An intimate exploration of love, memory, and late imperial Chinese society, Six Records of a Floating Life (Shen Fu, 1763 – sometime after 1825) was first published in 1877, after being discovered in manuscript form at a used book stand, with only the first four of its six records remaining.

In this nonlinear autobiography, Shen, who was educated as a scholar and worked as a civil servant and art dealer, recounts his travels through Qing China and his married life with Yun, the woman and fellow aesthete he fell in love with as a child. The records, each self-contained and chronological therein, refract upon each other and together tell of a life of pleasure and pain, of freedom and frustration, and of surfaces and depths.

Translated from the classical Chinese into English by Alex Fang, a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and Harvard Law School.