In a certain sense, there has never been a break in the literary tradition of China. A Chinese scholar of today, when he learns of the death of a friend,will turn aside from his research on Finnegans Wake to compose an obituary couplet whose language would have been acceptable to a fifteenth-century forebear, and whose content will probably include allusions to the Bookof Songs of the sixth century before Christ. In another sense, the literary history of the past seven hundred years is a record of continual upheavals, of the periodic emergence of new forms, of the frequent substitution of one classical model for another, and (for the past half-century) of iconoclasm and innovation on the largest scale. The literature of China has been one of the most glorious achievements of the imagination of man.

Cyril Birch has been Chair of the Department of Oriental Languages of the University of California at Berkeley. His many translations include Stories from a Ming Collection, which prompted Library Journal to declare "we are indebted to Cyril Birch . . . for his felicitous translation," and his Anthology of Chinese Literature, Volume I: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century, which was described by the New Yorker as "a remarkable Chinese banquet indeed--drinking poems and didactic biographies, cynical love stories and operatic plays, philosophical letters and lyrical religious tracts--it is all a delight.

INTRODUCTION
YUAN DYNASTY (1280-1367)
SONGS OF THE YUIAN DYNASTY
Two Anonymous Songs
Tune: "Magpie on the Branch"
Seeking a Mate
Kuan Han-eh'ing
Tune: "Reining in to Listen"
Bedroom Seene
Song Set: Defy Old Age
Song Set: Get Out While You Can
Hu Chih-yv
Thoughts of Love
Ma Chih-yvan
Tune: "Plum Blossoms in the Breeze"
Tune: "Sand and Sky"
Chang Yang-hao
T'ung Pass
Teng Yii-pin
Taoist Songs
Hsii Tsai-ssu
Thoughts of Love
Tu Tsun-li
To a Pretty Girl with a Mole on Her Cheek
Chou Wen-chih
Autumn Sadness
Ch'iao Chi
A Waterfall Revisited
Chang K'o-chiu
The Waterfall Temple at T'ien-t'ai
MING DYNASTY (1568-1644)
GHOSTS AND OTHER MARVELS
The Jade Kuan-yin
Ch'v Yu
A Record of the Land of the Blessed
Ma Chnng-hsi
The Wolf of Chung-shan
A POET OF THE EARLY MING
Kao Ch'i
Preface to His Own Poems
On Hearing the Sound of Oars, When Leaving the
East Gate of the City at Dawn
The Song of the Man of the Green Hill
Written on Seeing the Flowers, and Remembering
My Daughter
Called for the Compilation of the Yiian History and
about to Leave for the Capital, I take Leave of My
Wife
Winter Hardship in the Capital
Four Poems from the Eastern Cottage
A HILARIOUS BUDDHIST ALLEGORY
Wu Ch'eng-en
The Temptation of Saint Pigsy
A MASTERPIECE OF MING DRAMA
T'ang Hsien-tsu
From Peony Pavilion
……