Feng Menglong from the late Ming Dynasty was all of the following: a famous historian, an exceptional novelist and poet. His Sanyan trilogy of vernacular Chinese short story collections have been compared to Italian writer Boccaccio's Decameron and the stories of A Thousand and One Nights. So what to make of it when this successful 61-year-old novelist "abandoned" his comfortable life to take up a post of the county head in a faraway place? Let's check out his story now.