In the history of Chinese classical novels, there is no other work like "The Plum in the Golden Ping", which has always wandered between the dual labels of "wonderful book" and "banned book" for four hundred years. It is not only praised as the "Ming Dynasty social encyclopedia", but also repeatedly banned due to its straightforward erotic description and sharp social criticism.
The mysterious author signed "Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng" uses the rise and fall of Ximen Qing's family as clues to weave a panoramic view of late Ming society. Its ideological depth and artistic tension make it a cultural anomaly across the ages - Li Zhi praised it as "the most wonderful book in the world", and Lu Xun affirmed that it "describes the world's conditions, and all Zheng Zhenduo said that the realistic achievement of "his feelings are false" has "opened a new page in the history of Chinese novels"; from the denunciation of Xue Gang in the Ming Dynasty for "hurtly surrendering to the fire of Qin", to the rejection of it by Ji Yun in the Qing Dynasty "Sikuquanshu", to the controversy over its "instruction of obscenity" in modern times, the complexity and diversity of this work are further confirmed.
