Abstract: Although The Plum in the Golden Vase is a derivation of the episode “Wu Song kills his sister-in-law” in The Water Margin, its temporal and spatial narration breaks through the restrictions of the original text. In terms of historical background, The Plum in the Golden Vase intentionally blends the Song and the Ming dynasty, which sets a precedent for profound reflection of the times in popular novels. The coherent chronological narrative and the continuous festival writing in this work also demonstrates the ups and downs as well as the prosperity and decline through the comparison of before and after. The main location in the narrative shifts from Yanggu to Qinghe, which ambivalently forms a realistic but illusory artistic effect. Then the novel describes society by focusing on family issues, and combines the courtyard layout with the story development and characterization, which constructs an interlocked and multilayered space. On the whole, it sets up a new paradigm for the popular novels by creating the chaptered novel of worldly affairs, which had a far-reaching impact on subsequent fictional writing.

Key words: The Plum in the Golden Vase, temporal and spatial narration, using the past to describe the present, multilayered fields, realism