Su'e pian
Su'e pian, also Su E Pian, translated into English as The Moon Goddess or The Lady of the Moon, is a Chinese erotic novel by an anonymous writer published in the late Ming dynasty. It follows the sexual escapades of Wu Sansi and his concubine, Su'e.
Plot
Wu Sansi, the wealthy and powerful nephew of Empress Wu Zetian, falls in love with the eponymous Su'e and takes her in as a concubine. The novel describes forty-three sexual encounters between Wu Sansi and Su'e, each of which is artfully named and commemorated with a poem. Palace official Di Renjie insists on meeting Su'e after hearing of her exceptional beauty; she agrees after some hesitation, before revealing to Di that she is an immortal "Moon Lady". Su'e then departs to a higher dimension with Wu's spirit. Some time later, the couple are reportedly sighted at the Zhongnan Mountains.Content and publication history
Su'e pian is more than 10,000 Chinese characters long and comprises some forty-three chapters and ninety illustrations collected in four volumes. Each sexual position described in the novel is given a name such as "Stopping the Horse to Pull the Saddle", "Flowers Longing for Butterflies", "Boat Widthwise Over the Ferry", and "The Union of Yin and Yang".The novel was written in Classical Chinese by an anonymous writer using the pseudonym Yehua Sheng. According to its preface, Su'e pian was engraved by Hangzhou-based engraver Huang Yikai, and published. An English translation of the story was written by E. D. Edwards and published in Chinese prose literature of the Tang period. A complete Ming edition of the novel, believed to be the only one left in existence and previously owned by Columbia University professor Wang Jizhen, is housed in the library of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in Bloomington, Indiana.