Bao Juan
Bao Juan: Prosimetric narrative text. A descendant of the religious bianwen, the baojuan is a Buddhist or Daoist story told in alternating prose and verse. The earliest baojuan were the products of Buddhist religious sects that used these texts, written in a combination of vernacular and classical Chinese, to propagate their religious teachings. By the late sixteenth century, the baojuan was transformed into a narrative form that consists of a sustained plot interspersed with sermons. An early example is Xiangshan baojuan 香山 (Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain), which tells the story of Guanyin’s reincarnation as a princess. There were also Daoist baojuan popular in the Quanzhen 全真 sect. A well-known piece tells the famous story of Zhuangzi’s dialogue with a skull. (Oxford Reference)