Zhongli Chun

Also known as Zhongli Wuyan · Wu Yanjun · Wuyan Niangniang

Zhongli Chun is known from the 'Accomplished Rhetoricians' section of the Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienu zhuan) by Liu Xiang, which describes her as a woman of Wuyan in Qi so ugly that she was still unmarried past forty. According to that text she went to the palace gate on her own and asked to see King Xuan of Qi, and in his presence rolled her eyes, bared her teeth, raised her hands and slapped her knees, crying out in alarm. Pressed to explain, she said that Qi faced Qin to the west and a hostile Chu to the south while the king built the lavish Jian Terrace, kept flatterers about him, and lost himself in music and women. The king tore down the terrace, dismissed the musicians and the flatterers, and made her his queen with the title Lady of Wuyan. Later writers used 'Wuyan' for a plain woman of talent and virtue, and the Yuan playwright Zheng Guangzu built a zaju play on her story.