author
Yung-lun Yüan
An early 19th-century Chinese writer, he is remembered for a vivid firsthand-era account of piracy along the South China coast. His work remains a valuable window into the upheavals of the Jiaqing period and the world behind one of history’s most famous pirate confederations.
1 Audiobook
History of the Pirates Who Infested the China Sea From 1807 to 1810
by Yung-lun Yüan
About the author
Little is firmly documented in the sources I could confirm about Yung-lun Yüan as a person, but he is known as the author of Jing Hai Fen Ji, the Chinese work later translated into English as History of the Pirates Who Infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810. The text was written in the early 19th century and focuses on the pirate fleets active off Guangdong during the Jiaqing era.
What makes the book stand out is its close attention to real events, local conditions, and named historical figures rather than legend alone. For modern listeners, Yüan’s importance lies less in a large surviving biography and more in the fact that he preserved one of the most useful contemporary narratives of South China Sea piracy.
Because reliable biographical details are scarce in the material I found, it is safest to remember him through that achievement: a compact, historically rich account that has helped later readers, translators, and historians understand a turbulent moment in Qing China.