Six Chapters of a Floating Life - Audiobook in CN

Six Chapters of a Floating Life (Chinese: 浮生六記; pinyin: Fú Shēng Liù Jì) , by Shen Fu (沈復, 1763–1825) during the Qing Dynasty.
The Autobiography of a Chinese Artist, read in Chinese.
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Six Chapters of a Floating Life (Chinese: 浮生六記; pinyin: Fú Shēng Liù Jì) is an autobiography by Shen Fu (沈復, 1763–1825) who lived in Changzhou (now known as Suzhou) during the Qing Dynasty. The four chapters are "Wedded Bliss," "The Little Pleasures of Life," "Sorrow," "The Joys of Travel." Two further chapters are missing (or perhaps not completed): "Experience," and "The Way of Life."

Yang Yin, the brother-in-law of the prominent writer Wang Tao, found the incomplete manuscript of the work in a second hand book stall. He gave the four parts to Wang, who was in charge of the Shanghai paper, Shen Bao. Wang published the manuscript in letterpress in 1877 and it became an instant bestseller. The Fourth Record was written in 1808, so the book was believed to be finished after that. Based on the index, we can tell that the Fifth Record is about A History of Life at Chungshan (the experience in Tclaimed and the Sixth is about The Way of Living. Later, the Fifth and Sixth parts which were claimed to have been found in another book stall were declared fraudulent by scholars.

The phrase "Floating Life" comes from the preface to a poem by the Tang poet Li Bai: ...The floating life is but as a dream; how much longer can we enjoy our happiness? (浮生若夢，為歡幾何?)

The book is written in what translator Graham Sanders calls "the literary language of poetry, essays and official histories rather than in the more verbose vernacular language used for the popular lengthy novels and dramas of the Ming and Qing dynasties." This choice allowed Shen Fu, Sanders continues, to "slip readily into a poetic lyrical mode," though he is also able to vividly describe topics as diverse as "gardening, finance, social roles of women, tourism, literary criticism, prostitution, class relations, and family dynamics."