As a gourmet, Suiyuan Food List is the product of his 40-year food practice, which describes the diet and cooking techniques in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in classical Chinese.
It describes in great detail 326 kinds of dishes and meals popular in China from14th century to18th century, and also introduces the famous wines and teas at that time, which is a very important masterpiece of China cuisine in Qing Dynasty.
Yuan Mei's introduction is as follows:
Yuan Mei (17 16- 1797) was a poet, writer, essayist and gourmet in Qing dynasty. Zi Zi Cai, nicknamed Jian Zhai, or Suiyuan Old Man, whose real name is Suiyuan, was born in Qiantang County, Zhejiang Province (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province). His ancestral home is Cixi, Zhejiang. He was a scholar at the age of 24. He used to be a magistrate in Lishui, Jiangpu, Shuyang and Jiangning. Before the age of 38, he quit his job and returned to his hometown. After he became an official, he made a fortune by investing in real estate. Official to the county magistrate, posthumously awarded the second grade to serve the official doctor.
Yuan Mei is good at poetry, prose and craftsmanship, and can write parallel prose, essays and notes. During the Qianlong period, he was the leader of the poetry circle, one of the "Eight Outstanding Parallel Proses in Qing Dynasty" and "Three Outstanding Jiangyou Writers", and his writing style was just as famous as that of Ji Yun, a great scholar, and he was called "Southern Yuan and Northern Ji". He has a wide range of hobbies, and even writes cookbooks and strange novels, including Collected Works of Kokura Mountain Residence, Poems with Garden, Midday Rain and Poems for Sisters.
Letters are also famous, among which Kokura Shanju, Qiushuixuan and Hongxuexuan are called "the three great letters in Qing Dynasty". Yuan Mei liked to call people kind and reward literati all his life, and also advocated female literature and recruited female disciples. He hated Neo-Confucianism and Sinology, pursued freedom and opposed unified thinking, so he was severely criticized by many literati at that time. Yuan Mei still lives a leisurely life and enjoys a high reputation in the literary world.
After four years of Qianlong (1739), 24-year-old Yuan Mei took part in the imperial examination and got the fifth place. With the help of Yin Jishan who got the exam, he chose Jishi Shu, imperial academy.