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DÙ Lìniáng 杜丽娘 = a beautiful maid, a student of love poetry
Chūnxiāng 春香 = her handmaiden and fellow student
LIǓ Mèngméi 柳梦梅 = a young scholar of poetic sickliness
Once upon a time, the prefect of Nán’ān 南安 in Fújiǎn 福建 province was a man named DÙ Bǎo 杜宝, who had a beautiful daughter named DÙ Lìniáng 杜丽娘 (“beautiful maid”), who spent her days learning embroidery and studying the classics with a teacher named CHÉN Zuìliáng 陈最良, who taught her to read the “Book of Poetry” (Shījīng 诗经). Her handmaiden Chūnxiāng 春香 kept her company, but was not a very good student. Lìniáng was very taken with the romantic world of the poems, where boys and girls freely fell in love.
One beautiful day Chūnxiāng told Lìniáng about the magnificent garden behind the house. Lìniáng had always followed orders and remained inside, so she had never seen the garden, but she gave in to temptation and went out to see. It was all beautiful green leaves and bright flowers and birds singing. Even the peony was newly opened. But what a shame that she had only Chūxiāng to share it with.
On her return indoors she took a nap, and dreamt a young scholar came to her and gave her a willow branch and was sorry that she was so lonesome. They went into the garden and fell in love.
But her mother came into the room and woke her up, shattering the dream. Thereafter she went into the garden again, and all was just as in her dream, save that the young man was never to be found, and she began to pine away for love of him. She even painted a portrait of herself and had Chūxiāng hide it under the artificial mountain in the garden so that he might be drawn to her. As she neared death, she asked to be buried under the plum tree, a request that was honored.
Some while after Lìniáng’s death, her family moved away, and the house fell into decay. Some time later, a sickly young scholar named LIǓ Mèngméi 柳梦梅 (“Willow dreams of plum”) stopped in the town to recover his health as he made his way to the capital to take exams. One day, when his health was a little better, he took a walk, and happened upon the ruined garden, which looked oddly familiar. He even found Lìniáng’s self-portrait, which also looked hauntingly familiar.
He took it home and hung it on the wall, and found that gradually he was falling in love with the figure in the painting. Lìniáng’s ghost, seeing him to be the virtuous and attractive man she had originally dreamt of, appeared to him, and began visiting him every night.
At length, on her instructions, he dug up her grave, where her body came instantly back to life, just as whole and beautiful as ever, and they married and lived happily ever after.
Just as Lìniáng had died of love, she was brought back to life through love.