Kevin
@kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
970 followers 850 following 2.5K posts
Historical Chinese literature, poetry, and philosophy. Co-host Rereading the Stone podcast https://bsky.app/profile/rereadingstone.bsky.social book reviews & discussion of Ming-Qing literature, science fiction, etc. https://www.patreon.com/kmichaelwilson
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kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
this novel Lin Lan Xiang 林蘭香 (19th C.) is giving The Love Dream Clapper 情夢柝 (17th C.) vibes, by the way
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
the second rule of Qing Dynasty poly marriage:

NO Daoists
NO monks
NO degenerates

🀄📚
excerpt from Lin Lan Xiang 林蘭香 (19th C.)

又令眾允需有孚重定治家法度,一不許私出私人,冥頑生非。二不許延道延僧,接交匪類,三不許無男無女,聚賭群飲。四不許說東說西,遞語傳言。五不許穿用錦繡,戴用金珠。六不許侮人貧窮,欺人良善。如有犯者,事小三次後一總責罰,事大則立即處治,斷不寬恕。以此家下內外,又都愛敬夢卿。

林蘭香 (19th. C.) -> 第十五回燕夢卿讓居別院 林雲屏承理家私
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
the second rule of Qing Dynasty poly marriage:

NO Daoists
NO monks
NO degenerates

🀄📚
excerpt from Lin Lan Xiang 林蘭香 (19th C.)

又令眾允需有孚重定治家法度,一不許私出私人,冥頑生非。二不許延道延僧,接交匪類,三不許無男無女,聚賭群飲。四不許說東說西,遞語傳言。五不許穿用錦繡,戴用金珠。六不許侮人貧窮,欺人良善。如有犯者,事小三次後一總責罰,事大則立即處治,斷不寬恕。以此家下內外,又都愛敬夢卿。

林蘭香 (19th. C.) -> 第十五回燕夢卿讓居別院 林雲屏承理家私
Reposted by Kevin
wolfbridge.bsky.social
Out of touch enough musically that I had never heard of Bad Bunny until the last few days. How are you all staying up to date with musicians??
Reposted by Kevin
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
icymi 🌸🌺✨🪞
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
though Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is not, as is sometimes claimed, an "ancient gay encyclopedia," it is one of the greatest queer novels of the nineteenth century, and it still does not have an English-language wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...
Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson
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kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
turns out that the audiobook for Proust's Remembrance is 150 hours long...

[weird pause]

that makes sense, since Remembrance is somewhat longer than a Classic Chinese Novel, which tends to be 100-120 chapters long, and, after all, it takes about a hour to read a chapter of text
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
icymi 🌸🌺✨🪞
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
though Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is not, as is sometimes claimed, an "ancient gay encyclopedia," it is one of the greatest queer novels of the nineteenth century, and it still does not have an English-language wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...
Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson
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kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
as for romanizing proper names, increasingly I think I like?

Baoyu over Bao-yu
Daiyu over Dai-yu
Qionghua over Qiong-hua
etc.
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
etymological speculation, in particular, seems to be an area where it's really hard to distinguish a) hard linguistic truths from b) reasonable speculation on issues where most linguistics would agree and from c) wilder speculation on issues where linguists might have meaningful on-going debates
Reposted by Kevin
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
I'm not saying that Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is necessarily the best queer novel of the nineteenth century, but I am saying it's definitely in the running

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...
Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson
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kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
preliminary napkin arithmetic suggests that The Complete Tang Poetry Collection 全唐詩 commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor in 1705 is too long to be read in full during one mortal lifetime
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
rough approximation, each of the "four great masterpieces" (viz. classic Chinese novels) is about a million Chinese characters long
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
I'm not saying that Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is necessarily the best queer novel of the nineteenth century, but I am saying it's definitely in the running

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...
Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson
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Reposted by Kevin
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
though Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is not, as is sometimes claimed, an "ancient gay encyclopedia," it is one of the greatest queer novels of the nineteenth century, and it still does not have an English-language wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...
Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson
Get more from kmichaelwilson on Patreon
www.patreon.com
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
though Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) is not, as is sometimes claimed, an "ancient gay encyclopedia," it is one of the greatest queer novels of the nineteenth century, and it still does not have an English-language wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/reflec...
Reflections on Flower Bouquet in the Polished Mirror 品花寶鑑 (1849) | kmichaelwilson
Get more from kmichaelwilson on Patreon
www.patreon.com
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
Having the character count for a Chinese translation of Proust is a key piece of the puzzle. I'll go back and update the post, once the mystery is resolved.
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
Of course, this is exactly the subject of this post 😅:

What's longer, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber? 🀄📚

a discussion of how to compare works written in different languages, and why it does (and does not) matter

www.patreon.com/posts/big-bo...
Big Book Energy, and How to Measure It | kmichaelwilson
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kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
"The upcoming translation is the result of a four-year project [...] involving seven Taiwanese translators, each handling one volume, for a total of more than 2 million words, the publisher said in a statement."

Words, or Chinese characters?

www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/...
Taiwan to finally have a translation of Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ - Taipei Times
Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan
www.taipeitimes.com
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
🔥 ICYMI (including a thread of recent Ming-Qing literature-related blog posts)
rereadingstone.bsky.social
🎙️ episode drop🎙️ Chapter 43 part 1

This chapter admits of dualities? So here in part 1 we cover the first half (gold 金), which involves some extensive bickering over money (including an eyebrow-raising subscription scheme to raise funds for Xifeng’s birthday…)

www.buzzsprout.com/1269965/epis...
the whole gang, from the 1980s classic TV rendition of Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢/ 石頭記
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
this tweet feels like the thesis of an essay

maybe it... should be
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
thinking about how in Ming-Qing literature, a lot of reincarnation and "past lives" rhetoric serves as a provisional space for the articulation of psychological theories that, just like modern psychology, posit oblique origins for illogical or irrational individual behavior
Reposted by Kevin
rereadingstone.bsky.social
a post about a novel that is directly in dialogue with Dream of the Red Chamber, is easily one of the greatest queer novels of the 19th century, and which, to this day, does not have an English Wikipedia entry

www.patreon.com/posts/nothin...
Nothing Mongering, and the Feeling When “Important Literature” Doesn’t Have an English-language Wikipedia Entry | kmichaelwilson
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Reposted by Kevin
rereadingstone.bsky.social
What's longer, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber? 🀄📚

a post about how to compare works written in different languages, and why it does (and does not) matter

www.patreon.com/posts/big-bo...
Big Book Energy, and How to Measure It | kmichaelwilson
Get more from kmichaelwilson on Patreon
www.patreon.com
Reposted by Kevin
rereadingstone.bsky.social
🎙️ episode drop🎙️ Chapter 43 part 1

This chapter admits of dualities? So here in part 1 we cover the first half (gold 金), which involves some extensive bickering over money (including an eyebrow-raising subscription scheme to raise funds for Xifeng’s birthday…)

www.buzzsprout.com/1269965/epis...
the whole gang, from the 1980s classic TV rendition of Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢/ 石頭記
Reposted by Kevin
monteurhulot.bsky.social
You could try turning into a corncob. I hear that works
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
I'm still making a big ol' chronological list of Ming-Qing 小說 novels (currently at around 220 entries), but were there already such a list out there that I don't know about that maybe you'd be willing to share, to save me the effort, I would appreciate it? 😅 🀄📚
Reposted by Kevin
kmichaelwilson.bsky.social
let's not lose sight of the fact that if you were a cool person leading a meaningful life, you wouldn't have posted that