Mèng Yuánlǎo 孟元老 (fl. Chóngníng 1103 – Shàoxīng 1147), hào Yōulán jūshì 幽蘭居士. The name is almost certainly a hào rather than the author’s actual name; modern scholarship (after Dèng Zhīchéng 鄧之誠 1959) has tentatively identified him with one Mèng Yuè 孟鉞 of the Mèng family of Bózhōu 亳州, a low-level Northern-Sòng huìjì sī official, but no identification is universally accepted (see Stephen H. West, “The Interpretation of a Dream,” T’oung Pao 71 [1985]: 63–108). According to his autograph preface (dated the last day of Shàoxīng 17 = early 1148), he had followed his father in official travel to the south and the north; in Chóngníng 2 guǐwèi (1103) he reached the metropolis Biànjīng and settled at the western Jīnliáng qiáo, where he lived through the Northern Sòng’s last decades of peace; after the catastrophe of Jìngkāng bǐngwǔ (1126) he fled south to the Jiāngzuǒ region. In Shàoxīng 17 (1147) at Hángzhōu he completed the Dōngjīng mènghuá lù 東京夢華錄 (KR2k0111), the principal documentary source for the urban culture of the Northern-Sòng capital. No further biographical information is preserved.