"官場現形記" by Boyuan Li is a late-Qing Chinese novel written between 1901 and 1906. This sprawling satirical work exposes the corruption and disintegration of China's civil service bureaucracy through over 800 characters and numerous interconnected episodes. The novel follows officials, aspiring bureaucrats, merchants, and women caught in a deteriorating system, weaving together themes of state decline, imperialism, and the commercialization of human relationships. With over 600,000 Chinese characters, this masterpiece of satirical writing offers an inventive and coherent critique of society's mercantile orientation. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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