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Six Records of a Floating Life
Six Records of a Floating Life | Shen Fu
6 posts | 6 read | 1 reading | 1 to read
Six Records of a Floating Life (1809) is an extraordinary blend of autobiography, love story and social document written by a man who was educated as a scholar but earned his living as a civil servant and art dealer. In this intimate memoir, Shen Fu recounts the domestic and romantic joys of his marriage to Yn, the beautiful and artistic girl he fell in love with as a child. He also describes other incidents of his life, including how his beloved wife obtained a courtesan for him and reflects on his travels through China. Shen Fu's exquisite memoir shows six parallel 'layers' of one man's life, loves and career, with revealing glimpses into Chinese society of the Ch'ing Dynasty.
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review
Bookwomble
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Of the four of Shen Fu's records which have passed down to us, the first three recount his life with his adorable wife Yün, whose sweet nature was subject to anxiety & depression, sensitive to the harsh judgements of her in-laws, & prone to ill health, which we know from early on will sunder the loving couple. Shen's grief at her death is palpable & moving.
The couple live an aesthetic life, troubled by precarious employment, poverty and... 1/4⬇️

Bookwomble ... family dissensions, through which their joy in nature, art and literature is sustaining.
Several of the blurbs I read make much of Yün's search for a concubine for Shen, but this takes up only a small part of the account and is, I assume, a prurient sales-pitch as, again, it's done rather sweetly and was culturally appropriate, and not mentioned was Yün's own interest in having a same-sex relationship within the domestic home. Also not ⬇️
5mo
Bookwomble ... mentioned in blurbs are Shen's visits to sex workers, which somehow seems a double-standard. His description of these experiences is honest and humanises the women he spends time with without romanticising the reality of their lives.
The last record is a travel memoir and, while interesting on its own account, lacks much of the intimate nature of the preceding sections, not least because Yün is largely absent and Shen attention is more on ⬇️
5mo
Bookwomble .. the external than internal experience.
Overall, 4½⭐ (Apologies; this review ran on longer than I'd intended! ⏳😴)
5mo
Anna40 Great review! 5mo
Bookwomble @Anna40 Thank you 😊 5mo
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Bookwomble
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"She prized shabby old books and tattered paintings. She would take the partial remnants of old books and separate them into sections by topic, and then have them rebound. These she called her 'Fragments of Literature'. When she found some calligraphy or a painting that had been ruined, she felt she had to search for a piece of old paper on which to remount it. If there were portions missing, she would ask me to restore them. These she named ⬇️

Bookwomble ... the 'Collection of Discarded Delights'."

I'm getting to like Yün
5mo
LeahBergen That‘s wonderful! 5mo
Bookwomble @LeahBergen I'm about half through, and I think you'd like this 😊 5mo
34 likes3 comments
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Bookwomble
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"I was born in the winter of the 27th year of the reign of the Emperor Chien Lung, on the second and twentieth day of the eleventh month."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

blurb
Bookwomble
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Written around 1809 by a mid-level Ch'ing Dynasty civil servant, the surviving four records (nonetheless confusingly still titled "Six Records") recount Fu's marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Yün, his dalliances with courtesans and her efforts to secure him a concubine, in keeping with the social mores of the time.
In a culture of arranged marriages, the introduction says that Fu's description of his romantic love match with Yün was unusual ⬇️

Bookwomble ... for its time, and appreciated in China as a result.
I'm hoping to find this enjoyable, and an insight into a different era of Chinese culture than I've previously read about (though, honestly, I retain little of the material I absorb - I'd be a rubbish kitchen towel!).
5mo
33 likes1 comment
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Liz_M
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Belated Weekly Report:

There finally was a nice day with morning sunshine for my picture 😊

I have read the amusing meta-fictional The Age of Goodbyes and finally! finished #Clarissa 🎇🎆🎉

So, of course, I have started another 18th C epistolary novel, Julie or the New Eloise 😳🙄 For something completely different (that I can carry on the subway), I am also reading the tagged book.

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johncadams
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This memoir from eighteenth-century China is wonderfully positive.

#China #memoirs #nonfiction