1084 - Circa 1151
Poet

A Literary Life. Known as Yian jushi (The Lay Buddhist of Easy Peace), Li Qingzhao was born to talented parents in Licheng (Jinan), Shandong Province. Her father, Li Ge, was a scholar and prose writer, and her mother, the daughter of a noble family, also had literary abilities. Li Qingzhao married the son of a government minister, Zhao Mingcheng, a minor official who was also an antiquarian, a book collector, and a writer of epigrams. They had a happy and literary life together until the Jurchen invasion of 1129. During their escape Li's husband died, and most of her six volumes of poems were destroyed. Only fifty lyrics are extant.

Lyrics. Li Qingzhao was good at painting and calligraphy, but her greatest achievement was in lyric writing. She is considered one of the foremost lyric poets, the successor to Su Shi (1037-1101) and the...