Little trustworthy information is known about the relatively short life of Yu Xuanji.[1] She was born or grew up in Tang capital Chang'an,[4] which was the terminus of the Silk Road and one of the most sophisticated cities of its time. Yu was married as a concubine, or lesser wife, to an official named Li Yi (simplified Chinese: 李亿; traditional Chinese: 李億; pinyin: Lǐ Yì) at 16, separating three years later because of Li's primary wife's dislike of Yu.[5]
She had a "painted boat" on the Wei River.[6] Yu later took her vows and became a Daoist nun at the Xianyi guan (咸宜觀, Abbey of Universal Benefit).[7] Daoist nuns were at the time known for their sexual freedom[8][9] During her time as a nun she travelled frequently and her travels influenced her writing.[8] Yu had a reputation for being sexually adventurous and is recognised by some as China's first openly bisexual female.[8]
She was a fellow of Wen Tingyun, to whom she addressed a number of poems. Apart from names and dates in her poems, the tabloid-style Little Tablet from the Three Rivers, (三水小牘), gives the only purported facts about her life. These are however salacious in detail: it reports she had an affair with Wen Tingyun, lived a scandalously promiscuous life, and was executed by decapitation[5] at the age of 28[1] for allegedly strangling her maid, Luqiao, to death.[5] This account is considered semi-legendary, and may be a reflection of the traditional distrust of women who were strong-willed and sexually independent.[3]
Yu Xuanji is distinctive for the quality of her poems, including many written in what seems to be a remarkably frank and direct autobiographical style; that is, using her own voice rather than speaking through a persona. In her lifetime, her poems were published as a collection called Fragments of a Northern Dreamland, which has been lost. The forty-nine surviving poems were collected in the Quan Tangshi,[5] mainly for their freak value in an anthology that also included poems from ghosts and foreigners.[10]
Published in 1998, her work was translated by the team of David Young and Jiann I. Lin.[11] In the 2000s, her work was translated by Stephen Owen and Justin Hill.
Her family name, Yu, is relatively rare. Her given name, Xuanji, means something like "Profound Theory" or "Mysterious Principle," and is a technical term in Daoism and Buddhism.『Yòuwēi』means something like "Young and Tiny;" and, Huìlán refers to a species of fragrant orchid.[1]
Yu Xuanji is the subject of the 1915 short story Gyogenki by Japanese author Mori Ōgai.[12] She was the nun in Robert van Gulik's 1968 "Judge Dee" novel Poets and Murder.[13]
