"Shadows of Elusive Dreams" were created in the last decades of the 17th century and combined two popular genres of that time - aphoristic "pure sayings" and interactive "critical remarks".
The author of the sayings, writer and publisher Zhang Chao (1650-1709) gathered comments and notes from over a hundred contemporary literati - officials and hermits, high-ranking and impoverished, famous and unknown, relatives and almost random acquaintances - in personal conversations, correspondence, and at poetic meetings, whose voices, echoing, admiring, joking, lamenting, sharing their own experiences and wit, transform the collection of aphorisms into an event among friends.
The translation into Russian is provided alongside the original and is presented in the style of modern Chinese editions - accompanied by explanatory essays and historical-philological notes.
