What is hsiao-p'in wen?

From the late sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries Yüan Hung-tao was primarily appreciated as a major poet rather than as an essayist. Criticism throughout the Ch'ing dynasty (1644–1911) mostly concentrated on his poetic style and the influence that he had exerted on the development of late Ming poetry. His prose did not attract scholarly attention until this century when, in the 1930s, Lin Yutang and Chou Tso-jen advocated the writing of hsiao p'in wen, a type of short and informal essay. Since Yüan Hung-tao's prose was considered to be the model for hsiao-p'in wen, he began to become known as an important prose writer of the Ming period. At this time it was almost forgotten that Yüan Hung-tao had been better known as a poet.

This shift of attention from Yüan's poetry to his prose strongly reflected the interest of scholars in the 1930s. Prose, however, had not been Yüan's own primary interest; his literary theory had dealt mainly with the composition of poetry, not prose. It is ironic that more than three hundred years after his death it was his prose that re-established his literary reputation and came to be recognized by modern literary historians as the major achievement of the Kung-an school. It also came to exert a strong influence on twentieth-century Chinese literature, insofar as it made late Ming prose a subject of importance to students of contemporary Chinese civilization.

Although Yüan Hung-tao's prose has been labeled hsiao-p'in wen, the genre has never been clearly defined.