It can be seen that after the birth of Conan Collection, not only the scripts were repeatedly carved and re-carved, but also some scripts were often performed in the folk and the Qing court, which proved the enduring literary charm and artistic vitality of Conan Collection.
In his book History of Modern Drama in China, Japanese sinologist Masako Aoki first compared Tang Xianzu with the British dramatist Shakespeare: "Tang Xianzu was born 14 years earlier than Shakespeare in England and died one year after Shakespeare's death (the author said: this is wrong, in fact, they both died in the same year), and it is also strange that great people in the eastern and western music circles were born at the same time." Indeed, Tang Xianzu's plays are worthy of world reputation in terms of the depth and breadth of their humanistic spirit and the artistic height they have reached. But probably because Tang Xianzu's plays are long and the lyrics are elegant and gorgeous, they were later translated into western languages. However, the scripts of Yuan Zaju had been translated into western languages as early as 1930s (AD 18). Edited by Jean Baptiste Du Halde, The Chinese Empire was published in 1735, which included the French translation of The Orphan of Zhao by French missionaries (1666- 1736). This is the starting point for China's classical operas to be introduced into Europe. Since then, The Orphan of Zhao has been translated into German and English. However, it was not until the 1930s that Tang Xianzu's plays had a full German translation of Peony Pavilion, while the English translation was only a single piece of Spring Fragrance and Snow in Peony Pavilion. Moreover, when early European sinologists translated China's classical opera scripts, they often deleted the lyrics. This is very inappropriate from the perspective of introducing China's classical operas.
Because China's classical opera scripts are all centered on lyrics from structural organization to moral transmission. Drama, like Sanqu, is in the same strain as classical poetry with a long history and inherits the profound tradition of China's ancient poetry. Therefore, in the eyes of ancient playwrights, drama is the pillar and essence of the script. 1980, American sinologist Corell Burch published a complete English translation of Peony Pavilion. In recent years, several other works of Tang Xianzu have also been translated and published by domestic scholars and translators. Mr. Zhang Guangqian, the English translator of this book, published the Peony Pavilion in English as early as 1994, and continued to complete Southland in 2003.
And submit it to foreign languages press for publication. Today, the English version of Conan's Tales will be published as a "Greater China Library Series", which is undoubtedly of great significance for promoting the understanding and understanding of Tang Xianzu, a great China dramatist of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and for making China's excellent ancient dramas accepted and appreciated by more people in the world.