Writers › Writer / Poet
Yuan Ji
Qing poet of Qiantang and Yuan Mei's third sister, who kept a betrothal to an abusive husband and died at forty, mourned in Yuan Mei's 'Elegy for My Sister'.
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 Suwen · Third Sister Yuan
Yuan Ji, courtesy name Suwen, was a native of Qiantang and the third younger sister of Yuan Mei. Betrothed before birth to Gao Yizu of Rugao, she refused to break the engagement even when his bad character became known, and after their marriage in 1744 she suffered repeated abuse until her father went to the authorities and brought her home. She spent her remaining years with her mother and never remarried, dying at Suiyuan in Nanjing in 1759 at the age of forty. Her poems survive as the Posthumous Writings of Suwen, and Yuan Mei's 'Elegy for My Sister' laments her unhappy fate.
Life and times
Dates 1720–1759 CE