Wen Kang

Wen Kang, of the Feimo clan, was styled Tiexian and also Hui'an, and called himself Yanbei Xianren. A Manchu of the Bordered Red Banner in the Qing dynasty, he was a grandson of the Grand Secretary Lebao. He served as a director of the Court of Colonial Affairs and as prefect of Huizhou, and was later specially appointed imperial resident in Tibet but did not take up the post because of illness. Public sources on his birth and death dates are limited, and they can no longer be determined with certainty. In his later years, with his family fortunes in decline, he wrote the long vernacular novel The Heroes and Lovers, also known as A Tale of Gold and Jade, a representative work of Qing chivalric fiction. Blending chivalry with romance and depicting social life in Beijing colloquial speech, the novel is lively and humorous in style and distinctive among classical vernacular fiction, exerting a certain influence on later chivalric and romantic writing. Seven of his works are held in the collection, mostly different volumes and editions of The Heroes and Lovers.