Su Hui (, fourth century CE) was a Chinese poet of the Middle

Sixteen Kingdoms The Sixteen Kingdoms (), less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439 when northern China fragmented into a series of short-lived dynastic states. The majority of these states were founded by ...

period (304 to 439) during the

Six Dynasties Six Dynasties (; 220–589 or 222–589) is a collective term for six Han-ruled Chinese dynasties that existed from the early 3rd century AD to the late 6th century AD. The Six Dynasties period overlapped with the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms, ...

period. Her

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theobald ...

is Ruolan (). Su is famous for her extremely complex "palindrome" (''huiwen'' 回文) poem, apparently having innovated this

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

, as well as producing the most complex example to date. Su Hui is depicted in the

Wu Shuang Pu ''Wu Shuang Pu'' () is a book of woodcut prints, first printed in 1694, early on in the Qing dynasty. This book contains the biographies and imagined portraits of 40 notable heroes and heroines from the Han Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, all acco ...

(無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.

Biography

The

Jin dynasty (266–420) The Jin dynasty (; ) or the Jin Empire, sometimes distinguished as the (司馬晉) or the (兩晉), was an imperial dynasty of China that existed from 266 to 420. It was founded by Sima Yan (Emperor Wu), eldest son of Sima Zhao, who had pr ...

had briefly unified the Chinese empire, in 280, but from 291 to 306 a multi-sided civil war known as the

War of the Eight Princes The War of the Eight Princes, Rebellion of the Eight Kings, or Rebellion of the Eight Princes () was a series of civil wars among kings/princes (Chinese: ''wáng'' 王) of the Chinese Jin dynasty from 291 to 306 AD. The key point of contention in ...

raged through northern China, devastating that part of the country. For the first thirteen years this was an all-out struggle for power among princes and dukes. Then in 304 CE the leader of the formerly independent ethnic nation of the Northern

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 20 ...

declared independence, under its newly declared Grand

Chanyu Chanyu () or Shanyu (), short for Chengli Gutu Chanyu (), was the title used by the supreme rulers of Inner Asian nomads for eight centuries until superseded by the title "''Khagan''" in 402 CE. The title was most famously used by the ruling L ...

, Liu Yuan (later Prince Han Zhao). Various other non-Han Chinese groups became involved, in what is known as the

Wu Hu uprising The Upheaval of the Five Barbarians also translated as the Rebellion, the Revolt, or the Invasion of the Five Barbarians () is a Chinese expression which refers to a series of rebellions and invasions between 304 and 316 by non-Han Chinese, Han p ...

. By 317 the last Jin prince left standing, now as emperor, ruled an empire reduced to its former southern area, and the former northern part of the Jin empire had been subdivided into a number of independent states. In 351, the state of

Former Qin The Former Qin, also called Fu Qin (苻秦), (351–394) was a dynastic state of the Sixteen Kingdoms in Chinese history ruled by the Di ethnicity. Founded by Fu Jian (posthumously Emperor Jingming) who originally served under the Later ...

was founded, and by 376 it had succeeded in unifying northern China. Su Hui was a poet of the kingdom of Former Qin (351-394). She was from a literate family, in what is now

Fufeng County Fufeng County () is a county under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Baoji, in the west-central part of Shaanxi Province, China. The county lies in the fertile Guanzhong Plain on the north bank of the Wei River between Xi'an, to ...

, in

Shaanxi Province Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichuan (SW), Gansu (W), Ningx ...

. She was the third daughter of Su Daozhi. Su Hui married at sixteen (fifteen, by Western reckoning), and went to live with her husband, Dou Tao, to what is now

Qinzhou District Qinzhou (), formerly romanized as Tsinchow, is a district and the seat of the city of Tianshui, Gansu province, China. It is named for its former position as the seat of the medieval Chinese province of Qinzhou. Before 2005 it was called Qincheng ...

Tianshui Tianshui is the second-largest cities in Gansu, city in Gansu list of Chinese provinces, Province, China. The city is located in the southeast of the province, along the upper reaches of the Wei River and at the boundary of the Loess Plateau and ...

, Prefecture, in

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

Province, where he was the governor.

Palindrome Poem: Xuanji Tu

Su Hui was known for an important and unusual poem. This was described in contemporary sources as shuttle-woven on

brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "embos ...

, meant to be read in a circle, and consisting of 112 or else 840 characters. By the

Tang period The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...

, the following story about the poem was current: :Dou Tao of Qinzhou was exiled to the desert, away from his wife Lady Su. Upon departure from Su, Dou swore that he would not marry another person. However, as soon as he arrived in the desert region, he married someone. Lady Su composed a circular poem, wove it into a piece of brocade, and sent it to him. Another source, naming the poem as ''Xuanji Tu'' (''Picture of the Turning Sphere''), claims that it was a palindromic poem comprehensible only to Dou (which would explain why none of the Tang sources reprinted it), and that when he read it, he left his desert wife and returned to Su Hui. The text of the poem was circulated continuously in medieval China and was never lost, but during the

Song dynasty The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...

it became scarce. The 112 character version was included in early sources. The earliest excerpts of the 840 character version date from a 10th-century text by Li Fang. Several 13th century copies were attributed to famous women of the Song dynasty, but falsely so. In the

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

the poem became quite popular and scholars discovered 7,940 ways to read it. It was also mentioned in the story ''

Flowers in the Mirror ''Flowers in the Mirror'' (), also translated as ''The Marriage of Flowers in the Mirror'', or ''Romance of the Flowers in the Mirror'', is a fantasy novel written by Li Ruzhen (Li Ju-chen), completed in the year of 1827 during the Qing dynasty. ...

''. The poem is in the form of a twenty-nine by twenty-nine character grid, and can be read forward or backwards, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, as well as within its color-coded grids.Hinton, 108 During the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

the character 心 (heart) was added to the center of the poem, so that it now has 841 characters.

Other poems

Other poems attributed to Su Hui are extant, but seem to date from the Ming Period.

Notes

References

*Hinton, David (2008). ''Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology''. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. / . *Wang, Eugene. "Patterns Above and Within: ''Picture of the Turning Sphere'' and Medieval Chinese Astral Imagination." In Wilt Idema, ed., ''Book by Numbers'', 49–89. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007.

Interwiki links

* Chinese Wikipedia article on Su Hui (In Chinese) * Chinese Wikipedia article on Su Hui's poem (In Chinese) With color text and image versions of her ''Xuanji Tu''.

External links

Interactive Chinese/English version of the text
{{DEFAULTSORT:Su, Hui Six Dynasties poets Year of birth missing Year of death missing Former Qin people Chinese women poets Writers from Baoji Poets from Shaanxi 4th-century Chinese people Sixteen Kingdoms writers Palindromists 4th-century Chinese women 4th-century Chinese writers 4th-century Chinese women writers Legendary Chinese people