Writers › Writer / Poet
Yu Xuanji
Late Tang Daoist nun and poet of Chang'an, once a concubine of the official Li Yi, who was executed after beating her maid Luqiao to death
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Youwei · Yizi Huilan
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Yu Xuanji, courtesy names Youwei and Huilan, was a native of Chang'an; Huangfu Mei's Sanshui xiaodu says she came from an entertainers' family and loved books and verse. The note in the Complete Tang Poems says she was a concubine of the official Li Yi and, when his affection cooled, became a Daoist nun at the Xianyi convent, which the Sanshui xiaodu dates to the start of the Xiantong reign. There she exchanged poems with literary men, and pieces such as Gazing in Sorrow from Jiangling, Sent to Zi'an were written to Li Yi. Suspecting her maid Luqiao of an affair with a visitor, she flogged the girl to death and buried her in the courtyard; when the body was found she was jailed and, despite pleas from officials, executed that autumn. The Sanshui xiaodu quotes her prison lines that a priceless jewel is easier to find than a faithful man, a couplet also in her To a Neighbour Girl. About fifty of her poems survive.
Life and times
Dates c. 844 CE–868 CE