Hedian

Hedian (何典; "What Sort of Book is This?") is a Chinese novel by Zhang Nanzhuang (張南莊). It was first printed in 1879, by Shen Bao's press in Shanghai.

Clearly a satire, the novel humorously depicts the netherworld society, where rich and powerful ghosts bully the weak and poor. It was one of the first Chinese novels to use the Wu Chinese dialect in writing.

References

• Wang, David Der-wei (1997). Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2845-3.