Wu Zao (; 1799–1862) was a Chinese poet. She was also known as Wu Pinxiang () and Yucenzi ().Marina H. Sung, "Wu Zao" in Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Qing Period, 1644-1911, edited by Clara Ho. Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998, p. 234.
Background and career The daughter of a merchant, she was born in the town of Renhe (now Hangzhou) in Zhejiang province. She married a merchant named Huang. Her contemporaries were wont to point out that her husband and father had "never even glanced at a book".
She was famous as a lyrics (ci) writer, in which she was considered one of the best of the Qing dynasty. She also wrote poetry in the sanqu form. She was said to be a good player of the qin, a stringed instrument. Wu wrote an opera (zaju) Yinjiu du Sao (Reading the "Li Sao" While Drinking), also known as Qiaoying (The Fake Image).The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China. Edited by Wilt Idema and Beata Grant. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2004, pp. 685–694, discusses and translates the play. Two collections of her works were published: Hualian ci (Flower curtain lyrics) and Xiangnan xuebei ci (Lyrics from South of the Fragrance and North of the Snows). She became a student of the poet Chen Wenshu. She was one of a number of early nineteenth-century women poets who wrote about the novel Dream of the Red Chamber.Ellen Widmer, The Beauty and the Book: Women and Fiction in Nineteenth-Century China. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2006. For the text of a poem on Dream of the Red Chamber, the translation by Anthony Yu, and a reading of the Chinese version, see the Dream of the Red Chamber website.
Wu converted to Buddhism later in life.
Translations Several of her works have been translated into English, notably by Anthony Yu.Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism, edited by Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 602–616.
References
External links Some of her poems can be found on the Ming Qing Women Writers database.