Ear Food Records. Three Strange People Discuss

Author: (Qing) Yue Jun and Xu Zhongyuan
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-05-01
Features: Yue Jun, the author of A Record of Whispers, styled Yuanшу, styled Lianchang, was a native of Linchuan, Jiangxi, and a laureate during the Jiaqing era of the Qing Dynasty. From a young age, Yue Jun served as a secretary to officials and traveled extensively, recording famous mountains, rivers, ancient sites, and old capitals in poetry. In the meantime, he collected and compiled interesting anecdotes and odd stories along the way, which were later written into A Record of Whispers. In the stories of A Record of Whispers, the author focuses on depicting the deepest emotions and love of people, with works like The Obsessed Woman, Zhou Yingru, and Zhang Biyun being tributes to the true human spirit. A Record of Whispers is distinguished by its romantic tales of love, a wealth of ghost stories, and folk legends. Additionally, there are many entries in A Record of Whispers that carry progressive significance.
Xu Zhongyuan, styled Xiaou, was a native of Songjiang. Xu Zhongyuan rose from the position of a secretary to become an official and spent his life navigating the political world. At the age of seventy-three, he was dismissed from office and settled in Wulin, where he wrote A Record of Three Wonders. What sets A Record of Three Wonders apart from other anecdotal novels is that it does not focus on recording supernatural beings or talking about ghosts and spirits. Instead, it presents worldly oddities and anecdotes from the perspective of an experienced official who rose from a clerk to a government position, such as The Litigant, A Strange Encounter at the Imperial Examination, The Willow Bailiff, Miao Customs, and The Wronged Woman of Qianwei.