Some of you know I run a blog about Chinese culture, and over the years, I have gotten round to writing about my favourite bad-ass women. From pirates to poets and even generals, here’s a list of completely real people who have existed and captured my imagination. The order I’ve placed them in isn’t significant, because they are all bad-ass to me.
Note: External links are not safe for children or work to read because it includes mentions of rape, domestic abuse, murder, backstabbing, and treachery.
1. Zheng Yi Sao
(I lost the original source to this image! Argh please tell me so I can give credit.)
Once a prostitute in Guangdong, this lady demanded to have half of Zheng Yi’s fleet when he asked to marry her. When he died, she ran his fleet like the boss she was. She was a shrewd business person, incredibly strict, and her punishments could be brutal. Oh and did I mention that she married her adopted son to cement her authority? Yeah, she was craft like that. You can read more about her here.
2. Wu Zetian
(Image credit here.)
I love talking about Wu Zetian to my friends, because she was super smart. Apart from using her feminine wiles to ingratiate herself with the crown prince, she was also a really craft propagandist–she asked Buddhist monks to create sculptures of the Maitreya Buddha, deliberately making the Buddha look like her. This was so that she could justify that she was an incarnation of the Buddha and was destined to rule. She had a secret police, read the scripts of the Imperial Exams so she could recruit people directly, and lots more. Read more about her bad-assery here.
3. Yu Xuanji
Image credit: Visit Beijing
What struck me about this poet was that she wrote about the unfairness of not being able to take part in the Imperial Examinations when she was clearly as talented as all the men. Unhappy with her life, she pitted her clients (she was a courtesan) against one another and backstabbed them, only to find that she had been falsely accused of physical abuse just because one of her jilted lovers wanted her dead.
4. Li Qingzhao
She didn’t hesitate to give one of and her father’s friends a rebuttal after he engaged in some futile nostalgia wank, she divorced her abusive husband, and eloped with her second one. They both catalogued many of China’s ancient stone tablets in a book, and she continued this work after that. Oh, and did I mention that she wrote excellent poetry?
5. Princess Pingyang
(Image credit here.)
When the Sui Dynasty was crumbling to bits, Princess Pingyang’s father asked his son and Pingyang’s husband to go kick some butt. Pingyang wasn’t one to stay at home and sigh–she gathered an army and opened the grain stores to feed them, and allied with many people so that the rebellion could overthrow the Sui. And of course, when she and her family entered the palace as rulers, this princess was awarded the rank of marshall and given military aides, too.