The Sea of Regret: Two Turn-of-the-Century Chinese Romantic Novels

Published within a few months of each other in 1906, Stones in the Sea by Fu Lin and The Sea of Regret by Wu Jianren take opposite sides in the heated turn-of-the-century debate over the place of romantic and sexual love and passion in Chinese life. The Sea of Regret, which came to be the most popular short novel of this period, is a response to the less well-known but equally significant Stones in the Sea. Taken together, this pair of novels provides a fascinating portrait of early twentieth-century China’s struggle with its own cultural, ethical, and sexual redefinition.