author
Mei Yuan
1716–1798
A bold Qing-era poet and essayist, this writer became famous for championing individuality, direct feeling, and a more natural voice in literature. His life mixed official success, early retirement, sharp criticism, and a long, productive career as a teacher and man of letters.
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About the author
Born in 1716, Yuan Mei was one of the best-known literary figures of the Qing dynasty. He passed the highest civil service examination at a young age and entered official life, but government service did not hold him for long. After serving as a magistrate, he resigned in the late 1740s and turned fully to writing, teaching, and collecting talented students around him.
He is especially remembered for his poetry, essays, and literary criticism. Yuan Mei argued that writing should come from genuine feeling and personal experience rather than stiff imitation, a view that made him an unusually lively and independent voice in eighteenth-century Chinese literature. He was also associated with the Sui Garden in Nanjing, which became an important part of his literary life.
Modern readers often meet Yuan Mei through his poems, but his interests were wide-ranging. He wrote criticism, travel pieces, letters, and the well-known collection Zibuyu, a gathering of strange tales and supernatural anecdotes. He died in 1797, though some modern references list 1798, and his reputation as an original, spirited writer has endured.