Magistrates, doctors, and monks: Satire in the chinese jestbook xiaolin guangji

In most modern Chinese-English dictionaries, the term fengci - a word composed of two characters which originally meant “to chant” and “to stab” - is often given as a direct translation of “satire.” In the light of an etymological origin so notably different from its Latin counterpart, satura, one might be tempted to think that satire, in its commonly understood sense, does not exist in Chinese literature, especially of the premodern variety. This article takes social satire as its starting point, introducing and dealing with three recurring categories of character from the premodern Chinese jestbook Xiaolin Guangji, namely magistrates, doctors, and monks. The debased image in which such characters wallow, and the overturning of their value systems, are the two main features which best serve the purpose of satire, and in this article such features become the object of a comparative theoretical analysis in an attempt to establish a dialogue between the main themes of the aforementioned jokes and the Western concept of satire. The main purposes of this article are to point out the satirical (and not merely ridiculous or humorous) nature of the text, and at the same time to highlight a Chinese way of using it, which has apparently been neglected to date.