yuanyang hudie pai

noun

A type of Chinese fiction modeled after classical romances involving a tragic love between an effeminate male protagonist and a tender young woman.

OriginMandarin 鸳鸯蝴蝶派 →
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Meanings

nounyuanyang hudie pai (uncountable)
  1. uncountableA type of Chinese fiction modeled after classical romances involving a tragic love between an effeminate male protagonist and a tender young woman.

    The Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school (yuanyang hudie pai; henceforth Butterfly) has its origins in the mid-1910s boom in commercial periodicals.

    2003, Joshua S. Mostow, The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature, →ISBN, page 355
    3 more examples

    There is no good reason to keep replicating the terminological blunders and ideological biases of the anti-popular May Fourth critics, who used yuanyang hudie pai xiaoshuo as a sweeping epithet of dismissal for rival turf on the literary scene.

    2000, Tamkang Review - Volume 31, Issues 1-3

    Even a shallow reading tells us that some of Ye's stories have features of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School (yuanyang hudie pai 鸳鸯蝴蝶派).

    2008, Women, Men, Love and Sexual Discourse in Ye Lingfeng's Fiction, →ISBN, page 18

    Leftist critics coined for them the depreciative polemical label yuanyang-hudie pai 鸳鸯蝴蝶派, "Mandarin-ducks-and-butterflies School", and construed in their critical discourse the overwhelmingly negative image of popular fiction as a purely commercial product for superficial entertainment and diversion, steeped in old-fashioned values and atavistic modes of behaviour, and adhering to outdated literary forms and techniques.

    2009, Roland Altenburger, The Sword Or the Needle, →ISBN

Synonyms & antonyms

Also see
yuanyang hudie

Origin

  1. Mandarin鸳鸯蝴蝶派
  2. Englishyuanyang hudie pai

Borrowed from Mandarin 鸳鸯蝴蝶派 (yuānyāng-húdié pài, literally “Mandarin ducks and butterflies school”).

More words from Mandarin

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

yuanyang hudie pai. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/yuanyang%20hudie%20pai

MLA

“yuanyang hudie pai.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/yuanyang%20hudie%20pai. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “yuanyang hudie pai,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/yuanyang%20hudie%20pai.

Source: yuanyang hudie pai on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.