"Bitter Rain"

Nov 14, 2006 21:19

黃媛介 Huang Yuanjie (mid-17th century)

When traveling, who can bear the wind and rain?
Homesickness pains me, I feel like a broken cloud.
Alone I climb the dilapidated tower and question Heaven's wisdom.
I laugh at my grieving face, afraid to look in the mirror.
Branches shiver, the flowers are cold, as orioles prepare to migrate.
My paint bag is empty, my writing brush has no hair, poems are hard to write.
I most lament the passage of youth, yet I go on living.
In the corner of the house a cricket sings, surprising my eccentric muse.

[trans. Ellen Widmer]

Here's yet another one whose story is more interesting than her poetry (at least in my opinion, for what it's worth). She was an intense Ming loyalist from an educated family, but she married a poor man; they were separated in the period of upheaval after the fall of the Ming, and her family refused to help her financially.

She turned to her wealthy friends - such as 柳是 Liu Shi - to help her, and sold poems and paintings on top of it. After attracting the attention of a number of well-placed men, she was further able to make a living, and one of them helped her get to the house of 商景蘭 Shang Jinglan, with whom she lived for a period.

Of course, no story of Chinese women is complete without a sprinkling of tragedy (or in this case, quite a lot) - on her way north to Beijing to take up a position as a tutor, her boat capsized in Tianjin & one of her children drowned. Her other child died young in Beijing; Huang became ill at some point after this & died before 1669. (357-8)

She's almost one of the "teachers of the inner chambers" to whom Ko's book title refers - itinerant women who made their living teaching, writing, and painting. Her life sounds like an interesting cross-section of Ming-Qing women's society - friends with famous courtesans and famous wives alike, also treading in the murky waters beyond the inner chambers due to necessity.

She published several volumes, but none of those are extant; however, some of her paintings do survive.



[357-63]

women writers anthology, 清朝, china, history, poetry

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