Perspective

Shen Fu writes as an autobiographer, born in the second half of the eighteenth century to an intellectual father in China. He is schooled to be a government magistrate, but only passes enough of his examinations to serve as secretary to magistrates, inspiring his title, "Six Records of a Floating Life," as he floats from one city and position to another all his life. His education would have acquainted him with traditional literature of the Imperial period in which he wrote, in which there was included very little detail about the details of daily life. For that reason, his diary-like frankness about those very details set his telling apart from those of his contemporaries. He writes as a tragic lover and an artist, as well, deeply engrossed in the details of his heart and imagination. He also offers a perspective on traditional families that makes him unique, unabashedly...