In one case, he assisted Liu Rushi's fellow famous courtesan Dong Xiaowan to marry nobleman Maoxiang(冒襄) by paying off her 3,000 gold taels worth of debt and having her name struck from the musicians register.

[3][4] Preceding this generation of individuals was the prose master Gui Youguang (1507–1571) who opposed the classicists headed by Wang Shizhen (1526–1590).

In 1644, Qian taught an excellent student in Nanjing: Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), who would later defeat and expel the Dutch from Taiwan.

His principal work and contribution to period history was the Liechao shiji 列朝詩集 (Lieh-ch'ao shih-chi),[1] originally a lengthy anthology of poetry with attached biographies.

At present the biographies alone are printed and the work has become an unmatched history of individuals from the middle and lower strata of 16th- and 17th-century Chinese society.