A Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics At the start you read

At the start you read with a sense of relaxation

excerpts from the late 19th-century novel Shanghai Demi-monde by Han Banqing

her traumatic discovery of her own sexual ignorance

and widely translated Chinese writers of the first half of the twentieth century

A Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics At the start you readEdited by Alice W. Cheang 2003 xxxviii + 342 pages ISBN 962 7255 28 9 The song lyric, or ci, began as a form of minor divertissement in the urban pleasure quarters of 8th century China. Over several centuries it evolved in the hands of literati composers into a major poetic form and became the preferred medium for expressing strong emotions, from romantic love to the passion of heroic endeavour. This anthology of 128 lyrics illustrates the genre's