The Travels of Lao Can (simplified Chinese: 老残游记; traditional Chinese: 老殘遊記; pinyin: Lǎo Cán Yóujì; Wade–Giles: Lao Ts'an yu-chi, or "The Travels of an old wreck") was a novel by Liu E (1857-1909), written in 1903-04[1] and published in 1907. Thinly disguising his own views in those of the physician hero, Liu describes the rise of the Boxers in the countryside, the decay of the Yellow River control system, and the hypocritical incompetence of the bureaucracy. The novel, a social satire[2] that showed the limits of the old elite and officialdom, was an immediate success. The novel serves as an in-depth look into the every-day lives of "peasantry" in the late Qing period.
