Lǐ Rǔzhēn 李汝珍 (1763–1830), courtesy name unknown, pseudonym Sōngshí Dàorén 松石道人 (“Daoist of Pine and Stone”), was a native of Dàxīng 大興 County, near Běijīng, who spent most of his adult life in Hǎizhōu 海州 (modern Liányúngǎng, Jiāngsū province), where his elder brother Lǐ Rújūn 李如均 served as a local official in the salt administration. A brilliant polymath, Lǐ pursued wide interests in phonology, music, chess, and classical literature without achieving examination success. He passed the county examination but never advanced further in the civil service system.
His major scholarly work, Jìngjīng 鏡鏡謝癡 (1805), is a systematic study of Chinese phonology that proposed a new analysis of the fǎnqiē 反切 syllable spelling system. The treatise demonstrates the same interest in linguistic precision and systematic taxonomizing that permeates his great novel. His literary masterpiece, Jìnghuā Yuán 鏡花緣 (KR4k0160) (ca. 1819–1827), is a 100-chapter novel combining mythological narrative, satirical utopian geography, and elaborate literary encyclopedism, notable above all for its sustained concern with women’s intellectual talent and gender equality.
CBDB records: id 65626, birth 1763, death 1830. These dates are the scholarly consensus.