author
E Liu
1857–1909
Best known for The Travels of Lao Can, this late Qing writer turned sharp social criticism into vivid storytelling. He was also an antiquarian and public-minded reformer whose life reached well beyond literature.
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About the author
Born in Jiangsu in 1857, Liu E was a Chinese writer of the late Qing dynasty, and he is most widely remembered for The Travels of Lao Can (Laocan youji), published in the early 1900s. Reference works describe him not only as a novelist, but also as an archaeologist or antiquarian and a government functionary involved in practical economic and public affairs.
His fiction stands out for blending travel narrative, satire, and concern for the condition of society in the final years of imperial China. That mix helped make The Travels of Lao Can his major literary legacy, and it remains the work most closely associated with his name.
Liu E died in 1909 in Dihua, Xinjiang. Today he is remembered as a writer whose career connected literature, scholarship, and public life in a period of major change.