Author: Linkai
Last Update: 2023, February 22nd
Yu Xuanji, courtesy name Youwei, was a Chinese courtesan (Yea you read it right) and poet of the late Tang dynasty, from Chang'an, which was the terminus of the Silk Road and one of the most sophisticated cities of its time. She was one of the most 4 famous women poets of Tang, along with Xue Tao, her fellow courtesan, Li Jilan and Liu Caichun.
In Fate of The Empress, she is portrayed as a Daoist nun because she was forced to become one after the relationship between her and an official named Li Yi decayed and she cultivated in Xian Yi temple. Daoist nuns were at the time known for their sexual freedom and, as was common at the time, Yu Xuanji continued as a courtesan. She left 49 poems in number. These poems reflect her relations with men-relations that are certainly more complex and interesting than any reduction of them to sex and commercial transaction would suggest.
At the end of her short and sad life, a novice died from a beating administered by Xuanji for disciplinary reasons, Xuanji herself was condemned and executed at 28 years old.
So when did life turn wrong? In Xuanji's life, she had hundreds of relationships with a lot of men, but among them, there were also some romances that took people's tears. The love that is mentioned by most people is the one between her and Wen Tingyun, a friend and also her mentor.
Her father was a scholar that had big ambitions but he'd never been able to achieve them, so he invested everything in his daughter and taught her to read and write poems from a very young. When Xuanji was 10, her father passed away and she had to work as a maid and do chores in a brothel for a living. She had a stunning beauty that is described as: 'bright blossoms of peaches and plums'.
At that time, Wen Tingyun was a popular scholar amongst the nobility. He found Xuanji when she was about 11 years old, doing laundry in the brothel. He was 24 years old. He saw this little girl as very clever so he raised her up, became her mentor, and provided financial support to her and her mother. Xuanji admired and was deeply attracted to Wen Tingyun but he didn't accept it as he had a notoriously ugly appearance that even the examiner rejected him due to his looking, and no career achievement, and he believed she deserved a better future. Wen Tingyun introduced her to his friend Li Yi, who is 'zhuangyuan', the person who achieved the highest score in that year's Imperial examination, as his concubine when she was 15.
(Tingyun and Xuanji)
However, Li Yi's wife felt angry with Yu Xuanji and always abused her. In order to protect Yu Youwei, Li Yi sent her to a Daoist temple and promised to pick her up three years later. Yu Xuanji's waiting didn't have a good result because Li Yi was dispatched to another place.
She thought she was deceived and then no longer believed in men, and transformed her temple into a brothel to survive on her own. Finally, Yu Xuanji was sentenced to death because she killed a maid who was found cheating with her lover. The story of her "murder" and "execution" was recounted some 12 years after her death, and it is told, the same source notes, "in such dramatic detail that its historical accuracy becomes suspect." The Little Tablet from Three Rivers, the source of the tale, sounds a little like the contemporary equivalent of a tabloid. What the truth of this story is, we can never know. But we know Wen Tingyun had blamed himself for the rest of his life for breaking Xuanji's heart, who truly loved him no matter how he looked, and pushing her into this path because of his insecurity. Wen Tingyun, who was thousands of miles away, cried bitterly when he heard the news. He had never loved a woman seriously in his life. The only one he couldn't bear to let her down was the one who hurt her the most.
(Xuanji was surrounded by a lot of men)
"易求無價寶，難得有情郎"
"It’s easy to come by a priceless treasure;
what’s hard is to find a lover with a heart."
This is one sentence in her poem, which is her own cry to her love life and is still famous and mentioned by scholars now. Yu Xuanji 魚玄機 means "dark secret", and that just somehow gives the audience an idea of her life. As a woman living beyond the pale of the traditional social order, Yu’s reputation in China has historically been that of a specimen of wayward womanhood.
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