Eighty-One Dreams was Zhang Henshui's foremost contribution to the patriotic literature of the War of Resistance against Japan, criticizing the political and social corruption of the Chiang Kai-shek regime. Soft surreal transitions and narrative shifts faithfully reproduce the logic of dreams; sharp reporting exposes contemporary social problems; characters and motifs from traditional Chinese fiction and history satirize the conduct of the war. A deft mixture of the popular style of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies School with the innovations of May Fourth modernism, Eighty-One Dreams is a window on China's educated classes, in its own time and still today.