Guan Hanqing, whose birth and death dates remain unknown, was a native of Dadu (Beijing), and once worked at the Imperial Academy of Medicine. The ruling elite of the time looked down upon non-orthodox writers, and so there is little mention of Guan in official records. The period when Guan Hanqing lived is the peak of Northern Zaju.

Guan Hanqing led a dissolute life, spending much time in places of low entertainment, yet he emerged as perhaps China's greatest playwright. He turned out 68 pieces of Zaju, of which 18 have been preserved. Acknowledging his bohemian lifestyle, he called himself "the leader of all loafers in the country", and described himself as a "copper pea that cannot be crushed".

Guan Hanqing's Zaju gave voice to repressed and indignant feelings -- a natural outcome of the fact that the playwrights were fully aware of the dark side of the society they lived in. Twelve of his dramas are about women, including his best-known one, The Wrong Done to Dou E.

The Wrong Done to Dou E is based on A Filial Woman of Donghai, a Han Dynasty folk tale. Guan Hanqing used the story as a framework for criticism of the evils of contemporary society. In her childhood, Dou E was sold to the Cai family to be brought up to marry their son. Soon after they married, her husband died. Dou E and her mother-in-law, who had also become widowed, were dependent on each other for survival. Zhang Lu'er, a local hoodlum, pressured the pair to marry him and his father respectively. When the two women spurned his offer, Zhang Luer tried to poison Dou E's mother-in-law, but killed his own father by mistake. Zhang put the blame on Dou E. The muddle-headed local prefect had Doug E flogged, until she confessed to the murder Dou E was finally executed, and Zhang Luer got off scot-free. Facing death, Dou E cried out, "The lives of the poor, though virtuous, are short, while the evil enjoy prosperous and long lives. It is unjust. Even Heaven and Earth bully the weak and fear the strong! The earth cannot tell good from evil, and Heaven has wronged an innocent person." Dou E's words expressed Guan Hanqing's noble spirit of not yielding to his own hard destiny.