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The Travels of Lao Can by E. Liu

alanffm's review against another edition

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2.0

This isn't as much a review of the book as it is of its horrific translation. As it stands, there is no readable version of this book in English.

The Travels of Lao Can, as a novel, however, is a classic Ming era narrative that depicts the adventures of a traveling official/medic, Lao Can. The book primarily focuses on government corruption and the symbolic deterioration of the Chinese political system in the post-Yellow River flooding period. It's quite an important text for historical reasons, but remains largely out of reach to English speakers due to its horrible translations.
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