The Dream of Handan

• Author: Tang Xianzu

The Dream of Handan is among the most famous of Chinese traditional dramas. In it, a young man falls asleep while cooking millet on the stove, and lives an entire life - studying for the exams, earning a jinshi degree, getting married and having children, being slandered and condemned to death, being cleared of the charges and promoted to a higher official post - before waking up from the dream, just as the millet is about to be ready.

Several of Tang's other plays also prominently feature the theme of dream as reality (or, reality as merely a dream).

References

• Conrad Schirokauer, et al, A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations, Fourth Edition, Cengage Learning (2012), 255.