Elegance of personality, a peculiar notion of the Chinese literati, is encapsulated in the Shishuo Xinyu - character sketches from the fifth century of elevated, often eccentric, beings. Bygone archetypes of soaring individuality, poets, politicians, artists, and musicians here come in an ensemble of the bold and untrammelled, selected from the Shishuo and translated by Mingyuan Hu. This book is part of the Erstwhile Series.