Sometime in the late 700s or early 800s, during China’s Tang dynasty, a brutal murder occurred among the rivers and lakes surrounding the Yangtze, west of modern Nanjing in southeast China. While the Tang era was known for its prosperity and political stability, much of the country was still dangerous. Bandits were holed up in the mountains, and pirates patrolled many of the rivers and lakes.
It wasn’t unusual, then, when a rich merchant’s boat was attacked for the booty it promised, the whole family slaughtered simply because they were transporting valuable goods. The whole family, that is, except one daughter, Xie Xiao-e, who was to become, quite literally, the stuff of legend after she finally enacted her vengeance.
The legend of Xie Xiao-e was once well known across China. Some versions were written down during her own lifetime, and it has been adapted and retold again and again in the centuries since. It appears in unofficial accounts known as “legends,” and also in official histories, or “biographies,” although both forms include elements that are clearly fictional — elements that provided additional drama and an incentive to copy the story for 1,200 years. The audience needed a moral framing to identify with Xie Xiao-e as a protagonist; they needed a concept of justice to understand who should live and who should die; and they needed divinity to imbue it all with significance.
I first came across Xie Xiao-e’s story as a result of my work translating Buddhist and Taoist scripture. This involved reading classical Chinese texts, and led me to an interest in classical fiction, or legends. The tale of Xie Xiao-e is among the most famous of these legends from the Tang period, and it was one of the first I read. After reading and translating many other Tang-era texts, I still felt the pull of the story. I wanted to return to it with my knowledge of other historical records to tease out what we can know for sure about Xie Xiao-e and her bloody quest for revenge after 1,200 years of retellings.
My search for the real Xie Xiao-e was based largely on two biographies. One comes from “The New History of Tang,” one of two comprehensive history annals of the Tang dynasty (roughly 600-900), which was compiled in the subsequent Song dynasty and published in 1060. The other appears in a Song gazetteer — a reference book for atlases. Both are nonfiction texts, but both accounts — which I will call “the gazetteer” and “the history” — are based on primary sources from the “legends” genre that mix fact with fiction. This collision of genres is itself interesting: Legends aren’t usually incorporated into official histories at all, and these historians and compilers must have had a reason for making this exception. Perhaps that reason was physical evidence: There may have been a building connected to Xiao-e’s story that still stood when both biographies were written. Or the authors may have interviewed locals in the area to whom the story had been passed down orally.
Whatever the method, we know that the stories were not simply a record of fact in the modern sense, thanks not least to the inclusion of a major supernatural plot point — a prophetic dream — in the “New History of Tang” biography. Even so, as Xin Zou, a researcher who has worked on Xiao-e’s story, has written: “What we consider a superstition may be something in which people in the Tang dynasty believed.”
Having two biographies from independent sources is helpful, since plot points that match up across both tellings have been independently verified, and are therefore more likely to be accurate than embellishments. Yet the biographies are highly condensed, so for context and details it is also useful to refer to the legend that the biography in the history is based on, the most famous account of Xiao-e’s story, by an official named Li Gongzuo, as well as an adaptation of that legend by another contemporary, Li Fuyan. Unfortunately, the legend on which the gazetteer entry is based, by a minister named Li Shen, has been lost to time. (The Lis are not related; it’s a common surname.)
All of these legends were written during Xiao-e’s own lifetime. Gongzuo even claims he met Xiao-e and that she told him the story herself. But I am relying on them only to fill in less controversial details, such as what certain places were like in the Tang era, how society operated and how the authors perceived and imagined various events, as Xiao-e’s contemporaries.
Xiao-e’s witnessing of her family’s murder fittingly coincided with her reaching “hairpin age” — 15, when a girl got her hairpin and officially became a woman.
Xiao-e and her father must have been close. Historically, sons have been valued above daughters in Chinese culture. Girls were outsiders, destined to be married off to other families. Yet he kept Xiao-e near, sailing alongside her, as he did business transporting precious cargo across the country via China’s great rivers and enormous freshwater lakes.
Xiao-e’s father was either an official or a merchant — the records don’t agree. Either way, the family wouldn’t have been poor. They lived in an unprecedented period of affluence and political stability, during the renaissance that unfolded under the Tang dynasty. Trade thrived in the Tang empire, agriculture was fruitful, citizens were well-off and sophisticated, and the state was strong, unified and stable.
But there was crime — banditry on land and water alike.
Xiao-e and her father spent much of their time sailing on the Yangtze, which cuts across southern China from west to east, as well as its countless tributaries and connected lakes. These vast rivers wind through valleys of towering green mountains and cliffs, while massive inland lakes like the Poyang churn — great voids indistinguishable from the ocean.
One official source says it was roughly half a mile from a town called Xiaotan (later renamed to Linjiang) where the nightmare began. That would have put them on the Yuan River tributary when the pirates targeted their ship.
Xiaotan is where Xiao-e’s quest for vengeance both begins and later ends, according to the gazetteer. The history, meanwhile, only references the larger Jiangzhou area (which includes Xiaotan) as the setting for the climax, though it’s probable that Xiao-e would have found the pirates in the same area where the initial incident occurred.
Li Gongzuo’s legend describes the carnage: “Her father and husband were killed, their golds and silks plundered, and [her husband’s] brothers, Xie’s cousins, and dozens of servants, too, all sank to the bottom of the river.”
Li Fuyan’s adaptation describes Xiao-e’s dead husband and father later appearing to her in a dream, “hair unkempt, naked, their bodies dripping with blood.” This suggests that, based on what he knew about pirate raids in that era, steel was likely involved — they didn’t just make them walk the plank.
In fact, Xiao-e only escaped death by jumping (or falling) overboard. The history says she injured her head and broke her leg. She then survived drowning only after being rescued by a passing ship.
Xiao-e had lost everything — her family, its wealth and apparently her home too, since, once she reached shore, she was forced to beg in the markets. There, shops would have lined noisy streets, busy with patrons and vendors bearing their wares on poles across their shoulders. She had been surrounded by family, floating aloof through the peaceful natural world. Now she was drowning in a sea of people, but alone.
As a young woman, Xiao-e was vulnerable. Tang officials had a huge appetite for courtesans, and criminals regularly preyed on beggars, abducting or conning them and then selling them into this form of prostitution. Once a courtesan, in addition to sexual slavery, a young woman would be expected to submit to the disciplines of the courtesan code — and would meet with swift rebuke and lashings if she disobeyed or made a mistake.
For this reason, Xiao-e may have disguised herself as a man. The history (informed by Gongzuo) explicitly says she did, though the gazetteer does not.
Whether she hid her femininity this way or not, chastity is an important theme in Xiao-e’s story. The biography in the history isn’t even named after Xiao-e, but her husband Duan Juzhen — it is titled “Duan Juzhen’s Chaste Wife.” Chastity, along with her incredible forbearance and bravery, are therefore early symbols of her upstanding character, and fit into a broader theme of painting Xiao-e as a folk hero — or even a chosen hero.
While the disguise detail is plausible, there’s another plot point only in the history (again, based on Gongzuo’s legend) that I’m labeling fiction. It has Xiao-e begging her way hundreds of miles east to Nanjing, meeting Li Gongzuo, learning the names of the pirates after Gongzuo solves a riddle from a dream she had and then coming all the way back. This — the prophetic dream riddle — is the supernatural event the history left in.
It’s also the detail that puts the “chosen” in “chosen hero.” Fuyan’s adaptation makes this clear. In the dream, Xiao-e’s father offers her half the riddle, and Fuyan gives him the following dialogue: “You seem to be a person of ambition, and so the heavens have permitted you to seek revenge.” Thus, Xiao-e isn’t just a rogue vigilante. The heavens chose her to carry out this mission.
Gongzuo was a brilliant storyteller. Tang legends are prominent in classical Chinese literature, and one of the defining arts of the cultural explosion that occurred during the Tang period. The literary giant Lu Xun wrote that Gongzuo was among the top two authors of the entire genre.
This gives Gongzuo a motive to have invented this 500-mile detour — because, in addition to allowing him to do a character insert, it also makes for a more sensational story. As Xin Zou wrote, “By adding the popular theme of riddle solving, the coincidence [that Xiao-e finds the pirates] becomes more dramatic.” So it gives us drama, divinity and a justification for her violent actions; it gives us a chosen hero.
It also gave the story a politically acceptable framing. Chinese empires like the Tang dynasty were built on the premise of the “mandate of heaven” — the idea that those who succeeded were guided by the heavens. And Gongzuo was an imperial official, after all.
A riddle from a prophetic dream didn’t deliver Xie Xiao-e to her family’s killers, though. Perseverance did.
Xiao-e started out as a beggar, but soon sought out work as a laborer. The history says she worked in the area for years before anything changed.
Finally, her patience paid off. She was hired to work for the household of a salt merchant named Li, according to the gazetteer, or two brothers with the surname Shen, according to the history (the character for “Shen” works better for the riddle sequence).
Once she was inside, she noticed familiar objects. The house was filled with her family’s old belongings. It was then that she realized the Lis (or the Shens) were the same pirates that had murdered her family.
The history makes Xiao-e an active protagonist: She’d been looking for the killers all along. This is plausible, even though the gazetteer doesn’t corroborate it, since she makes a major lifestyle change later, suggesting the laboring jobs were always a temporary means to an end. Still, the decision to take revenge may have been spontaneous, and simply triggered the changes that followed.
Regardless, when Xiao-e saw her opening, she took it. One night, her employer got the whole gang together, set out some liquor and threw a feast. Everyone got drunk and either left or fell into alcohol-induced comas — everyone except Xie Xiao-e.
Xiao-e had been living among the men who murdered her family before her eyes for some time. Gongzuo tells us she worked for them for over two years before this opportunity presented itself.
“While her heart raged,” Gongzuo wrote, “she appeared docile. In [her employer’s] presence, she was even endearing. … Every time her family’s old possessions passed through her hands, though, she would cry in secret for some time.”
He also emphasized how generously the pirates provided for her, with clothes, meat and liquor — the currency of laborers and soldiers. Her employer even left Xiao-e with his wife to hold the fort whenever they went on raids, Gongzuo adds. But the trust he showed didn’t sway her resolve to avenge her family.
“Chun [the man who killed her husband] passed out in his room, while Lan [her father’s killer] fell asleep in the open courtyard. She quietly locked Chun inside, and drew her blade. Then, she cut off Lan’s head, and cried out to the neighbors.”
The history summarizes the same scene, while the gazetteer simply says Xiao-e slaughtered the whole drunken household, though, according to the former, the other accomplices were all promptly sentenced to death anyway. So Xiao-e had finally gotten her revenge. The pirates were dead; justice was served.
It wasn’t entirely served by the letter of the law, though. In fact, Xiao-e should have gotten the death penalty for cutting off a man’s head. Luckily, she was exonerated after she told her story, and was even commended for her display of character.
Xiao-e was offered material rewards as well. The history says everyone from her hometown was competing to marry her after that — all of them rich nobles who could have given her a comfortable life, by Gongzuo’s account. The gazetteer says she was offered an official title. In a final show of integrity, though, she rejected everything she was offered, instead asking only that a temple be built for her, so she could live out the rest of her days practicing dharma as a Buddhist nun.
Gongzuo tells us what that meant: “a life of austerity, milling grain through frost and collecting firewood in the rain … [the ascetic practice of] burning her fingers and crippling her own legs … wearing clothes without cotton or silk, and eating a diet without salt or dairy … speaking of nothing but precepts and doctrine.”
Xiao-e got her temple and, after that, she apparently lived the rest of her life as a nun in obscurity.
The gazetteer says the temple still existed in the Jinchi ward of Linjiang at the time of writing, 400 years later. A nearly identical biography compiled in the Ming dynasty (roughly 1350-1650) says it was called Bao-en Temple — “bao-en” meaning “to repay gratitude.” This is the opposite of the word “bao-chou,” which means “to exact vengeance.” An 18th-century Qing-era record for Bao-en Temple tells us its ultimate fate: “Bao-en Temple; built for the exemplar Xie Xiao-e. Converted to a government building [in 1499].” That’s when Chinese empires stopped repaying their gratitude to her.
This temple was the last physical relic of this brave woman and her tumultuous life, whose story has inspired so many in the centuries since. Hopefully, this retelling of her biography will help bring her memory back to life — and bring us closer to understanding the real Xie Xiao-e behind the myth.
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