A dystopian satire, the "Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan" provides fascinating insights into late imperial China's popular culture. Using an array of sources, "Carnival in China" develops a style of reading that explores the desires, dreams, fears and nightmares of seventeenth-century Chinese citizens.

Daria Berg, Ph.D. (1995) in Chinese Literature, University of Oxford, is Associate Professor at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham. She has published extensively on traditional Chinese literature, literary theory and modern Chinese fiction (PRC and Taiwan) and is currently involved in research on women, gender and gentility in China.