The Wallet Of Kai Lung

Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung is a storyteller in an imagined China, telling tales of earnest examination candidates, corrupt mandarins, beautiful maidens, alchemical potions, grasping merchants, and assorted other stereotypes from the Western imagination of China. Bramah makes no attempt to depict any kind of historical reality, but uses the setting to allow his invention and fantasy free rein, to free himself from the confines of the mundane. The sentiment and some aspects of the setting are clearly late-Victorian, with juxtaposition of the two worlds sometimes used for comic effect.