Wu Zao

Wu Zao (Chinese: 吳藻; 1799 – 1862) was a Chinese poet. She was also known as Wu Pinxiang (Chinese: 吳苹香)[1] and Yucenzi (Chinese: 玉岑子).[2]

In this Chinese name, the family name is Wu.

Background and career

The daughter of a merchant, she was born in the town of Renhe (now Hangzhou) in Zhejiang province. She married a merchant[1] named Huang. Her contemporaries were wont to point out that her husband and father had "never even glanced at a book".

She was famous as a lyrics (ci) writer, in which she was considered one of the best of the Qing dynasty. She also wrote poetry in the sanqu form. She was said to be a good player of the qin, a stringed instrument.[3] Wu wrote an opera (zaju) Yinjiu du Sao (Reading the "Li Sao" While Drinking),[1] also known as Qiaoying (The Fake Image).[4] Two collections of her works were published: Hualian ci (Flower curtain lyrics) and Xiangnan xuebei ci (Lyrics from South of the Fragrance and North of the Snows). She became a student of the poet Chen Wenshu. She was one of a number of early nineteenth-century women poets who wrote about the novel Dream of the Red Chamber.[5]

Wu converted to Buddhism later in life.

Translations

Several of her works have been translated into English, notably by Anthony Yu.[6]

References
  1. Barnstone, Tony; Chou, Ping (2010). The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary. pp. 341–42. ISBN 978-0307481474.
  2. Marina H. Sung, "Wu Zao" in Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Qing Period, 1644-1911, edited by Clara Ho. Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998, p. 234.
  3. Ho, Clara Wing-chung (1998). Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women. pp. 234–36. ISBN 0765618273.
  4. The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China. Edited by Wilt Idema and Beata Grant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2004, pp. 685–694, discusses and translates the play.
  5. Ellen Widmer, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2006. For the text of a poem on Dream of the Red Chamber, the translation by Anthony Yu, and a reading of the Chinese version, see the Dream of the Red Chamber website.
  6. Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism, edited by Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 602–616.

Some of her poems can be found on the Ming Qing Women Writers database.


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