Liu Rushi

Portrait of Liu Rushi, ink on paper, by Lu Ji and Cheng Tinglu, 1847

Liu Rushi ( Chinese  柳 如是 , Pinyin Liú Rúshì , W.-G. Liu Ju-shih ; * 1618 probably in Jiaxing ; † 1664 ), also known as Liu Shi , Liu Yin and Yang Yin , was a Chinese courtesan and poet of the late Ming dynasty who married civil servant, teacher, and social historian Qian Qianyi at the age of 25 . She ended her life after her husband died. She became famous for the exchange of verses with Chen Zilong ; her paintings also attracted attention.

She was friends with fellow courtesan Chen Yuanyuan , who was a concubine of Wu Sangui .

Childhood and youth

Presumably born in Jiaxing, Liu was sold as a concubine to Prime Minister Zhou Daodeng by her family . At the age of thirteen, a scandal led her to be evicted from Zhou's household; she was sold to a brothel in Suzhou . At seventeen she had her first love affair with the painter Tang Shuda . Known as a poet and painter herself at a young age, she met Chen Zilong in 1635 and lived with him for about a year, but eventually left after his family disapproved of the association. After leaving Chen, she ran a brothel in Wujiang . An affair with the artist Wang Janming ended when Wang failed to keep an appointment with her in the Rainbow Pavilion. Another affair with Song Yuanwen , a government official, ended after his hesitant attitude towards marriage caused Liu to smash her sounds and storm out in a fit of resentment.

Marriage of Qian Qianyi

Liu Rushi's tomb on Mount Yu, Changshu

Tombstone

In 1640, Liu launched a campaign to marry the respected scholar Qian Qianyi. She put on men's clothes, spoke to Qian, and asked his opinion on one of her poems. Qian apparently initially believed she was a man, but later this year had a hermitage built for her on the property of his Suzhou estate, called the "Sutra-Compliant Studio". They married in 1641 while on a river cruise; Qian renamed his bride Hedong. Although he married her as a concubine, Qian Liu treated her like his first wife and they were married in a formal marriage ceremony. Her inclination towards cross-gender clothing persisted even after her wedding; she regularly wore men's clothes in public and occasionally had conversations on her husband's behalf, wearing his Confucian robes. This inclination earned her the nickname rushi , "Confucian gentleman", which is also a play on her adopted name Rushi .

After the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, Liu tried to persuade her husband to kill himself and thus become a martyr of the fallen Ming. Qian refused and instead tried to organize a resistance movement against the newly established Qing regime . In 1648 the couple had a daughter.

The last years of her life have been difficult for Liu. In 1663 she entered the Buddhist lay class, partly in response to the destruction of her husband's extensive personal library, the Crimson Cloudy Hall. After Qian's death in 1664, his creditors and enemies tried to press money out of Lui; these machinations ultimately drove them to hang themselves.

poetry

Liu has been a prolific poet all her life, editing four collections of her work before she was 22. Her calligraphy was noted for her strong, masculine brushwork. She used the "wild grass writing style". Her solo anthologies included songs from the mandarin chamber and draft poems about a lake . Her poetry was published in a number of works along with that of her husband.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Marsha Weidner (Ed.): Flowering in the Shadows. Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu HI 1990, ISBN 0-8248-1149-6 , pp. 105 f . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search - USA ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Dorothy Ko: Teachers of the Inner Chambers. Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China . Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 1994, ISBN 0-8047-2359-1 , pp. 273–277, (English, limited preview in Google Book Search - USA ).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Melissa Hope Ditmore (Ed.): Encyclopedia of prostitution and sex work. Volume 1: A - N. Greenwood Press, Westport CT et al. 2006, ISBN 0-313-32969-9 , p. 255, ( limited preview in Google Book Search - USA ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Victoria Cass: Dangerous Women. Warriors, Grannies, and Geishas of the Ming . Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD et al. 1999, ISBN 0-8476-9395-3 , pp. 40–44, (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Bonnie G. Smith (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Volume 1: Abayomi - Czech Republic. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-514890-9 (4 volume set), pp. 125–126, ( limited preview in Google Book Search - USA ).

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Liu is the family name here, Rushi is the first name.