The Nine-tailed Turtle
novel by Zhang Chunfan
The Nine-tailed Turtle (Chinese: 九尾龜, also translated as Nine-tailed Turtles, Nine-headed Turtle, or Nine-times Cuckold) is a novel by Zhang Chunfan (?-1935), an author from Piling (near modern-day Changzhou). The novel centres around the life of a scholar named Zhang Qiugu, who leaves his wife to spend time with famous courtesans in China's pleasure districts.
The book was serialized from 1906 to 1910 and has 192 chapters, making it one of the longest novels produced in China's late Qing and early Republican eras. During that time, it was "phenomenally popular", and was one of the most widely read books of the 1920s, as well as one of the most popular novels of its time written partly in Wu Chinese. In the 20th century, many intellectuals criticized it for its erotic content, and during the intervening years it "fell into oblivion", with the result that by the 1980s it was difficult to obtain even a Chinese copy of the novel. However, by the 21st century it had a continued high circulation with new editions and print runs.
Development
Wang Tao, a man who knew Zhang Chunfan, said that the novel was based on the author's real life love affair with a courtesan in Shanghai. Mainly due to commercial reasons, Zhang Chunfan found difficulty in ending the story at an opportune time, so he continued the novel until he exhausted his imagination. David Der-wei Wang argued that this may also be due to Zhang Chunfan's unwillingness to end the book with a standard good ending with the protagonist settling down to raise a family.
Title
The book's title refers to the consequences of a scandal in the household of Kang Jisheng, a former Jiangxi governor.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Nine-tailed Turtle” is novel by Zhang Chunfan. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nine-tailed, Turtle and novel, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “novel by Zhang Chunfan” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9384723. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1935, 1906 and 1910.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Nine-tailed Turtle”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Nine-tailed Turtle primary sources, The Nine-tailed Turtle archive and Nine-tailed research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Nine-tailed Turtle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.