| Xue Tao (768-832), a prolific and versatile poetess in the middle Tang Dynasty, is well-known for her five volumes of poetry anthology Jin Jiang Ji. She is also known as the most acknowledged poetess in the 900-volume Complete Poetry of Tang Dynasty due to the fact that she alone has had 89 poems included in it and the fact that about 600 female poems categorized in 12 volumes are collected from more than 120 poetess'works. Xue Tao thus can be regarded as the most influential poetess in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Nevertheless, she was never commemorated in the official history records because she was once a humble musical entertainer. All reviews on her poetry and life were written only in a word or two since the late Tang Dynasty till the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties. As a result, Xue Tao has gradually been forgotten in history.Xue Tao, styled Hongdu, was originally born in a decent family in Chang'an. As a little girl, she followed her father Xue Yun to Chengdu, Shu (now Sichuan Province), who was appointed an official there. Later, her family was mired in difficulties since her father's death. At the age of 15 or 16, her mother passed away and she was forced to a humble musical entertainer in the governor's mansion of Wei Gaoren who was in charge of both the civil and military affairs of Jiannan Xichuan area (now Chengdu Plain and around). From then on, she began her life of both a musical entertainer and a poet. For decades, she had kept company with the Governor and his successors, dignitaries, celebrities, and poet friends, and joined them in wine and poetry. So her life was extraordinarily complicated in the sense that she had to serve others as a musical entertainer and suffer the humiliations and hardships as well as in the sense that she was appreciated and acknowledged as a talented poetess. Such unique life experiences have not only broadened her horizon but also provided materials and platforms for her poetry creation.The Tang Dynasty is the peak of China's feudal society with its prosperous economy, developed culture, frequent contacts with foreign countries and open common practices; coupled with extraterritorial impact of ethnic culture in the Tang Dynasty, women had suffered less constraint than ever. In the context of this unique era and social atmosphere, women in the Tang Dynasty were able to break away from the traditional social expectations of the role of women, trying to obtain their "human" status, realize their own value through a broad participation in society and reshape their female images by releasing and highlighting the female consciousness. But the basic view that men are superior than women and social structure as well as the basic view that a woman should obey to the three obediences and the four virtues have not been fundamentally changed in the Tang society. Chastity was relatively less valued at that time and visiting prostitutes was in vogue. Meanwhile, literariness and refinement were advocated in the Tang society; prostitutes were judged not chiefly by their good looks but by their talent, accomplishment and refined style of conversation, etc. Such an atmosphere set the stage for prostitutes to become a major force in the Tang female literature. Hence, Xue Tao emerged as a typical poetess from among the prostitutes in the context of the unprecedented prosperity and unique cultural atmosphere in the Tang Dynasty.Xue Tao used poetry as her weapon to extricate herself from life and as her stage to demonstrate her talent and the carrier of her female consciousness. Through objects and scenes employed in her poetry, she displayed her desire for perfect love, her recognition of female identity and her pursuit of ideals in life; she also displayed her persevering, extraordinary and pure human dignity as well as her yearning for independent personality, her search for the value of life, and her consciousness of self-realization.In the subject-object relations between Man and Nature, the poetess felt the natural beauty from the female perspective. She tried to comfort her broken heart by demonstrating fully her personality, interests, and preferences. She also showed the unique feminine disposition, temperament, emotion and consciousness through her own life experiences. Xue Tao liked to leave her boudoir to keep a close contact with nature and chanted the beautiful landscape and scenery with her male friends and poets. Such behaviors are not only a reflection of her love for nature and her positive attitude towards life, but also a challenge to the feudal ethical code and an embodiment of the feminine consciousness.Xue Tao went through the process gradually from attachment to independence in dealing with men. The loss of father, favor and love meant three failures in her attachment to men and thus dealt her a heavy blow. Gradually, she was on the road to diverging from men, and her female consciousness began to grow into maturity along the way. Repeated life misfortunes and blows led her to become meditative, self-reliant, and self-improving. Trapped in a group of dignitaries, she Learned to be alert, agile, appropriate and superior, showing an outstanding and independent demeanor. She produced five-volume poetry anthology "Jin Jiang Ji" with her superior creative talent; she won literati's respect for her competitive personality and poetic style; she also left a good name for her handsome and exciting calligraphy and exquisite "Xue Tao Notepaper". Xue Tao, an embodiment of beauty, talent, rhetoric, knowledge and wisdom, not only realized her own expectation of being an accomplished woman, but also became a universally acknowledged "superior-to-male" female. She realized her value of life and personal independence through painstaking pursuit and highlighted a strong female consciousness. |
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