Abstract：While The Golden Lotus has earned the reputation for parodies, the works parodied ( such as poems from the Tang to Ming dynasties) are not the first hand material, instead, they are from a secondary source: the light literature, as is showed in chapter 11 in which Invitation to Wine—a poem by Li He—is quoted. The author of The Golden Lotus was unfamiliar with the elegant literature, such as poetry ( and even the real life of upper society) , while familiar with the light literature ( including the life of townspeople in the bottom society) , which justifies our hypothesis: even though the novel was not authored by a storyteller group, as some scholars have believed, it could hardly be written by a so-called“great celebrity”as widely believed for long.

Keyword：The Golden Lotus;poetry of Li He;elegant literature;great celebrity;parody;