Romance of the West Chamber 西厢记

Romance of the West Chamber is a Chinese dramatic work written by the Yuan Dynasty playwright Wang Shifu. It tells the story of a secret love affair between Zhang Sheng, a young scholar, and Cui Yingying, the daughter of a chief minister who had passed away.

Zhang Sheng met Cui Yingying when he stayed in a temple and soon fell in love with her. However, Yingying’s beauty became known by a local bandit. He dispatches ruffians to besiege them, in the hopes of taking her as his consort. Yingying’s mother declared that she would marry her daughter to whoever could save her. Zhang Sheng managed to save Yingying with his friend’s help. But her mother refused to fulfil her promise because he was poor. With the help of Hong Niang, Yingying’s maid, they broke the traditional barrier and finally married.

The original story was first told in a literary Chinese short story written by Yuan Zhen during the Tang Dynasty. This version was called The Story of Yingying, or Yingying's Biography. This version differs from the later play in that Zhang Sheng ultimately breaks from Yingying, and does not ask for her hand in marriage. Despite the unhappy ending, the story was popular with later writers, and recitative works based on it began accumulating in the centuries that followed. Perhaps bowing to popular sentiment, the ending gradually changed to the happy one seen in the play. The first example of the modified version is an oral performance by Dong Liang of the Jin Dynasty. Wang Shifu's play was closely modeled on this performance.

Due to scenes that unambiguously described Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying fulfilling their love outside of the bond of marriage, moralists have traditionally considered The Story of the Western Wing to be an indecent, immoral, and licentious work. It was thus placed high on the list of forbidden books. Tang Laihe is reported to have said, "I heard that in the 1590s the performance of the Hsi-hsiang chi...was still forbidden among [good] families." Gui Guang (1613–1673) called the work "a book teaching debauchery." On the other hand, the famous critic Jin Shengtan considered it silly to declare a book containing sex to be immoral, since "If we consider [sex] more carefully, what day is without it? What place is without it? Can we say that because there is [sex] between Heaven and Earth, therefore Heaven and Earth should be abolished?".

The story in The Story of the Western Wing by Wang Shifu of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) directly came from the prose romance The Story of Yingying by Yuan Zhen of the Tang Dynasty (618-907).The Story of Yingying is a tragedy about the love, union and separation between Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying in the first year of the Zhenyuan reign in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Several episodes in the story have certain influence on The Romance of the Western Chamber in terms of subject matter, dramatis personae and plots as well.

The Story of the Western Wing tells that a young scholar Zhang Sheng went to the capital city to take the highest imperial examination. When he stayed in a temple, he met Cui Yingying, daughter of the then Prime Minister and fell in love with her. At that time, a group of robbers besieged them. Yingying's mother declared that she would marry her daughter to whoever could save them. Zhang Sheng managed to do that with his friend's help. But her mother refused to keep her words because he was poor. However, Yingying and Zhang Sheng loved each other very much. With the help of Hong Niang, Yingying's maid, they broke the traditional barrier.