A Dream of Glory (Fanhua Meng): A Chinese Play

Wang Yun's A Dream of Glory (Fanhua meng) has emerged as the first ever full-length chuanqi play written by a woman dramatist, a unique text amidst the canonical works by male playwrights during the Ming and Qing dynasties such as Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion and Kon Shangren's Peach Blossom Fan. The story, autobiographical in nature, is about a young lady who bemoans the constraints imposed on her sex and relates how her hope for a career as a government official materializes in a dream through cross-gender change. Through her translation of and critical introduction to the play, Qingyun Wu resurrects a long-neglected voice and reveals the suppressed desires of a most unusual woman in eighteenth-century China.