted comments between chapters, between the lines of the text, and in the upper margins.

As one recent critic puts it, the "dirt" which Zhang saw in the book was not the sexual transgressions but the "ethical abjections," which were intended to form a moral fable.

The reader of Jin Ping Mei, warned Zhang in his dufa, "should keep a spittoon handy in order to have something to bang on... a sword ready to hand so that he can hack about him to relieve his indignation... and hang a bright mirror in front of himself so that he can see himself fully revealed.

"[11] Roy, while preferring the more complete text of the earlier edition for his translation, says that he "stands on the shoulders" of Zhang, especially his view of the moral basis of the seemingly immoral tale.