Linghui Bao

Background

Bao Linghui was born in 414 in Jiangsu Province. She came from a low-status family. There is no exact information about her parents. Bao Linghui had a brother named Bao Zhao, who also was a poet.

Education

Bao Linghui seems to have had a reasonably good education, especially in literature and music.

Career

Biographical information on Bao Linghui cannot be found in any history books and it is only through the comments of some literary critics and the words of her brother to learn anything about her.

A considerable number of their works are deliberate imitations of Han dynasty poems, indicating that they were eminently familiar with the form and content of those poems.

In her poetry, she refers to someone as jun, a pronoun usually used by a woman to refer to her husband or lover, so it can be assumed that there was a man in her life. There is a record of a collection of her poems entitled Rhapsody of the Fragrant Tea (Xiangming fu ji) but it is no longer extant. At least some of her poems are found in a collection of particularly love poems called New Songs from a Jade Terrace (Yutai xinyong) compiled by Xu Ling. These were also attached at the end of an edition of her brother’s works edited by Qian Zhonglian.

Achievements

• Bao Linghui was one of the well-known Chinese poets. She was known for her ballad (yuefu) style poetry.

Views

Bao Linghui’s style of writing is direct and sentimental, like many of the old songs she claimed to imitate; however, unlike those songs, she uses numerous parallel lines, a later literary device. Use of these parallel lines changes the outlook of the simple songs into something more complex and aesthetically satisfying.

Connections

It is not known if Bao Linghui had ever been married. She had no children.

Brother:

Bao Zhao

Bao Zhao was an early medieval Chinese poet, writer, and official known for his shi poetry, fu rhapsodies, and parallel prose.

References

• Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: Antiquity Through Sui, 1600 B.C.E. - 618 C.E This new volume of the "Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women" spans more than 2,000 years from antiquity to the early seventh century. It recovers the stories of more than 200 women, nearly all of them unknown in the West.
  1998
• Chinese Love Poetry: New Songs from a Jade Terrace - A Medieval Anthology
  1995