Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat

What It's About

Kai Lung is a travelling storyteller in a gently absurd, invented China. In this collection he tells a series of tales to the people he meets, while his own troubles with the scheming Mandarin Shan Tien and his hopes of reuniting with his beloved Hwa-Mei run through the book. Each story is a self-contained fable of greedy officials, hapless merchants, scholars, magicians and meddling spirits. Between the tales, the framing narrative keeps Kai Lung's own predicament moving. The humour comes from the contrast between the stately, courteous language and the cunning, comic events it describes. Some modern readers may find the stylised, pastiche China dated. It was never meant to depict real Chinese life, and it works as an affectionate parody of a literary tradition.

Key Concepts

The book is built on nested storytelling: tales within tales, each used to teach, flatter, stall for time or escape danger. It satirises officialdom, bureaucracy and human vanity through elaborate politeness, where compliments often carry the sharpest insults. Ancestors, fate, filial duty and Confucian-style proverbs drive the plots, and virtue is usually rewarded through cleverness rather than force.

About the Author

Ernest Bramah was the pen name of Ernest Brammah Smith, an English writer born in Manchester. He left school at sixteen, tried farming, and then moved into journalism and writing. He was famously private and guarded his personal life closely, so little is known about him beyond his books.