Schoffer

Reconstructs the life of the great female poet Hung Tu, who flourished in the eighth centur during one of the great periods of Chinese literature. The daughter of a Government offical far from the capitol, on the Silk River, she was, most unusually, brought up with her brothers whom she far outshown. Her mother was a talented woman whom her father took from a Blue House and married as his second wife. Falling on evil times, the father sells Hung Tu to the same Blue House from which her mother came, the best on the Silk River and perhaps in China. Hung Tu's poetry and calligraphy bring her great renown and she is appointed offical hostess in his palace by the Governor. Her life becomes affluent and her fame widespread. Her poems are renowned and admired throughout the empire. But her greatest triumph comes with the arrival at the Governor's court of the exiled poet Yuan Chen. There is a tremendous and immediate affinity between the two great poets and they live together for a considerable time. But in the end disaster strikes and Yuan Chen returns, reinstated and promoted to the Imperial Court. Hard times follow, but through it all Hung Tu retains her dignity and finally dies in her seventies. This is a wonderful reconstruction of one of the great periods of China, turbulent, cruel, yet with a sense of beauty remarkable by any standards and in any age. Many of Hung Tu's poems are quoted and woven by the author into the narrative which makes a far-away age come alive as a rich tapestry.