800-year-old manuscript of popular Chinese love story to be exhibited

SHENYANG - An 800-year-old manuscript of "The Romance of the West Chamber," one of China's most popular love dramas, is to be put on display in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning province.

The manuscript, discovered in Tatirang, a village in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, is one of the earliest copies of the story. It was found in 1986 by a herdsman, along with 27 other documents.

"The Romance of the West Chamber" is about a young scholar and the daughter of a minister, who fell in love without parental approval. Written by Wang Shifu, a playwright of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), it is recognized as a plea for freedom of marriage in a time when marriages were always arranged.

Bai Wenyu, curator of the Shenyang Palace Museum, told Xinhua that Tatirang was once a Yuan city on a busy traffic line. "From the documents we can deduce that soldiers came from distant Shaanxi province. They read this book to kill time and quench their homesickness."