The Misadventures of Master Mugwort: A Joke Book Trilogy from Imperial China (The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature)

This book is a collection of jokes and short teaching stories about the mythical sage (and trickster and fool) "Master Mugwort" (Aizi). He supposedly lived in the Warring States Period, and the stories are imitations of the countless teaching stories and short anecdotes from that period. However, the stories were in fact written in the Song and Ming dynasties, by at least 3 authors. Two are known; the earliest, from Song, are ascribed to the great writer and statesman Su Shi, but as an early Chinese reader observed, they really are a bit below his normal style. Maybe he put together some circulating jokes in an idle hour. Anyway, the stories range from hilarious to thoughtful, rather like the science recognized by Ig Nobel Prizes, which "make you laugh and then make you think." I am glad to see more and more ordinary Chinese books getting translated, instead of the same old classics translated over and over and over again. The translations in this book are lively, fun to read, and thoroughly in the spirit of the Chinese writers.