Dongfang Shuo, from Yanci, Pingyuan (today's Huimin, Shandong Province), was a Grand Palace Grandee to Emperor Wu in Western Han Dynasty. He was humorous and fond of drinking. Different from those helmets retiring themselves from the world in mountains, he claimed himself as a helmet hiding in the court.

Dongfang Shuo was recruited by self-recommendation in the early years of Emperor Wu, when many talents all over the world were needed. In his recommendation, he revealed that he had lost his parents at an early age and had to support his brother's family as a grown-up. Learning to read at 13, fencing at 15, Confucian classics at 16 and Sun Zi and Wu Qi's military sciences in 19…he claimed that only someone like him would be qualified as the minister of the emperor. And his words won him the title he had desired.

Dongfang Shuo was also a man of letters, who left us the representative poetic prose of Da Ke Nan and Fei You Xian Sheng Lun.