The New Plums in the Golden Vase

The New Jin Ping Mei uses the story of Wu Song killing his sister-in-law from Water Margin as an introduction. By describing the sinful life of Ximen Qing, who represents the feudal era's bourgeois force with his three identities as a bureaucrat, a bully, and a rich merchant, it reveals the darkness and corruption of society in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty.