Fu Shen

Born in Suzhou 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, a memoir-like work that follows his life with remarkable openness and attention to ordinary pleasures and hardships.

What makes his writing stand out is its closeness to lived experience. Rather than focusing on grand public events, he wrote about travel, family, money troubles, and his deeply affectionate relationship with his wife, Chen Yun. That personal voice has helped make his work one of the best-loved accounts of everyday life in premodern China.

Some library records list him as “Fu Shen,” but the author is more commonly known in English as Shen Fu. Details of his later life are uncertain, though sources agree he was born in 1763 and lived into the early nineteenth century.