Abstract
This review essay offers a critical assessment of Liu Xiaoyi’s Clothing, Food, and Travel: Ming Material Culture as Reflected in Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan, which employs the late-Ming vernacular novel Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan as a window into the material life and moral imagination of late imperial China. The essay highlights three of the book’s major contributions. First, it provides a methodologically rigorous model for using literary fiction as a source for social and religious history, systematically cross-referencing narrative depictions with extra-literary evidence. Second, it reveals how Buddhist-inflected notions of karmic retribution operated as a practical moral economy that regulated consumption, shaped interpretations of material fortunes, and structured social expectations during a period of commercial expansion. Third, through analysis of pilgrimage narratives, the study illuminates the complexity of women’s religious agency, showing how devotional practices created spaces of autonomy while reinforcing traditional gender roles. The review also raises questions about the representativeness of a single fictional narrative for reconstructing broader societal attitudes and suggests avenues for further comparative research.
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How to cite this paper
Reassessing Karmic Retribution in the Material World: A Review Essay of Liu Xiaoyi’s Clothing, Food, and Travel
How to cite this paper: Yixin Jiang, Dawei Wang. (2026) Reassessing Karmic Retribution in the Material World: A Review Essay of Liu Xiaoyi’s Clothing, Food, and Travel. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(5), 529-532.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.05.003