The New Sequel to The Golden Lotus: Samsara in a Floating World

New Sequel to The Plum in the Golden Vase: Reincarnation in a Fleeting World

This is a long modern realist novel about society and human affairs. Building on the core themes of karma and reincarnation, and of splendor returning to emptiness, in Ding Yaokang's Qing-dynasty Sequel to The Plum in the Golden Vase, it leaves behind the classical world of romance and sensuality and recasts the modern city as a "silent age of chaos," tracing the fortunes of people from a bygone era in their new lives.

The people of the Ximen household in their past lives are reborn in the modern world as everyday city folk: a nouveau riche businessman, a traffic-seeking influencer, a wealthy family's homemaker, a corporate executive, an ordinary worker, and a law enforcement official. Carrying the old karmic burdens of greed, delusion, anger, and jealousy, they live again amid the torrents of capital, the pursuit of fame and fortune, webs of human relationships, and whirlpools of desire.

This book has no sensational tales of romance and sensuality. It focuses instead on present-day karma, the folds of human nature, and the ills of the age. People believe that wealth, traffic, and connections can rewrite their fate, never realizing that every gamble, scheme, transgression, and act of callousness will eventually come back to haunt them. From sudden riches and ostentatious heights, through undercurrents of social rivalry, to the final reckoning of financial collapse, a shattered public image, and the loss of friends and family, all splendor ultimately comes to nothing, and every obsession is broken.

Using the past to illuminate the present, and reincarnation to examine the modern world, the novel lays bare the futility of contemporary people's pursuit of fame and fortune. It captures the warmth and coldness of everyday life, the good and evil in human nature, and the truths of our fleeting existence. Rooted in traditional culture yet facing the hearts of modern people head-on, it is a powerful contemporary novel about society and human affairs.