南京的秦淮河原是風月之鄉，明季秦淮名妓，才貌雙全，吸引不少名士，不時產生名妓與名士之間的愛情故事。然而滿清入侵，頓使繁華成空，倖存者深感興亡之悲。余懷為倖存者之一，以其生動的文筆，書寫親見的秦淮盛況，南明的興亡。再經過孔尚任編製了完整的故事，經由《桃花扇傳奇》描述古文家侯朝宗與秦淮名妓李香君的戀愛故事，他們與權奸鬥爭，以及亡國的悲痛。作者雖然收集了許多真實的史料，但畢竟是傳奇，而非史傳。生於滿清入關之後的孔尚任亦非遺民，只是異代興嘆。《桃花扇》此一歷史劇由於內容的動人以及文筆的高超，無論劇本或舞臺，自清初以來直到民國以後都受到歡迎，常有人將之改為新式的舞臺劇、電影或長篇小說。於是明季秦淮風月與南明興亡悲劇性的美感，通過孔尚任的筆墨，成為難以磨滅的集體歷史記憶。但經由文筆書寫所刻劃的歷史記憶並不一定是真實的歷史，文筆並不能取代史筆，但史筆遠不如文筆之更能刻劃集體的歷史記憶，傳之久遠。

Nanjing’s 南京 Qinhuai river 秦淮河 and its environs was an area synonymous with romance, reaching its heyday in the late Ming. Besides their beauty, its prostitutes were famed for their ability to sing, dance, recite poetry, and paint, qualities which attracted talented young scholars and renowned literati, who often became romantically involved with them. Those happy days, however, came abruptly to an end when Qing forces conquered south China in 1645. Qinhuai was devastated, its bustle replaced by emptiness, and its lovers dispersed or dead. The surviving Ming loyalists grieved for their loss of home and country, and when they finally lost hope for a restoration, they were left only with feelings of nostalgia for those bygone days of romance, and sorrow at the passing of the Ming dynasty. The writer Yu Huai 余懷 , one of the survivors, left behind a lively account of Qinhuai in its heyday, including recollections of its many charming courtesans and their respective romances with celebrated scholars. While Yu’s recollections of happier times were interspersed with his grief for the fallen Ming, the early Qing writer Kong Shangren’s 孔尚任 historical play Peach Flower Fan 桃花扇 provides us with a moving story of the full-fledged romance between the scholar Hou Fangyu 侯方域 and the courtesan Li Xiangjun 李香君 during the final years of the Ming. In the play, the scholar and the courtesan fight heroically against the vicious ministers who were responsible for the fall of the last remaining Ming stronghold in the south. Although Kong collected a large quantity of historical information and anecdotes from survivors of the dynastic transition, Peach Flower Fan is poetic drama, mixing fact with imagination. Born after the Manchu conquest, Kong was not a Ming loyalist, but merely expressing regret at the passing of a bygone age. The artistry of the Peach Fower Fan even more vividly recreates the romance and patriotism of Qinhuai at the fall of the Southern Ming. The moving story and superlative writing of the Peach Flower Fan was greatly popular with readers and theater-goers alike throughout the Qing, and even into the twentieth century the play was still being reworked as stage-plays, rewritten into novels, or adapted into films. This tragic and romantic aesthetic inspired by the final years of the Ming, through Kong’s writings in particular, thus came to form an indelible part of the collective memory of the late Ming. It is important to remember that the memories transmitted by literary works do not always represent factual history, and cannot replace historical writings; however, histories can never engrave the collective memory as literature can.