Li Huanan's biographical information is quite limited; publicly available sources lack clear records of his native place, dates of birth and death, or official career. The one work known to survive is XING YUAN LU (Records of the Awakening Garden). In library classifications this work is often placed under literary appreciation, and its content largely concerns comments and records on food, gardening, and daily life. Its style favors concrete experience and plain, detail-oriented observation, reflecting the traditional literatus's habit of attending to ordinary things and writing about life in a leisurely manner. Because very few of Li Huanan's works survive, scholarly and general understanding of him still rests mainly on this single text, which remains the most direct basis for examining his writing. Later attention to the book has centered chiefly on how it organizes and evaluates practical knowledge of everyday life.
