Treasure Book of Flowers

"Qunhua Baojian" is a long worldly love novel written by Chen Sen, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty. It is also known as "The Lost History of Yiqing" and was written during the Daoguang period. The novel takes "appreciating flowers" as the main line and focuses on the talent, character and destiny of the famous opera dancers. The book creates an original "love character grading" system, which divides the children of officials and opera actors into ten grades. With "love" as the soul, it creates the images of actors with distinctive personalities such as Du Qinyan (Qin Guan), Su Huifang, and Yuan Baozhu. Through delicate brushstrokes, the author not only shows his elegance in both sex and art, but also reveals the joys and sorrows of his humble career. With Mei Ziyu, the son of Hanlin scholar Mei Shixie, as the core, it connected the social activities of Shi Nanxiang, Yan Zhongqing, Wang Xun and other literati. Through scenes such as poetry, wine, singing, watching plays and actors, the aesthetic tastes, spiritual pursuits and complex aspects of human nature of the scholar-bureaucrats are vividly outlined, interspersed with implicit criticism of the imperial examination system and the ecology of officialdom. As China's first full-length novel focusing on the ecology of the pear garden, "Qunhua Baojian" is known as the pioneer of "Xiaoxie novels". His realistic brushwork has profoundly influenced later works such as "Biographies of Flowers on the Sea" and is an indispensable classic for studying the cultural history, opera history and citizen literature of the Qing Dynasty.