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Chen Yun
Qing-dynasty Suzhou woman, cousin and wife of Shen Fu, and the heroine of Six Records of a Floating Life.
Before a thatched village house stands a stone well with a wooden bucket, beside a pole with plain cloth drying, smoke rising from a hearth inside and a dog sleeping at the left; a woman carries two buckets along a path by rice fields, with green hills beyond.
Also known as Zi Shuzhen · Yun Niang
Chen Yun, courtesy name Shuzhen, was a daughter of Shen Fu's maternal uncle in Suzhou and ten months his senior. Fatherless as a child, she supported her family with needlework and taught herself to read by reciting 'Song of the Pipa'. Married to Shen Fu in 1780, she shared his delight in poetry, flowers and the arts, but family quarrels led to her estrangement from her in-laws, and the couple lived in poverty away from home. She died of illness in Yangzhou in 1803. Shen Fu's Six Records of a Floating Life immortalised her as one of the most endearing women in Chinese letters.
Life and times
Dates 1763–1803 CE