The Pleasures of Leisure Summary and Analysis

Simple stories of childhood pleasures mingle with complex descriptions of how to create places of beauty in a home and garden in the record entitled "The Pleasures of Leisure." At times reminiscent and sentimental and at other times meticulously descriptive to the point of being technical, Shen Fu seeks in this chapter is to record his memories of the simplest of pleasures. He begins with memories from his childhood of laying eye-level with the grass to watch the bug fly through it, imagining that he is watching cranes fly through trees and mountains. One day as he sits in the grass, an earth worm bites his scrotum, and as therapy, his family's servants get a duck to open his mouth over the wound. When they lose their hold on the bird, Shen Fu screams with...