Hangzhou has a charming beauty of a city that has intoxicated the Chinese imagination for generations. The city, with its dreamy West Lake, luscious green hills and many other picturesque scenic spots, has inspired a myriad of artwork, poetry and romances, many of which are associated with women.
Now let's turn the spotlight on several legendary female figures hailing from Hangzhou, whose stories from ancient times through to the 20th century can tell you a little more about this stunning city and its soul.
1. Xi Shi
Xi Shi
Xi Shi, whose real name was Shi Yiguang, could be one of the most renowned women in Chinese history, known as much for her stunning beauty as well as for the dramatic plot she was involved in. She is one of the “Four Beauties” of ancient China, and lived during the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, around 2,500 years ago.
Her story of romance, espionage and politics could come straight from a Hollywood blockbuster. The pretty woman first fell in love with a nobleman named Fan Li, but sadly this is no Cinderella story! At the time, the king of the Yue Kingdom, Goujian, was defeated by Fuchai, king of the Wu Kingdom, who enslaved his foe. As part of his secret revenge, Goujian sent Fan Li to seek out pretty women that could be offered to Fuchai as concubines, and that's when Fan met Shi.
Xi Shi
Shi finally fulfilled her mission as a beautiful female spy to contribute to the downfall of the Wu Kingdom, and her story made her a household name in China. However, her ultimate destiny remains a mystery, with some saying she lived out the rest of her days as a recluse with Fan. Hangzhou's West Lake (Xi Hu) is said to be the incarnation of Xi Shi.
2. Lady Sun
Lady Sun
Lady Sun was the younger sister of Lord Sun Quan, the ruler of the Wu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms Period, and is believed to have lived around 200 AD. Her real name was Sun Renxian, although today she is more widely known as Sun Shangxiang, a fictional name created in Peking opera.
Like Xi Shi, Sun's destiny was also closely bound to politics. Sun Quan proposed that his sister marry Lord Liu Bei, the ruler of the Shu Kingdom, in a plot designed to keep him under house arrest.
But Sun Quan's plan hit a snag when the two really fell in love. Liu Bei later escaped Wu with Lady Sun, but the story took a sad turn when Sun Quan tricked Lady Sun, his own sister, into returning to Wu under the pretense that their mother was gravely ill. Lady Sun never saw her husband again, and when Sun later learned of Liu Bei's death, she committed suicide by drowning.
3. Su Xiaoxiao
Su Xiaoxiao
Su Xiaoxiao, also known as Su Xiaojun, was a Chinese courtesan who lived in the city of Qiantang (modern Hangzhou) during the Southern Qi Dynasty (479–502 AD).
She is said to have come from a family of artisans, and she gained fame and attention for her beauty and poetry, becoming well-known throughout the region by her mid-teens.
But what made the beauty's name go down in history was her untimely death: she died at the early age of 19, and legend has it that she died of grief waiting for her lover to return. She was laid to rest in a tomb beside the Xiling Bridge over Hangzhou's famous West Lake.
The tomb of Su Xiaoxiao4. Lin Huiyin
Lin Huiyin
Lin Huiyin, also known as Phyllis Lin, was an outstanding architectural historian, but she remains best known as one of the leading female poets of the 1930s.
Lin was the envy of all women at the time. The favorite daughter of Lin Changmin, a high-ranking governor in the Beiyang Government, 16-year-old Lin Huiyin traveled with her father around Europe and the United States in the 1920s. Her western education gave her a broader outlook on life, inspiring her to study architecture and write poetry.
Lin Huiyin
Today she is fondly remembered for her poetry and romance with the poet Xu Zhimo. Lin inspired Xu's most well-known poem, Farewell to Cambridge, which still enjoys worldwide recognition to this day, and is marked by a marble plinth popular with tourists at King's College in the UK university city.
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