What can a grief memoir about a beloved wife tell us about love, life, and society in 18th-century China?

Shen Fu’s Six Records of a Life Adrift (浮生六記 / fúshēng liù jì) offers a bottom-up look at Qing dynasty elites. Shen Fu experiences love, financial trouble, pain, beauty, sadness, and joy, never passing up a chance for a drink and making questionable career choices at a time in Chinese history when the life options for a slacker scholar were increasingly limited. His life with his devoted wife, Chen Yun, has made Six Records of a Life Adrift one of China’s great romances.

At its heart is Yun, whose resourcefulness makes you wonder what she sees in Shen Fu, especially when her eye seems to wander toward the beautiful young courtesan Hanyuan.

Alexander Boyd, Associate Editor of China Books Review, joins Jeremiah again to discuss a memoir by an author with a true gift for finding beauty in everyday life, if not always for paying the rent on time. We talk about why the imperial exams in Shen Fu’s time were becoming even more difficult to pass, what that meant for talented scholars like Shen Fu who fell by the wayside, and why overeducated and underemployed readers, from China’s Lying Flat Gen Z to students in PhD programs in Chinese history, might find Shen Fu’s story startlingly – if uncomfortably – familiar.

Jeremiah’s China Books Review column

“Shen Fu: Floating Life in a Fallen Realm” (September 29, 2026)

Lin Yutang translation

Shen Fu, Six Chapters of a Floating Life

Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui translation

Shen Fu, Six Records of a Floating Life (Penguin Classics)

Graham Sanders translation

Shen Fu, Six Records of a Life Adrift (Hackett, 2011)

John Minford’s new anthology

Ch’ing, a Chinese Book of Love: From Early Times to the Modern Age (Reaktion Books, 2026)

(The anthology Alexander mentions, which includes selections from Shen Fu.)

David and Jeremiah are back together again in Beijing. Recording from Palace Moser, the two get weirdly nostalgic and compare notes on what has changed in the 20+ years (Jeremiah) and 40+ years (David) since they first moved to China’s capital. They ask whether students coming to China today are getting the same experience as previous generations of study-abroad students or if it’s the curse of the sinologist that every newcomer since Marco Polo has had to listen to some old-timer expat talk about how it was so much better before.

Longtime China hand? Join us for a stroll down memory lane in Beijing. New to China or Sino-curious? Hear about why the best China might always be the China you meet first.

Two older gentlemen with expanding waistlines, staggering daddy issues, and a shared love of firing military brass meet in DC this week. And right on cue, the pundits leap forward to pontificate on the most important issues facing Sino-US relations today: What is Xi Jinping’s title in English?

Many bytes and keystrokes are spent in social media wars between those who insist that Xi Jinping be called General Secretary and those who feel that such pedantry is ideologically loaded panda poop.

David is a linguist. Jeremiah is a historian. They put their heads together to discuss why people care so much about this issue (and the related kerfuffle over whether China is led by the CCP or the CPC) and to give their take on the meeting, the view from Beijing, and to wonder whether Xi Jinping — whatever his title — is smart to play the waiting game.