Many people think that *The Plum in the Golden Vase* is a "pornographic book" that couldn't be more explicit.
In 1994, someone privately printed and sold this book, which was then listed as a major national case. The ringleader was sentenced to death and executed by a gunshot to the back of the head.
In fact, regarding whether *The Plum in the Golden Vase* is pornographic or not, there are at least two key questions worth asking: First, how much sexual content does it actually contain? Second, are these descriptions necessary, and do they have any literary value? The answer to the first question is relatively simple: The entire book of *The Plum in the Golden Vase* is over one million characters long, but the text describing sexual acts is only about 30,000 characters.
To label the entire one million characters as a "pornographic book" because of this 3%, probably indicates that basic arithmetic wasn't learned well in primary school.
For the second question, we must delve into it further.
Many people know that the title of *The Plum in the Golden Vase* is composed of one character each from the names of three women in the book.
Jin refers to Pan Jinlian; Ping refers to Li Ping'er; and Mei refers to Chunmei.