Li Qingzhao
2 min readLi Qingzhao（old spelling:Li Ch’ing-chao）was born into a Chinese family knownfor literary talent and service to the emperor.Her poetry was well known even before her marriage in 110l to a student，Zhao Mingching（1081-1129）.In 1103，her husband began his official career；from 1108 the couple lived in Shandong province.
From 1121，he spent much time traveling around the province；his periodic absences may have provided the occasion for some of Li’s love poems.Throughout their married life，the couple collected antiquities；this，combined with the political upheavals of the time，explains the relative poverty in which they lived.
In 1126，the Song dynasty capital，Kaifeng，fell to the Jin people from the north；Shandong province was in their path and considerable fighting took place there.In the fighting，the home of Li and Zhao was burnt.In 1127，the emperors were captured by the Jin；the Han loyalists named a new emperor，and the entire court moved slowly to the south，to establish a new“Southern Song”court inHangzhou.During this period Zhao died，and Li was left to try to save their collection.Li describes her married life and the turmoil that ended it in Hou hsu.
Li Qingzhao finally arrived at Hangzhou，to spend the rest of her life and to publish her husband’s work，Jin shi lu（Records on metal and stone），a 30-volume collection of inscriptions that Zhao had copied over the years.She continued to write poetry；we know that she was writing for the court in the 1140s.
The last official mention of her is in 1149.In the same year a contemporary wrote that she had remarried and then divorced；a letter exists that has Li Qingzhao describing that experience.Attribution of the letter is not certain:for centuriesneo-Confucian writers said it was a forgery and that a”proper lady”wouldn’t have done such a thing；most modern scholars appear to accept the letter as genuine.
Li Qingzhao’s poetry was originally published in seven volumes of shi（traditional poetry）and prose，plus six volumes of ci（lyrics composed to be set to existing popular music）.About 50 ci（tz’u in the old spelling）and 17 shi survive.
Also extant are brief prose works:Hou hsu，an epilogue that she added in 1132 to her husband’s book；Cilun（or Lun ci:On lyrics），a study of the ci form of poetry；and the disputed letter.
