“Then we paint each other’s beautiful eyebrows.
I want to possess you completely –
Your jade body
And your promised heart.”
- Wu Zao
An extraordinarily skilled poet, musician, and playwright, Wu Zao occupies a liminal yet luminous place in the history of Chinese literature—and increasingly, in the evolving narrative of China’s LGBTQ+ cultural heritage. Born at the turn of the 19th century, Wu Zao emerged as a singular voice in a literary canon typically dominated by men, and carved a space for herself within intellectual and artistic traditions that rarely welcomed women, let alone those who dared to defy gender and sexual norms. While many of the particular details surrounding her existence remain uncertain, Wu Zao’s surviving writings subtly but powerfully permeate with erotic ambiguity and convey the deep emotional bonds she forged with other women throughout her lifetime. Through careful translation and scholarly interpretation, Wu Zao has emerged in more recent years as a figure who, with quiet defiance, charted her own path on the margins of Qing Dynasty society to challenge socio-cultural constraints placed on gender and sexuality. Today, Wu Zao’s creative legacy not only enriches the canon of classical Chinese literature but also expands the landscape of Chinese queer history, offering a rare glimpse into the complexities of queer desire and expression from a time and place where such notions were seldom recorded.
Wu Zao, also known as Wu Tsao, Wu Pinxiang, or Yucenzi, was born in 1799 in Renhe, or modern-day Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province. Her father, a prosperous merchant, arranged her marriage at a young age to a merchant named Huang. Wu Zao reportedly assisted both men in their shops, which granted her more personal freedom than was typical for women of her class and era. Still, historians note that neither her father nor her husband—both substantial figures in her early life—had any interest in books, and she thus seemed to receive little familial support for her literary ambitions.
Despite this, Wu Zao displayed exceptional creative talent from an early age. Exactly how she learned to read, write, play music and paint remains unclear, considering that women belonging to the merchant class at this time were rarely taught such skills. But Wu Zao’s sheer brilliance was undeniable, and she excelled in any creative endeavor she pursued. Musically gifted, she became known for her mastery of playing the Guqin, an elegant seven-string instrument that held deep cultural significance in China during this era. She also wrote her own lyrics and frequently set them to music, composing songs that resonated widely throughout the country, especially among other literate women, courtesans, and female performers.
Wu Zao gained even greater recognition, however, as a poet. She would ultimately be regarded as one of the finest literary voices of the Qing Dynasty. She studied under the esteemed poet Chen Wenshu and joined a vibrant circle of early 19th-century women writers who engaged with the Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Wu Zao’s deep musicality infused her verses with lyrical grace, making her especially renowned for her mastery of cí—also known as chángduǎnjù or shīyú—a form of lyric poetry rooted in Classical Chinese folk traditions. She also wrote extensively in the sǎnqǔ form, characterized by tonal patterns that align with melodies from folk songs or other musical traditions, further emphasizing the deep connections to music in her literary works.
Notably absent from Wu Zao’s poetry, however, is any mention of her husband—a striking omission for a married woman of her time, particularly one whose work tended to be so emotionally expressive. Her poems contain no acknowledgment of an intellectual or emotional intimacy with Huang, leading historians to surmise that Wu Zao may have lived in quiet estrangement from her spouse for much of her life. Instead, her writings frequently express a yearning to transcend the restrictive roles imposed on women, while offering subtle but poignant glimpses of desire, companionship, and artistic solidarity directed toward other women—especially female courtesans, fellow poets, and kindred spirits within the literary world.
While historical evidence makes it difficult to determine whether Wu Zao engaged explicitly in romantic or sexual relationships with women, many scholars do agree that her life was significantly shaped by the intimate bonds she forged with other females, connections that often seemed to surpass the emotional intensity expected of platonic friendship. And though it would be anachronistic and imprecise to impose contemporary Western concepts like lesbianism onto Wu Zao’s identity, several of her poems unmistakably convey a sensual and personal admiration for the female form. This is especially evident in poems that Wu Zao wrote explicitly addressed to female courtesans, which teem with tender longing, aesthetic appreciation, and a sense of intimate connection. In these works in particular, Wu Zao's voice feels less constrained by convention and more attuned to a world where her alternative affinities and artistic expression are inextricably linked.
One of Wu Zao’s most widely discussed and frequently anthologized poems, “For the Courtesan Ch’ing Lin,” is often interpreted as what we might now recognize as a lesbian love poem. The speaker—presumed to be Wu Zao herself—recounts a scene of physical and emotional intimacy with the female Ch’ing Lin, using language that is both tender and boldly sensual: “Then we paint each other’s beautiful eyebrows. / I want to possess you completely— / Your jade body / And your promised heart.” These verses, which perhaps blur the lines between poetic metaphor and personal confession, seem to convey a deep romantic yearning and emotional closeness from one woman to another. Scholars and translators like Kenneth Rexroth, Ling Chung, and Julie Landau also point to the boldness of Wu Zao’s voice here, particularly highlighting her direct engagement with female desire between what is presumed to be herself and another woman.
Other poems by Wu Zao are less brazen, but given the historical time period during which she lived and wrote, it is no surprise that same-sex desire in her work is never overtly expressed. Nevertheless, it lingers throughout—ambient and unmistakable. During her lifetime, only two collections of Wu Zao’s poetry and writings were published: Hualian Ci (Flower Curtain Lyrics) and Xiangnan Xuebei Ci (Lyrics from the Fragrant South and the Snowy North). Yet despite this limited publication, her lyric poems achieved broad popularity, especially among courtesans and female performers who sang them in salons and at private gatherings of women. Wu Zao’s verses thus deeply resonated within these communities, serving as both forms of entertainment but also as vehicles for their own emotional expression. This wide circulation of Wu Zao’s verses can thus attest not only to their aesthetic beauty but also to their cultural significance within a gendered and often overlooked network.
In addition to her poems and songs, another notable work for which Wu Zao became known during her lifetime was a lyric drama titled Qiao Ying (Image in Disguise), which she is believed to have written while in her early twenties. This one-act play, composed for performance with music, centers on a single character: a woman who cross-dresses, paints her own self-portrait, and laments the gender constraints that stifle her artistic and intellectual ambitions. The play’s protagonist, Xie Xucai, mourns her condition with vivid metaphor, comparing herself to a caged, ailing crane—a creature capable of flight, yet grounded by societal restriction. Alone in her studio, Xie Xucai drinks heavily and dreams of a freer life: one in which she could live as a male scholar and enjoy the companionship of a beautiful woman.
In one particularly evocative passage from the play, Xie Xucai bemoans:
“Alas, I’m shackled in this body, and I can only lament and sigh about it. But when I consider this with care, I realize that even if my form has been given to me by Heaven, it’s up to me to take charge of it. For this reason, I recently drew a sketch of myself dressed as a man…One could say that such a beautiful woman as I may secretly boast of being one of the most dashing of famed literary men. Today I slipped out of my dressing gown and came to study to enjoy my portrait for a bit, in order to dispel my vexation and anger at the injustice of being a woman.”
This monologue, at once playful and profound, lays bare the tensions between gender identity, creative agency, and societal constraint. By boldly exploring these themes of gender nonconformity, artistic frustration, and same-sex longing, Image in Disguise stands as a strikingly subversive piece, examining questions around gender identity and queer desire that would not be named for generations to come. While at the time it may have been regarded as somewhat transgressive, Wu Zao’s lyric drama was quickly set to music and staged to widespread acclaim across China, a testament to both its emotional power and popular appeal. Additionally, according to legend, Wu Zao herself was known to have once painted a self-portrait while dressed in male attire—leading many scholars to view the play’s protagonist as a thinly veiled reflection of the author herself. In this sense, Image in Disguise can be read as yet another act of Wu Zao’s imaginative liberation. Through her writing, Wu Zao seemingly found a fleeting but potent space in which she could speak her mind freely and inhabit an alternative vision of herself.
Considering she lived in a patriarchal society that often silenced or restricted women’s voices and rendered same-sex intimacy unspeakable, Wu Zao managed to craft a body of work that can be read as a quiet but enduring archive of sapphic longing. Her poems offer a rare glimpse into the emotional and erotic interiority of a woman whose desires, though shaped by social constraint, were no less vivid or radical for their subtlety. Meanwhile, her play radically interrogates the boundaries of gender, using cross-dressing, self-portraiture, and artistic frustration to explore identity as something fluid rather than fixed. In these works, Wu Zao thus gives voice to a lineage of queer expression that may have otherwise been lost to history—and her writings have continued to resonate with LGBTQ+ readers nearly two centuries later.
Additionally, Wu Zao’s stylistic range as a poet—particularly her ability to blend the traditionally feminine lyricism of the cí form with a direct, often vernacular voice—has contributed significantly to her lasting literary resonance. While she certainly drew inspiration from earlier women poets like Li Qingzhao, Wu Zao also forged a poetic style that was unmistakably her own: one that was often emotionally raw, at times defiant, and on occasion remarkably bold. As such, Wu Zao was wildly popular during her time, and was widely admired by her contemporaries, including the influential Chen Wenshu, who referred to her as “The Master of the Flower Screen.”
Despite her popularity and esteem, at some point between Wu Zao’s mid-thirties and early forties, her life took a marked turn. Though details are scarce, it is known that she moved south—likely on her own—and, in the preface to her second poetry collection, she wrote of enduring “ten years of sorrows and burdens” which weighed heavily upon her. She does not elaborate, but the tone of the poems that follow suggests that illness, both physical and emotional, may have played a role in her suffering. This period of decline culminated around 1837, when Wu Zao withdrew from public life entirely and embraced a life of spiritual retreat, becoming either a devout Buddhist or Taoist.
Some sources and scholars suggest she may have even been ordained as a Buddhist or Taoist priestess, and argue that in renouncing worldly attachments—including her marriage, her public status, and her celebrated literary career—Wu Zao entered into a newfound form of spiritual queerness. Her retreat into solitude, nonmaterial devotion, and metaphysical inquiry mirrors the trajectories of other early queer figures who found in asceticism a path beyond the constraints of gender and sexual desire. Rather than marking an end, this shift in Wu Zao’s life adds yet another dimension to her radical legacy.
“As for poetry,” Wu Zao once wrote of this later period in her life, “I gave up writing it.” For her, poetry had become inextricably tied to her former self—a self grounded in the temporal world, likely entangled in same-sex longing and suffering. By turning away from it, she symbolically severed the final thread connecting her to that life, and from that point on, she reportedly never wrote poetry again. While the exact date and circumstances of Wu Zao’s death remain uncertain, most sources agree she contentedly passed away in either 1862 or 1863. In her final years, she seemed to embrace an increasingly ambiguous identity—one that gently blurred conventional understandings of gender, selfhood, and spiritual purpose.
Though it is important not to impose modern Western categories too rigidly onto historical figures like Wu Zao, her poetry and life story nevertheless offer rich ground for queer historical recovery. Her writings articulate human emotional states that resonate across centuries, telling of unfulfilled desire, alienation, physical fragility and creative obsession. Meanwhile, her melancholic, love-saturated lyrics and her portrayals of intimacy between women—paired with her lifelong resistance to patriarchal norms—make her a compelling and necessary figure to be included within the global queer literary canon. In her work, we can find both subtle resistance and open longing, poetics shaped by constraint but alive with subversion.
Many of Wu Zao’s literary contributions have long been overlooked, marginalized, or forgotten about entirely. Even now, several of her translated works remain out of print or relatively unknown. Later translations by scholars such as Anthony Yu helped bring her voice to English-speaking audiences, yet she continues to exist on the periphery—her legacy fragmented, and her impact still unfolding. To reclaim Wu Zao is to enrich not only the tapestry of Chinese literary history, but to also widen the narrative of LGBTQ+ creative life and add to the lineage of artists and writers who, across time and place, found in poetry a space to explore their queerness beyond the realm of what was possible in their realities.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material
Barnstone, T., & Ping, C. (2010). The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary, the Full 3000-Year Tradition. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Chang, K. S., & Saussy, H. (Eds.). (2001). Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism. Stanford University Press.
Chen, S. (2017). Iron Clappers and Red Castanets: Gender and Representation in Wu Zao’s (1796-1862) Writings. McGill University Libraries.
Dorn, E. (2022, March 6). Lesbian Sorrow Poetry: Wu Zao is Here. Fairyland. https://fairyland.substack.com/p/lesbian-sorrow-poetry-wu-zao-is-here
Fong, G. S. (2017). Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China. University of Hawai’i Press.
Henriot, C. (2025). Modern China in Flux: Networks, Mobility, and Transformation. Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
Idema, W. L. (2007). The Red Brush Writing Women of Imperial China. Harvard University Asia Center.
Lee, L. X. H., Syrokomla-Stefanowska, A. D., & Ho, C. W. (2015). Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women V. 1: The Qing Period, 1644-1911. Taylor & Francis.
Lo, I.Y., & Schultz, W. (1986). Waiting for the Unicorn: Poems and Lyrics of China's Last Dynasty, 1644–1911. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/84682
Mann, S., & Cheng, Y. (Eds.). (2001). Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History. University of California Press.
Rexroth, K., & Zhong, L. (1982). Women Poets of China. Published for J. Laughlin by New Directions Pub. Corp.
Rupp, L. J. (2011). Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women. New York University Press.
Sang, T. D. (2003). The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China. University of Chicago Press.
Vida, G. (Ed.). (2014). New Our Right to Love: A Lesbian Resource Book. Touchstone.
Wu, Z. (1820) Qiao Ying. [Place of publication not identified: Publisher not identified, to 1862] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021666541/
Yeo, S. (2019, May 18). Wu Tsao. 400 Favourite Books. https://400books.wordpress.com/2019/05/18/wu-tsao/
Zimmerman, B. (Ed.). (2014). Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.