Li Xiangjun

Li Xiangjun was a celebrated courtesan and performer in seventeenth-century Nanjing whose life became associated with the political and literary circles of the late Ming. Her relationship with the scholar Hou Fangyu was later transformed into the central love story of Kong Shangren’s The Peach Blossom Fan, which used their separation and reunion to dramatise the fall of the Ming dynasty.

She became known for her relationship with the scholar Hou Fangyu and for resistance to political coercion during the Southern Ming crisis. Her story was later transformed into the central romance of Kong Shangren’s play The Peach Blossom Fan.

In Alice Poon’s Tales of Ming Courtesans, In seventeenth-century Nanjing, Liu Rushi, Chen Yuanyuan and Li Xiangjun rise from exploitation and precarious childhoods to become celebrated members of the Qinhuai pleasure quarter.