Li Qingzhao

Biography

Li Qingzhao was born into a scholar-official household with strong literary and artistic interests. Her father Li Gefei, from Zhangqiu in Jinan, held a jinshi degree, served as Judicial Commissioner and later as an official of the Ministry of Rites, studied under Su Shi, and was counted among the “Later Four Scholars of Su’s School.” He owned a substantial collection of books and has a biography in the History of Song. Her mother was a granddaughter of the zhuangyuan Wang Gongchen and was literarily accomplished. Another account identifies Li Qingzhao’s mother as the eldest daughter of the Yuanfeng-era Grand Councilor Wang Gui and likewise describes her as skilled in writing. Li Qingzhao’s birth mother died when she was two, after which a granddaughter of Wang Gongchen became her stepmother.

Li Qingzhao grew up in a household steeped in literature. The source describes her as exceptionally perceptive and talented and quotes Wang Zhuo’s Biji Manzhi as saying that she “already had a poetic reputation in youth; her talent and richness of expression approached that of earlier masters.” The literary figure Chao Buzhi is also said to have praised her highly.

In 1090, the fifth year of the Yuanyou era, six-year-old Li Qingzhao moved with her father to the Eastern Capital, modern Kaifeng. The prosperity of the capital stimulated her creative interests. In 1099, at sixteen, she wrote the ci Rumeng Ling: Zuoye Yu Shu Feng Zhou. The source states that it made a great impression in the capital. Yaoshan Tang Waiji is cited as saying that writers of the time all praised it and that none could match its phrasing.

In 1100 Li Qingzhao met Zhang Lei and composed Wuxi Zhongxing Song Shi He Zhang Wenqian Er Shou. The poems discuss historical rise and decline around the An Lushan Rebellion and use criticism of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang to warn Song rulers through historical precedent. The source cites Zhou Hui’s Qingbo Zazhi and Chen Hongxu’s Hanye Lu as praising the depth and force of these poems, especially given the poet’s youth.

In 1101, the first year of the Jianzhong Jingguo era under Emperor Huizong of Song, eighteen-year-old Li Qingzhao married the twenty-one-year-old National University student Zhao Mingcheng in Bianjing. Her Jinshilu Houxu recalls that she first married into the Zhao family in that year. At the time, her father Li Gefei was an official in the Ministry of Rites, while Zhao Mingcheng’s father Zhao Tingzhi was an assistant minister in the Ministry of Personnel.

Although both came from official families, the source says the Zhao and Li households were accustomed to frugality. When Zhao Mingcheng came home from the National University on leave, he sometimes pawned clothes for cash and then went to the market at Xiangguo Temple to buy inscriptions and fruit that the couple enjoyed examining together. Ancient inscriptions drew them into the distant past, and they jokingly described themselves as people of the legendary age of Getian.

After Zhao Mingcheng entered official service, the couple continued to live simply and formed an ambition to search remote regions for ancient writings and unusual characters. Through relatives and acquaintances they borrowed rare texts from court collections and copied them diligently. When they encountered famous calligraphy, paintings, or ancient ritual vessels, the source says they sometimes even sold clothing to obtain them. On one occasion a seller offered them a painting of peonies by the Southern Tang painter Xu Xi for 200,000 cash. They kept it for two nights but could not raise the price and reluctantly returned it, remaining distressed for several days. The account presents their early married life as modest but harmonious and intellectually rich.

Their circumstances changed as court factionalism intensified. In the seventh lunar month of 1102, Li Qingzhao’s father Li Gefei was listed among members of the Yuanyou faction and barred from office in the capital. In the ninth lunar month Emperor Huizong personally wrote out a list of 120 names for inscription at Duanli Gate, with Li Gefei listed twenty-sixth. At the same time Zhao Tingzhi was rising in office.

Li Qingzhao is said to have written poems to Zhao Tingzhi in an effort to help her father. The source preserves reports of these appeals, but they did not succeed, and the dismissed Li Gefei returned to his home at Mingshui.

The political restrictions later extended to descendants of the Yuanyou faction. In 1103 an edict barred their children from residing in the capital, and in 1104 another order required them to remain outside it. Li Qingzhao therefore returned alone to her native region to join her family. In the second lunar month of 1106 Cai Jing was dismissed, the court destroyed the stele naming the Yuanyou faction, proclaimed an amnesty, and lifted the restrictions, allowing Li Qingzhao to return to Bianjing and reunite with Zhao Mingcheng.

In the first lunar month of 1107 Cai Jing returned to power. In the third lunar month Zhao Tingzhi was removed from his position and died five days later. Three days after his death Cai Jing accused him, and relatives of the Zhao family who were in the capital were arrested. Although the investigation found no substantive case and they were soon released, Zhao Tingzhi’s posthumous honors were revoked and his sons lost offices they had received through family privilege. The family could no longer remain in the capital. That autumn Li Qingzhao moved with the Zhao household to their residence in Qingzhou and began a long period of rural seclusion.

In 1108 she named her room “Guilai Tang” and took the sobriquet Yianjushi. “Guilai Tang” alluded to Tao Yuanming’s Guiqulai Xi Ci. The source also notes that Chao Buzhi, an admirer of Li Qingzhao and a friend of her father, had taken the sobriquet “Guilai Zi” after retiring during the factional purges. The expression “Yi’an” was likewise drawn from a line in Tao Yuanming’s work.

At Guilai Tang, Li Qingzhao and Zhao Mingcheng no longer enjoyed the resources of a ministerial household in the capital, but the source presents them as finding satisfaction in a quieter life of scholarship. They economized to acquire ancient texts and inscriptions and gathered many steles and bronzes from Qingzhou and surrounding areas, including Eastern Wei and Northern Qi stone inscriptions and Tang inscriptions written by Li Yong.

In 1114 Zhao Mingcheng wrote an inscription for a portrait of the thirty-one-year-old Yianjushi, praising the elegance of her writing and the dignity of her character. By 1117, with Li Qingzhao’s assistance, Zhao Mingcheng had largely completed Jinshilu. Zhang Duanyi’s Gui’er Ji is cited as saying that Li Qingzhao also took part in revising and editing the work.

In 1121 Li Qingzhao remained in Qingzhou through spring and summer while Zhao Mingcheng took office in Laizhou. She joined him in the eighth lunar month. On the way she stayed at an inn in Changle and wrote Dielianhua: Wanzhi Changle Guan Ji Zimei, expressing sorrow at parting from her sisters in Qingzhou. On arriving in Laizhou she wrote the poem Ganhuai. She continued helping Zhao Mingcheng organize Jinshilu, preparing volumes, labels, and bindings and regularly collating and annotating them.

In 1125 Zhao Mingcheng was transferred to govern Zizhou and obtained a copy of the Lengyan Jing written by Bai Juyi, which the couple admired together. In 1126 Li Qingzhao was still living with him in Zizhou, where Zhao received a promotion for helping suppress local military disorder.

In 1127 the Jingkang Incident brought down the Northern Song. In the third lunar month Zhao Mingcheng went south after his mother died in Jiangning, modern Nanjing. By the eighth lunar month he was governing Jiangning Prefecture and concurrently held a regional fiscal-military post. As conditions in the north worsened, Li Qingzhao sorted their collections for transport. Her Jinshilu Houxu describes repeated rounds of selection: first leaving behind heavy printed books, multi-scroll paintings, and uninscribed bronzes; then official editions, ordinary paintings, and bulky objects. Even after these reductions, fifteen cartloads of books remained, which were moved by boat across the Huai and Yangzi rivers to Jiankang. In the twelfth lunar month unrest in Qingzhou destroyed more than ten rooms of books left locked in the old residence.

When Li Qingzhao transported the fifteen cartloads through Zhenjiang, the city was seized by Zhang Yu and the local administrator fled. The source credits Li Qingzhao with bringing the collection safely through the disorder to Jiangning in the spring of 1128.

In Jiangning she sometimes climbed the city walls during snowfall in search of poetic inspiration and then asked Zhao Mingcheng to write matching verses. Zhou Hui’s Qingbo Zazhi records this anecdote. The source also states that she disliked the Southern Song court’s conciliatory policies and wrote poems criticizing retreat and inaction.

In the second lunar month of 1129 Zhao Mingcheng was removed from his Jiangning post. The following month the couple traveled by boat through Wuhu and Gushu and planned to settle near the Gan River. Passing Wujiang, where Xiang Yu had died, Li Qingzhao wrote Xia Ri Jueju. The source presents the poem as a criticism of the Southern Song rulers.

In the fifth lunar month Zhao Mingcheng was ordered to take charge of Huzhou. Li Qingzhao later recalled in Jinshilu Houxu how he left her at Chiyang to go alone to court. Before departing, he instructed her that in an emergency she should abandon baggage in order of value but preserve certain ancestral ritual objects even at the cost of her own life. He fell ill on the journey and died at Jiankang on the eighteenth day of the eighth lunar month. Li Qingzhao wrote a sacrificial text for him, buried him, and then became seriously ill.

After his death the political situation deteriorated further. The collection still included some twenty thousand volumes and two thousand rubbings. Li Qingzhao arranged for belongings to be sent to Zhao Mingcheng’s brother-in-law Li Zhuo, but Jin forces captured Hongzhou in the eleventh lunar month and the books transported there were lost. She fled south with only a small number of portable texts and objects and for a time sought support from her younger brother Li Hang, then serving in a court editorial office. A rumor that Zhao Mingcheng had been accused in connection with “offering gold” left Li Qingzhao fearful of political suspicion; she followed the imperial court with her remaining bronzes, hoping to present them officially. Much of what remained was lost during this displacement.

In spring 1130 she followed the court through eastern Zhejiang. The source describes her traveling through Taizhou, Shan, Huangyan, Wenzhou, and Yuezhou and at times moving by sea in pursuit of the imperial route. In the ninth lunar month Liu Yu established the puppet Qi regime under Jin support. Li Qingzhao wrote a poem denouncing him through historical comparison. In the twelfth lunar month, after the court released officials from attendance, she reached Quzhou.

In the third lunar month of 1131 she moved to Yuezhou and stayed with a Zhong family. One night paintings and calligraphy were stolen. She was deeply distressed and offered rewards to recover them. By then most of the original collection had been dispersed. In 1132 she arrived in Hangzhou. The loss of books and antiquities, continuous flight, and widowhood left her isolated. The source notes that accounts of a remarriage to Zhang Ruzhou followed by divorce remain disputed. She later moved between Hangzhou and Jinhua. In 1134 she climbed Bayong Tower in Jinhua and wrote Ti Bayong Lou. Around 1155, in the twenty-fifth year of the Shaoxing era, she died; the source emphasizes that the exact year of her death remains uncertain.

Major Deeds

Li Qingzhao is presented as a leading representative of graceful-and-restrained ci poetry, with sharply different early and late styles. Before the Song court’s southward migration, her work is described as lively, bright, and direct, often focusing on youthful life and separation within marriage. The source cites works such as Rumeng Ling: Chang Ji Xiting Rimu, Yijian Mei: Hong'ou Xiang Can Yudian Qiu, and Zuihuayin: Bo Wu Nong Yun Chou Yong Zhou. After the southward migration, the death of her husband, and the collapse of the Northern Song, her writing increasingly expressed displacement, loneliness, and grief, as in Shengsheng Man: Xunxun Mimi, Wuling Chun: Feng Zhu Chen Xiang Hua Yi Jin, and Yongyule: Luori Rong Jin.

The source characterizes her technique as musically controlled, precise in description, vivid in imagery, apt in comparison and allusion, and skilled in repeated characters, parallel phrases, and colloquial diction. It says she developed what later critics called the “Yi’an style,” marked by ordinary language, sorrowful elegance, and at times a boldness conventionally associated with male writers.

Li Qingzhao drew a strict distinction between shi poetry and ci. In her Cilun, she argued that “ci forms a separate tradition of its own” and maintained that ci should value literary refinement, musical compatibility, developed exposition, dignity, and informed allusion. The source treats this as an important document in the history of ci criticism.

Relatively little of her work survives: the source gives approximately fifty ci poems, fourteen shi poems, and fewer than ten prose pieces. Most Song printed editions were lost, and surviving works were collected from later anthologies and notebooks. It states that the earliest extant collection devoted to Li Qingzhao appeared in 1630, the third year of the Chongzhen era, in the Jiguge Shici Zazu, which included seventeen ci poems. Jiguge later issued an unengraved-text collection called Shuyu Ci, containing forty-nine poems and becoming the largest such compilation mentioned in the source.

Li Qingzhao and Zhao Mingcheng worked together to collect, organize, and study inscriptions and antiquities. During their years in Qingzhou they economized to acquire ancient texts, bronzes, and stone inscriptions, including Eastern Wei and Northern Qi monuments and Tang steles. By 1117, with Li Qingzhao’s assistance, Zhao Mingcheng had largely completed Jinshilu. Zhang Duanyi’s Gui’er Ji is cited as saying that Li Qingzhao also participated in revising it.

Jinshilu comprised thirty juan and catalogued inscriptions on bells, tripods, ritual vessels, steles, epitaphs, and other objects from antiquity through the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties periods. The source describes it as one of China’s earliest catalogues and studies of epigraphic material. Li Qingzhao’s own Jinshilu Houxu recounts the couple’s collecting activities and is also treated as an important prose work.

Li Qingzhao’s life took her through areas in present-day Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi. She lived in Bianjing with her father and later with Zhao Mingcheng, spent nearly two decades in Qingzhou, moved to Laizhou in 1121 and Zizhou in 1125, then traveled south after the Jingkang Incident. She reached Jiangning in 1128. After Zhao Mingcheng’s death in 1129, she followed the imperial route through eastern Zhejiang, traveling by way of Taizhou, Huangyan, Wenzhou, Yuezhou, and Quzhou. She reached Hangzhou in 1132 and was living in Jinhua in 1134.

Li Qingzhao had close ties with Chao Buzhi, who praised her writing. At seventeen she met Zhang Lei and wrote poems in response to him. Because her father Li Gefei studied under Su Shi, she grew up with indirect connections to Su’s literary circle. After the southward migration she relied in part on her younger brother Li Hang. The source cites Lu You’s epitaph for Lady Sun as evidence that Li Qingzhao still possessed a literary reputation in later life and at one point wished to transmit her learning to a younger woman.