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This post forms part of my '[aspects of the novel](/2022/01/04/aspects-of-the-novel/)' collection. Please do note that these entries, which may appear basic, are simply my own notes on the subject. They implicitly or explicitly describe a canon not of my own making or choosing and replicate this from various sources. The original encyclopaedia articles are far more comprehensive, nuanced and worth consulting. I am especially conscious, in this article, of the danger of causing offense by grossly simplifying a national history.

Fiction, in China, was held in low esteem for a very long time. The very term for fiction 'xiao shuo' literally means 'small talk'. The novel was a particular latecomer to China and did not appear until the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368).

The first Chinese novel is the _Sanguo yanyi_ (1522) or _The Romance of the Three Kingdoms_, often attributed to Luo Guanzhong. This text covers a century of history of early Imperial China. Another early novel is the _Shuihu zhuan_ (1614), translated as _Water Margin_. This novel charts the course of a set of philanthropic robbers in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126). Early Chinese novels, according to Yang, p. 19, did not have anything like Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ to act as intertextual reference points for their work.

As might be indicated by the subject of _Sanguo yanyi_, history and fiction are blurred categories in Ancient Chinese literature. History and fiction are all included under a word that might be translated as "pattern". Hence, much early Chinese writing is historical, with a narrative nature. For instance the _Shu jing_ (Book of Documents) is a record of historical political speeches. The _Zuo zhuan_ is the earliest narrative history.

One of the most important ancient Chinese histories, but regarded as a work of literature, is Sima Qian's _Shi ji_ or _Historical Records_. Significantly, this work focuses on people, rather than just charting historical events, hence lending it the literary quality. This work could be compared to Herodotus's _Histories_ or Thucydides's _Peloponnesian War_.

Works of philosophy also sometimes have a narrative structure. For instance, the _Lun yu_ is a book about Confucius but does so through a documentation of the conversations he had with his pupils.

The novel arises in China from the Ming dynasty onwards. Famous early examples include the _Xiyou ji_ (or _Journey to the West_) from 1592. There is also the well-known _Jin ping mei_ (_Plum in the Golden Vase_) from 1617, a 100-chapter novel of anonymous authorship, focusing on the daily life of an urban family. These paved the way for other texts, such as Cao Xueqin's _Shitou Ji_ or _Honglou meng_, which is "widely acknowledged as the greatest Chinese novel of all time" from the eighteenth century.

Further reading: Yang, Ye, ‘Ancient Narratives of China’, in _The Encyclopedia of the Novel_, ed. by Peter Melville Logan, Olakunle George, Susan Hegeman, and Efraín Kristal (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 18–28