author
Yanxiayishi
Known by the pen name Yanxiayishi, this early Chinese novelist is remembered for Qiao Lian Zhu, a caizi jiaren romance full of wit, poetry, and social intrigue. Even though the writer’s real identity is uncertain, the work has remained notable enough to survive in major library collections and modern digital editions.
1 Audiobook
巧聯珠
by Yanxiayishi
About the author
Yanxiayishi, written in Chinese as 煙霞逸士, was a pseudonymous author associated with Qiao Lian Zhu (巧聯珠), a Chinese novel in the scholar-beauty tradition. Sources available here describe the book as an early Qing-era work, with the earliest surviving edition dating to the Yongzheng period, and they note that the author’s true identity is not firmly established.
Some references say Yanxiayishi may have been an alias of the writer Liu Zhang, but that attribution is disputed, so it is safest to treat the name as a pen name rather than a confirmed personal identity. That uncertainty is part of what makes the author interesting: the book is well known, while the person behind it remains partly hidden.
Today, Yanxiayishi is chiefly remembered through the endurance of Qiao Lian Zhu, which has been preserved by institutions such as Harvard’s Chinese rare book collections and made available by Project Gutenberg. For modern listeners and readers, the appeal lies in the novel’s blend of romance, literary play, and a glimpse into the storytelling tastes of early imperial China.