author
Shangren Kong
1648–1718
Best known for The Peach Blossom Fan, this Qing dynasty playwright turned the fall of the Ming into a vivid, enduring stage drama. A descendant of Confucius, he brought scholarship, poetry, and a strong sense of history to his writing.
1 Audiobook
桃花扇
by Shangren Kong
About the author
Born in Qufu in 1648, Kong Shangren was a Qing dynasty dramatist, poet, and scholar-official. Sources consistently describe him as a descendant of Confucius, and that background shaped the learned, historical tone of his work.
He is most famous for The Peach Blossom Fan, a chuanqi play completed in 1699 after many years of work. The drama looks back at the final years of the Ming dynasty and became the work for which he is best remembered.
Kong Shangren died in 1718. Today he is still regarded as one of the notable playwrights of the early Qing period, especially for the way he combined personal emotion, political memory, and theatrical craft.