Li Ruzhen
c. 1763–1830
Biography
Li Ruzhen was a Chinese novelist and phonologist of the Qing dynasty, and a native of Beijing. Older English writing gives his name as Li Ju-chen, and he used the courtesy name Songshi. He reached the lowest examination degree, xiucai, but made his living in minor office. When he was about nineteen he went with an elder brother, who held a post in the salt administration, to Bangpu near Haizhou on the Jiangsu coast, where he studied with the scholar Ling Tingkan. Later, after a flood, he bought a minor county post. He read widely and wrote on many subjects, among them astrology, medicine, mathematics, music, poetry, calligraphy, painting and the game of Go.
His novel Jing hua yuan (鏡花緣), known in English as Flowers in the Mirror, has a hundred chapters. He planned two hundred, but finished a hundred after nearly twenty years of work and several drafts. The first half sends its hero on journeys to strange lands in the manner of Gulliver, while the second half is a showcase of learning that at times reads more like a compendium of knowledge than a story.
His other works include Lishi yinjian (李氏音鑑), a study of Chinese phonology with syllable charts that record the speech of Beijing in his day, and Shou zi pu (受子譜), a collection of Go games. Scholars value the novel for its breadth of learning and the phonology for its record of the Beijing dialect. The site holds Flowers in the Mirror, the book by which he is still best known, and readers should expect its learning to slow the story at times.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
鏡花緣
by Li Ruzhen
A disappointed scholar sails abroad with his merchant brother-in-law and visits fantastic countries, among them a land of gentlemen, a land of giants and a Kingdom of Women where men are bound and powdered. Begun as a voyage of wonders, it becomes the story of a hundred talented…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.