Di ershisan hui: Henghaijun Chai Jin liu bin, Jiangyanggang Wu Song da hu
第二十三回﹕橫海郡柴進留賓﹐ 景陽岡武松打虎

In the Ming novel (both jianti and fanti versions) the story is found as a ‘chapter’ or ‘session’, hui 回 (chapter 22 or 23). The word hui is mentioned first as part of the title (numbering the units of the novel before the couplet title), but also inside the text in the final stock phrase, zheng shi shen ren qie ting xia hui fenjie. Hui as a textual unit is here closely connected with the ‘storyteller’s manner’ of the genre, indicating that the sections of the book correspond to ‘returns’, ‘rounds’, ‘sessions’ of storytelling, for which the performer would be paid, while this unit at the same time serves to divide the long text into suitable portions for reading, i.e. chapters. Only with the genre of vernacular fiction does the word hui acquire the meaning of ‘chapter’.