Guan Hanqing

Guan Hanqing lived from about 1241 to 1320 during China's Yuan dynasty and was among the most prolific dramatists of his era, described by a contemporary as the leader of the Pear Garden. He wrote sixty-eight plays, of which eighteen survive, three only in fragments, and also composed fifty-seven individual song pieces and fourteen song suites, spending his later years in the cities of Dadu and Hangzhou. His most celebrated drama is The Injustice to Dou E, also known as Snow in Midsummer, the tragic story of a wrongfully condemned young woman, and he is remembered for courtroom dramas built on poetic justice and sympathetic portrayals of the downtrodden.