Peach Blooms Painted with Blood

Kong Shangren (1648 - 1718) was a Qing dynasty dramatist and poet best known for his chuanqi play The Peach Blossom Fan about the last days of the Ming dynasty. The Peach Blossom Fan tells the story of the love story between the scholar Hou Fangyu and the courtesan Li Xiangjun, against the dramatic backdrop of the short history of the Southern Ming. It remains a favourite of the Kun opera (kunqu) stage. Kong Shangren is known as the author of a curious poem dedicated to the eyeglasses, a Western innovation brought to Macau by the Portuguese. Xu Yuanchong (born April 18, 1921 in Jiangxi, China) is a translator of Chinese ancient poets into English and French. Xu took foreign language studies at Tsinghua University after he studied abroad. And after that, he became a professor in English and French. Since 1983 to now, he is professor at Peking University.