Six Records of a Life Adrift

A memoir of a life in the Qing dynasty. It reveals a sensitive and artistic man, who failed at the civil service examinations that were the gateway to official employment and had to settle for becoming an itinerant private secretary, dabbling unsuccessfully in making a living as an artist and a merchant. "Shen Fu's Six Records of a Life Adrift is the most intimate document at our disposal of private life in late imperial China. Graham Sanders now provides us with a new translation for the 21st century, which is not only well researched but also highly readable". --Wilt Idema, Harvard University