Feng Menglong

Also known as Zi Youlong · Hao Mo Han Zhai Zhu Ren

Feng Menglong, courtesy names Youlong and Ziyou, styled himself Master of the Mohan Studio; he came from Changzhou county in Suzhou and, after repeated examination failures, lived by editing and publishing. Between about 1620 and 1627 he issued Stories to Instruct the World (Yushi mingyan), Stories to Caution the World (Jingshi tongyan) and Stories to Awaken the World (Xingshi hengyan), the Three Words, holding one hundred and twenty Song, Yuan and Ming tales. He also recorded Wu folk songs in Mountain Songs (Shange) and Hanging Branches (Guazhi'er), expanded the novel Quelling the Demons (Pingyao zhuan), and compiled books of wit and love stories. As a tribute student he taught at Dantu, and in 1634 he became magistrate of Shouning in Fujian, where he wrote a county gazetteer. After 1644 he printed records of the year's events in support of the Southern Ming, and he died in 1646. Later readers paired the Three Words with Ling Mengchu's two story collections as sanyan erpai.