Writers › Writer / Poet
Wei Jingyu Qi Wangshi
Liang-dynasty faithful widow and poet from Bacheng, surname Wang, who cut off her ear at sixteen to vow never to remarry; the governor honoured her gate, and she wrote the Lone Swallow poem.
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 Chaste and Righteous Madam Wei · Wife of Wei Jingyu
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Wang, wife of Wei Jingyu, was a woman of the Liang dynasty from Bacheng (north of modern Xi'an). Widowed at sixteen, she refused her parents' and in-laws' urging to remarry, cutting off an ear to swear her oath. She planted trees at her husband's grave, and when one of a nesting pair of swallows returned alone she tied a silk thread to its leg; it came back the next spring with the thread still on, and she wrote a poem about it. Xiao Zao, Governor of Yongzhou, admired her integrity and built a gate-tower inscribed to the chaste and righteous Madam Wei. Her story is in the Nan Shi, Filial and Righteous Conduct, Part 2.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; a woman of the Liang dynasty