Ling Mengchu was born into the Ling clan of Wucheng in northern Zhejiang province. His courtesy name was 'Xuanfang' and his pseudonym was 'Chucheng'. His ancestors were government officials. His grandfather was named Ling Yueyan. He was a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations of Ming Dynasty and in Nanjing served as an adjutant, managing legal affairs and prisons. Ling Mengchu's father was Ling Dizhi, styled Zhizhe. He was a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations in 1556. He first worked in the Labor ministry as a leader, managing projects, water conservation, farmlands and so on. This was an unimportant position, but Ling Dizhi was studious and serious. Soon he was appreciated by the emperor of Ming Dynasty, and became tongpan of Ding Zhou government and Tong Zhou government. At the time of Ling's birth, his family fortunes were declining. He had four brothers, and he was the fourth son in this family. He went to school when he was 12 and became Xiucai at age eighteen. By 1605 his mother died and he failed the next level of exams. Afterwards, he wrote Break with Ju Zi. In 1623, he was 44 years old. He met with minister of the Ministry of RitesZhu Guozhen. After that meeting, Ling Mengchu decided to take up writing. In 1634 he worked as a country magistrate in Shanghai. In 1637 he wrote Wu Sao He Bian with Zhang Xudong. 1643 he was promoted to tongpan of Xuzhou government. In addition family members were actively engaged in the printing business with a local specialty of books in polychrome. The Wucheng area was adjacent to the commercial and cultural areas of Hangzhou and Suzhou where reading materials were in increasing demand. Ling Mengchu was certainly a merchant businessman and also certainly a traditional scholar with civil service ambitions. The business motive of the Ling family was originally discussed by Ling Mengchu’s contemporary Xie Zhaozhe in his Wu zazu. Such were the times. Ling repeatedly failed at the examinations and did not take a government post until he was fifty-four. Ling would finally perish in fighting against the Li Zicheng led rebels in 1644. He is frequently associated with Feng Menglong.
Works
Ling’s Two Slaps collections of short stories comprise a detailed composite portrait of his 17th century moral world, offering tales of virtue, vice, and adventure. Sometimes racy, often outrageous, and wildly imaginative, they have remained popular reading for centuries. While focusing on extraordinary events, the narratorial attitude alternates openness toward the unorthodox with reflexive Confucian conservatism, a mix also found in contemporaneous works such as Feng Menglong's Three Words trio of story collections and Zhang Yingyu's The Book of Swindles. Ling was most strongly influenced by Feng Menglong, whose success he acknowledged as having emboldened him to publish commercially. In the prefatory material to his first short story collection he insisted it was infinitely more difficult to paint a likeness of a dog or horse one had actually seen than to render a ghost or goblin one had never observed.
