Investiture of the Gods 001: Introduction
A brief overview of the next novel I’m covering, a leading work in the genre of gods and demons fiction.
Transcript
Welcome to the Chinese Lore Podcast, where I retell classic Chinese stories in English. This is episode 1 of Investiture of the Gods.
In this episode, I’m going to provide a brief introduction to this novel to set the table for the rest of the series. The Investiture of the Gods was believed to have been published sometime in the late 1500s or early 1600s. For context, that is quite a bit later than the two works that we have covered so far. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Water Margin were both attributed to authors who lived in the 1300s.
The plot of Investiture of the Gods is loosely built around the historical transition at the end of the Shang Dynasty, which is believed to have lasted from about 1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C., though there are multiple chronologies with varying start and end dates. It is the earliest Chinese dynasty in recorded history. Among the things that it is famous for are the oracle bones used in divinations, which contained the earliest known Chinese writing. And if you look at a map of the approximate boundaries of the Shang, you’ll see that it is only a fraction of the size of modern-day China, and it was centered in the Yellow River valley.
And for the purposes of this novel, that’s about all the historical context you need at this point. This novel really just borrows the names of a few historical figures to weave a tale about immortals and supernatural magic. It basically provides an origin story for many of the deities in the Daoist canon. It is a leading work among gods-and-demons novels, a genre of vernacular fiction that first appeared during the Ming dynasty in the 14th century. The genre is characterized by plots involving deities and monsters. One of the four great Chinese classics, the Journey to the West, also falls into this category.
Like a number of old Chinese novels, the authorship of the Investiture of the Gods is a matter of dispute. It is often attributed to Xu (3) Zhonglin (4,2), a novelist who lived from about 1560 to 1630, and about whom we know basically nothing. But there are also speculations that attribute the work to either a Daoist or a government official, both of whom lived in the mid-1500s.
If you want to read an English version of the book while you listen to the podcast, there are a couple options. There was one abridged translation that only includes 46 out of 100 chapters, which was done in 2002 by Katherine Liang Chew. This version is easily found in online stores under the title “Tales of the Teahouse Retold: Investiture of the Gods.”
If you want the full story, however, that’s a bit trickier. There is actually a pretty solid two-volume English translation of the whole novel that was published in 1992 by Gu Zhizhong. But finding it proved to be rather difficult. You can find one volume or the other at various used book sources online, but they are typically priced in the triple digits. It took me a long time to track down both volumes for under $100, and it felt like I won the lottery.
BUT, big hat-tip to listener Kwee, who shared the link to a digital version of this translation. Kwee also shared a link to a very abridged translation that reads more like Cliff’s Notes. I have posted the links to both files with this episode on chineselore.com, so go check those out.
That’s about it for this introduction. I want to keep it short so we can dive right into the story, and I’ll give more historical and cultural context as needed as we go through the book. So I’ll see you on the next episode of the Chinese Lore Podcast. Thanks for listening!
Music in This Episode
- “Sao Meo” by Doug Maxwell / Zac Zinger