Pǔ Lín 浦琳 (fl. late eighteenth century), style name Tiānyù 天玉, was a professional vernacular storyteller (pínhuà 評話) of the Yángzhōu school. The primary source for his biography is Lǐ Dǒu’s 李斗 Yángzhōu huáfǎng lù 揚州畫舫錄 (completed ca. 1795), chapter 9 (“Xiǎo Qínhuái lù” 小秦淮錄), which records that he had a withered and twisted right hand, earning him the epithet “quánzǐ” 扌必子 (lit. the Fist-boy, i.e., the fellow with the bent hand). Having absorbed the oral storytelling tradition from childhood and finding that the standard story repertoire was too familiar to audiences, he decided to compose a new work based on his own lived experiences, giving the protagonist the fictional name Pí Wǔ 皮五 (Pí the Fifth), and producing the novel Qīngfēng Zhá 清風閘 (KR4k0202).
The Fèngxiào Xuān 奉孝軒 block-printed edition of Qīngfēng Zhá appeared in 1799 (Jiāqìng jǐmǎo 嘉慶己卯) with a preface by “Méixī Zhǔrén” 梅溪主人 — possibly an editor or publisher rather than the author himself. Pǔ Lín’s birth and death dates are unrecorded.
Qīngfēng Zhá is his only known composition. The scholar 俞樾 noted that, on reading the printed text, he found little to admire — a puzzling response, he reflected, given that the work had apparently captivated audiences in its day. This suggests the work’s power resided primarily in the oral delivery rather than the written text (Cháxiāng shì cóngchāo 茶香室叢抄, j. 17).