Fùwēng Xǐng Shì Lù 富翁醒世錄
The Rich Man’s Record of Awakening to the World by 落魄道人 (撰)
About the work
Fùwēng Xǐng Shì Lù 富翁醒世錄 (The Rich Man’s Record of Awakening to the World) is a Qīng vernacular didactic novel in 16 chapters (huí 回), written under the pen name Luòpò Dàorén 落魄道人 (“the Down-and-Out Daoist”). It is a satirical moral allegory centered on the power and corrupting influence of money, personified as “this supreme treasure” (zhì bǎo 至寶), and traces the contrasting fates of two families — the miserly Qián Shìmìng 錢士命 and the generous Shī Lìrén 施利仁 — to illustrate that avarice leads to ruin while generosity yields prosperity.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The opening of the novel is a long apostrophe on the omnipotence of money: it can move gods and ghosts, save lives, alter fates, and determine honor and disgrace. The author then introduces the allegorical characters — Qián (錢, “money”) Shìmìng and Shī (施, “to give”) Lìrén — whose names encode their moral valences. A wandering Buddhist monk (huà sēng 化僧) serves as a deus ex machina figure, periodically testing the characters and exposing hypocrisy. Subsidiary characters include Shí Bójì 時伯濟, a poor man whose patience and virtue are eventually rewarded by a dramatic reversal of fortune (his name shifts from one character to another to mark the change: “Shí Bójì” becomes “Shí Déjì” 得濟), and the villainous Qóng Bǎimǎo 邛百卯.
The narrative structure is episodic and comic, with repeated scenes of social embarrassment, trickery, and moral comeuppance. The final chapter draws the moral: wealth honestly used is a blessing; wealth hoarded or extorted leads to destruction.
The pen name Luòpò Dàorén 落魄道人 is unidentified. The text contains no dated preface or colophon and no datable internal reference beyond general Qīng period conventions. Based on stylistic features and the structure of the narrative, a mid-Qīng composition (roughly 1820–1870) is suggested as the most defensible window.
Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual) does not list this title.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Links
- Ctext.org: no dedicated entry located.