Mèngzhōng Yuán 夢中緣
Bonds Forged in a Dream
by 李修行 (撰)
About the work
Mèngzhōng Yuán 夢中緣 is a Qīng vernacular romance novel (cáizǐ jiārén xiǎoshuō 才子佳人小說) in 15 huí 回 (chapters), attributed to Lǐ Xiūxíng 李修行. An appended preface (xù 叙) indicates that the actual author was a man named Lǐ Xiānsheng 李先生 from Wúdì 無棣 (present-day Shāndōng), a metropolitan graduate (míngjìnshì 名進士) who taught locally and, in his later years, channeled his frustrations into composing this novel.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
The colophon-preface (xù 叙) appended to the text, signed by “Liánxī shì” 蓮溪氏 and dated to the autumn month of Guāngxù 光緒 11 (1885), provides important biographical context. It states that the work was composed by “Wúdì Zǐqián Lǐ Xiānsheng” 無棣子乾李先生 — a man from Wúdì county (present-day northern Shāndōng) with the style name Zǐqián 子乾, a metropolitan graduate who taught in his home region and, in old age, wrote this novel to vent accumulated grievances (xiōng yǒu jī fèn, nǎi yuàn suí bǐ chū 胸有積憤，乃怨隨筆出). The preface mentions that the original manuscript was partially destroyed in bandit disturbances during the fēng-zhì 豐治 period (i.e., the Xiánfēng 咸豐 and Tóngzhì 同治 reigns, roughly 1850–1874), and that the final text was reconstituted from multiple copyist versions gathered from several families.
The novel follows the adventures of Wú Ruìshēng 吳瑞生, a talented young scholar, whose journey to the south leads him through a series of romantic entanglements and moral tests involving several women — including the daughters of a magistrate named Jīn 金 and the girl Cuìjuān 翠娟 — who collectively represent the ideal of the wǔ měi 五美 (five beauties) united in the culminating chapters. The plot involves abduction by river pirates (mùkè shāng 木客商), rescue from danger, identity confusions, and eventual resolution at court.
The novel is notable for its partly autobiographical frame: the author’s sense of social injustice and career frustration is explicitly foregrounded in the preface, making Mèngzhōng Yuán an instance of the qiǎ yú mèng zhōng 寄寓夢中 (literary aspiration sublimated into romantic dream-fiction) tradition. The Guāngxù 11 date (1885) in the preface likely refers to the posthumous editing and publication; the original composition would predate this, probably in the mid-to-late Tóngzhì 同治 (1862–1874) period.
Lǐ Xiūxíng 李修行 as listed in the catalog meta may represent the actual author’s name or alternatively the editor’s designator. No confident CBDB match has been found for this figure. The CBDB entry for Lǐ Xiūxíng (id 358027) has no date fields and cannot be confirmed as the novel’s author.
Translations and research
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