WU TSAO

(FL. 1840)

Wu Tsao (P’in-hsiang; YÜ-CH’EN-TZU), a native of Jen-ho (present-day Hangchow), Chekiang province, published two volumes of tz’u in her lifetime: Hua-lien tz’u (Flowered Curtain Lyrics) and Hsiang-nan hsüeh-pei tz’u (Lyrics from the Fragrant South and the Snowy North). She also wrote some song poems (ch’ü). Her lyrics, frequently set to music and widely sung, were popular among literate women, courtesans, and performers of the time.

Not much is known about her life. She grew up in a merchant family, married a Mr. Huang, and kept her own name. Because no exchanges of poems of theirs exist, and because there is no mention of him in her poems, it is presumed he was a merchant and that the marriage may have been unhappy.

Sometime between the publication of her first collection, before she was thirty, and her second, after she was forty, her circumstances declined radically. She moved south, probably alone. In the preface to her second collection of lyrics, she writes of ten years of “sorrows and burdens” that were overwhelming. She declines to enumerate them, however, but one gathers from the poems that illness may have been one cause of her depression. In any event, as a result of these reverses, she cast off hope for this life, became a devout Buddhist, and followed the Way of the Pure Land sect. “As for poetry,” she writes, “I gave up writing it.” Poetry was for Wu Tsao a karma, tying her to this world. She never wrote again. Neither the date nor the circumstances of her death are known.

Wu Tsao is admired for a style that is not typically feminine. She is particularly adept at using a vernacular vocabulary and an easy colloquial style to delineate true emotions; her stance is direct and bold rather than languid or contrived. She seems to have identified herself to some degree with the Sung poet Li Ch’ing-chao (1085?—ca. 1151), also a woman, and to have captured some of Li’s most-admired qualities: delicacy, honesty, and grace.

(Julie Landau)