Wen Peixin

Wen Peixin (1688–1776), was a Chinese novelist and poet of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). She was born in Lanzhou, Gansu. She had a rough childhood and spent most of her days on the fields of her village Lanzhou along with her father and mother, tending to crops. She was playful even at such a young age and enjoyed napping on the fields whilst watching clouds. She then attended the village school at the age of 8 and began to learn to write. At the age of 15, she became renowned of her ability to write poems whilst gazing at the sky and became the villages best student. Many of her childhood poems were inspired by the vast landscape of Lanzhou where she drew her inspirations from.

During her spare time where she was not devoted to writing poetry and painting landscapes, she would attend standby crowds of music instrumental performances. On a summer morning while she was traveling to the fields, the sound of an Erhu caught her attention. She joined the crowd and continued to listen to a young man of her age who had traveled from Gansu to play in Lanzhou. Wen attended many of his weekly standby street performances and met up privately with him in the fields where He Tianhao would play the Erhu for Wen would write and paint for him.

By the age of 20, she had become more focused on romance stories. Although it is not known by many, however old villagers of Lanzhou believe that her most respected piece of work was the story of two youngsters, a boy and a girl, who had known each other since their early teens and had fallen in love. Through many trials and tribulations, they pulled through and wedded, binding their souls together forever. This story was called "Ai de Ming Yun" (爱的命运, "The Fate of Love").