49 Cai Yan

An Outstanding Female Poet and Musician

Cai Yan, better known as Cai Wenji, lived in chaotic time of the Three Kingdoms Period, and was the daughter of a renowned man of letters Cai Yong. Wenji had a previous marriage, but her husband died early. In her age of 23, north minority Xiong Nu troops invaded her native land with committing all kinds of atrocities, and she with many women was looted into Xiong Nu territory. She afterward wrote a history-famed lengthy poem Grief and Indignation in which she spotlighted a real picture Chinese people constantly suffered in war-plagued times:

“… Men in central land were of weak-built,

But north ethnic soldiers were husky.

They attacked and destroyed everything,

With men’s heads hung on their horse neck,

With women carried on their horse back. …”

After Wenji was rooted into the north, she became the wife of Xiong Nu’s vice premier, and gave birth to two children. Twelve years had passed, Cao Cao, after unifying north China, once thought of Wenji, his teacher’s daughter was still captivated in the north. He sent a special envoy carrying heavy tablets of gold to Xiong Nu to redeem her back. In the same work Grief and Indignation, Wenji also described the unbearable anguish in the heartbroken time she departed with her husband and two young sons. The poem was so heart-touching that people could feel puffs of wind blowing when chanting it. Years later, Wenji adapted the poem into a music Hu Jia 18 Beats by use of a Xiong Nu melody, played by hu jia, the Xiong Nu’s instrument. Everyone who heard the melody would be moved into tears.

When Cao Cao reunited Wenji, he recalled a large quantity of books collected in the teacher’s house. Wenji said there were 4000 volumes of books, but all of them had been burned out in the war. Cao sighed with regret. Wenji said, she still keep in memory 400 volumes of them. Cao, overjoyed, would immediately send four men as recordists at her dictation. Wenji said: “It should be avoided ‘to hand things over directly between man and woman’ (one of Confucius important teachings), I could do it by myself.” Shortly afterward, Wenji completed the job, and handed in Cao Cao with 400 volumes of books.