Baoweng Laoren
Biography
Baoweng Laoren, the Old Man Holding a Jar, is the pen name under which the anthology Jin gu qi guan, rendered Wonders Old and New, was compiled. The name is almost all that the book tells us about its editor. He is described as a man of Gusu, the old name for Suzhou, and beyond that nothing reliable is known: no birth or death dates, no career and no firm identity. No trustworthy biography survives, and this page does not try to fill the gap.
The anthology was made in the late Ming dynasty. It draws on the two great collections of vernacular stories of the period, Feng Menglong's Sanyan and Ling Mengchu's Erpai, and it gathers the stories into a single selection. They are often about merchants, lovers, scholars and courtesans, and some became famous in their own right, such as the tale of the courtesan Du Shiniang, who throws her treasure chest into the river when she is betrayed. The collection kept these stories in circulation for readers long after the Ming ended.
The book on this site is Wonders Old and New. Read it for its storytelling. The pen name on its title page is the only trace of the person who made the selection, but the stories themselves show the lively, sharp-edged vernacular fiction that Ming readers enjoyed and that shaped popular storytelling in the centuries that followed.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
今古奇觀
by 抱甕老人
Forty of the best tales from the Three Words and the Two Slaps anthologies, chosen by a Ming-dynasty editor who signs himself the Old Man of the Gourd. They include Du Shiniang sinking her treasure chest and the oil seller who wins the courtesan. This book uses the racial and…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.