author
active 19th century Hanshangmengren
Known only by the pen name Hanshangmengren, this elusive 19th-century Chinese writer is remembered for Feng yue meng, a vivid Qing-era novel later translated as Courtesans and Opium. The book pairs the bustle of Yangzhou city life with a strongly moral, cautionary edge.
1 Audiobook
風月夢
by active 19th century Hanshangmengren
About the author
Little is firmly known about this author beyond the pseudonym Hanshangmengren and an active period in the 19th century. Library and catalog records consistently connect the name with Feng yue meng (*風月夢*), and modern English editions present the work as the creation of an anonymous author writing under that name.
The novel itself seems to date from the 1840s and is set against the pleasure quarters and social world of Yangzhou. In later descriptions and translation materials, it is framed as both a lively city novel and a warning tale about vice, especially the world of courtesans and opium.
Because the author’s real identity has not been clearly established in the sources available here, the most reliable way to think of Hanshangmengren is as the shadowy signature behind a single notable Qing-dynasty novel—one that survived not through biography, but through the force of its storytelling and its sharp picture of urban life.