author
Fu Shen
b. 1763
Best known for an intimate memoir of everyday life in Qing-dynasty China, this writer turned ordinary moments—love, loss, work, travel, and domestic joys—into something vivid and lasting. His most famous book is prized for its warmth, candor, and rare glimpse of private life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
1 Audiobook
浮生六記
by Fu Shen
About the author
Born in 1763, Shen Fu was a Chinese writer of the Qing dynasty, also known by the courtesy name Sanbai. He is remembered above all for Six Records of a Floating Life, an autobiographical work that has become a classic for its personal, clear-eyed account of life beyond court politics and official history.
What makes his writing stand out is its closeness to lived experience. Rather than focusing on grand events, he wrote about marriage, friendship, money troubles, travel, and the small pleasures and sorrows of daily life. That direct, human style has helped his work endure and has made it especially appealing to modern readers.
Some details of his later life remain uncertain in the sources, including the year of his death. Even so, his reputation rests securely on the unusual honesty and charm of his surviving work, which offers one of the most memorable self-portraits in classical Chinese literature.