Six Records of a Floating Life

by Shen Fu, translated by Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-Hui

Shen Fu wrote a story of love between husband and wife, which is quite unusual in Chinese literature, after his wife of 23 years had died. It’s a very candid description of happiness despite misfortunes, and of the enjoyment of all the aesthetic sides of life. He loved painting, travelling, looking at landscape, and he loved looking at the moon with his wife. I think that it’s really very close to the Chinese people’s most inner sensibility and sense of aesthetics, and of the beauty of life, nature and true relations with other individuals.