Quite likely the greatest female poet in Chinese history, Li Qingzhao might be deemed a Sappho of the East or the Emily Dickinson of China.

Living during the Song Dynasty, Li Qingzhao came from an extraordinary family background and received the best possible education in imperial China. As a teenager, she already wrote better verses than most of the men who attained the jinshi degree in the civil service examination: the highest level of distinction. She then had the good fortune of a loving marriage.

But then tragedies both national and personal struck. The Jurchen invasion in 1127 forced millions of refugees to move from northern China to the south, including Li and her husband. Shortly afterward, he died.

In spite of her personal tribulations, or because of them, Li Qingzhao left us with a unique body of work, poems with a distinctly feminine voice that soars above a literary pantheon otherwise full of men.

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