TY - BOOK AU - Ling,Mengchu TI - 初刻拍案驚奇 AV - PL PY - 2018/// CY - Salt Lake City, UT PB - Project Gutenberg KW - Chinese fiction -- Ming dynasty, 1368-1644 N1 - Wikipedia page about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slapping_the_Table_in_Amazement; Release date is 2018-06-02; Produced by Xiaoman Chiu; Original publication data not identified N2 - "初刻拍案驚奇" by Mengchu Ling is a collection of vernacular short stories composed in 1627 during the late Ming dynasty. This two-volume work contains seventy-eight tales drawn from folk legends, romances, and unofficial history. The stories capture extraordinary events hidden within ordinary life, featuring merchants, hawkers, prostitutes, thieves, and other common people rather than emperors and heroes. Written in vernacular Chinese, the collection explores themes of love, marriage, and commerce while reflecting the social changes of seventeenth-century China through vivid characters and surprising plot twists. (This is an automatically generated summary.) UR - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57248 ER -