Record of the Following One's Ancestor Studio
This text, written when scholars living in retirement became intimately identified with their gardens or studios, is a rare fourteenth-century example of a new literary genre, the "studio memoir." But as Zheng"s brief postscript makes clear, the essay was also intended to function as a letter of introduction for its recipient, an aspiring young student named Xu Huan. In the postscript, Zheng asks Xu Huan to show the scroll to…
