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Shen Fu and Six Records of a Floating Life: Love, grief, and lying flat in Qing China
What can a grief memoir about a beloved wife tell us about love, life, and society in 18th-century China?
Shen Fu’s Six Records of a Life Adrift (浮生六記 / fúshēng liù jì) offers a bottom-up look at Qing dynasty elites. Shen Fu experiences love, financial trouble, pain, beauty, sadness, and joy, never passing up a chance for a drink and making questionable career choices at a time in Chinese history when the life options for a slacker scholar were increasingly limited. His life with his devoted wife, Chen Yun, has made Six Records of a Life Adrift one of China’s great romances.
At its heart is…
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