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Zhou Gui
Ming woman of Kunshan, mother of Gui Youguang, who married at sixteen and died young, as remembered in his 'Sketch of My Late Mother'.
Before a thatched village house stands a stone well with a wooden bucket, beside a pole with plain cloth drying, smoke rising from a hearth inside and a dog sleeping at the left; a woman carries two buckets along a path by rice fields, with green hills beyond.
Also known as Lady Zhou (Ruren)
Zhou Gui, of the Zhou family of Wujiaqiao in Kunshan, was the mother of Gui Youguang. Born in 1488, she married Gui Zheng at sixteen and bore children in quick succession; worn down by repeated pregnancies, she took a folk remedy that left her mute, and she died in 1513 when Gui Youguang was only eight. His 'Sketch of My Late Mother' recalls her thrift, her ceaseless spinning and weaving, and her family, and in its plain, restrained prose became one of the best-known Ming essays.
Life and times
Dates 1488–1513 CE