Li Yu (1611–1680) was a popular author, playwright, and theatrical impresario with a reputation for tales that tested social limits. He was born into a gentry family, but after the chaos of the Ming-Qing transition kept him from an official career, he became a commercially successful writer. Li’s works in English translation include A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China (Columbia, 2019).
Stephen Roddy is a professor of languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of San Francisco.
Ying Wang is Felicia Gressitt Bock Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College.