Ainajushi

Ainajushi, also rendered as Aina Jushi or "Aina the Layman," is the pen name attached to Doupeng xianhua (Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor), a Chinese vernacular story collection generally dated to around 1660. Modern reference sources and publishers agree that the author’s real identity is unknown.

Sources describe Ainajushi as a novelist of the early Qing period, sometimes also called Aina the Buddhist Layman. The surviving work is known for linking a set of stories through the relaxed setting of people talking beneath a bean arbor, then using that simple frame to deliver satire, moral debate, and a skeptical look at social values.

Because the author’s life is unrecorded, most personal details remain uncertain. Some later scholars have guessed at possible origins or identities, but those ideas do not appear to be confirmed, so the clearest picture comes from the writing itself: lively storytelling, irony, and a strong sense of disillusionment with the world of the late Ming and early Qing era.