This issue celebrates our first full year of publication and distribution through Maney Publishing. I thank all the members of CHINOPERL, its officers, the various contributors, the Editorial Board, and the Associate Editor for all of your efforts to make this possible. We continue to enjoy the support of my home institution, the University of Michigan, and especially the home institution of the President of CHINOPERL, Vassar College, which has contributed generously towards the publication of this and past issues.
This issue also celebrates the completion of the translation into English by Professor David Roy of the famous Ming dynasty novel, Jin Ping Mei cihua 金瓶梅詞話 (Plum in the golden vase). This novel is of particular interest to readers of this journal because of the many descriptions of a wide variety of performance genres in it. To make these more readily available and usable to readers both of Chinese and English, in the Research Notes section please find an introduction to a lengthy essay on this material and its value, including an even lengthier appendix that describes each appearance with references both to Chinese editions and Professor Roy’s translation. Both will be made available for download on a number of online sites. Professor Roy’s pioneering work on this novel and his annotated translation surely merit the dedication of an entire issue in celebration of them; hopefully that can be brought to pass in the future. Our next issue will celebrate the life and many scholarly achievements of Rulan Chao Pian, marking the melancholy event of her passing. She was a founder of CHINOPERL, fully worthy of the title given her: “Honorary President for Life.”
This issue contains two articles, one about an early Qing dynasty playwright’s attempt to create a home for himself and his friends in a printed commentary edition of one of his plays, and the other about attempts to find a home in Taiwan for a modern and global song genre by linking it to indigenous traditions. There is also a translation of a play about the trials of a poor schoolteacher written by a famous author who himself spent decades teaching students, and a field report on the levels of mitigation recently experienced in enactments of rituals connected to an oral “epic” tradition in Southwest China.
David L. Rolston, Ann Arbor, MI, April 2014