active 19th century Hanshangmengren

Little is firmly documented about this author beyond the pen name Hanshangmengren and the fact that the work is generally placed in the 19th century. Sources connected to modern editions describe the writer as effectively anonymous, so a conventional personal biography is not available.

Hanshangmengren is known for Feng yue meng (also translated as Courtesans and Opium: Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou). Modern descriptions of the novel say it was written in the 1840s and set in the pleasure quarters of Yangzhou, tracing a world of courtesans, opium, material luxury, and moral ruin.

What makes the author notable today is the staying power of that novel. It has been preserved in Chinese through public-domain editions and later introduced to English-language readers in translation, where it has been presented as an important example of 19th-century Chinese urban fiction.