The development of the novel in premodern (pre–twentieth-century) China paralleled, to a significant extent, that of the novel in the West in that both were shaped by a changing social and cultural environment characterized by rapid commercialization and urbanization and a booming print culture, even if the former’s rise began almost two centuries earlier. Whereas the Western realistic novel flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Chinese novel had already experienced its golden age by the late eighteenth century. What sets the “realism” in the Chinese novel apart is its hybrid nature: A realistic narrative is often framed or punctured by the mythical/supernatural that tends to question the very veracity of this reality. Despite their shared fascination with realism, many fictional works, during both the premodern and modern periods, or both before and after the inpouring of the Western influence, have exhibited a deep concern over realism’s potential for moral “messiness” and, consequently, an urge to contain realism with various attempts at ideological intervention, whether Buddhist, Confucian, or communist.