ABSTRACT
Ever since the girl poet Xie Daoyun 謝道禮 (fl. 399) stunned the literati by her knack for versification, describing snowfall as ‘rather like willow catkins whirling in the wind’ (wei ruo liu xu yin feng qi 未若柳絮因風起), female child prodigies have enjoyed celebrity status in traditional China. 1 The willow catkins child prodigy became a topos in late Ming literati portrayals of talented women. Tanyangzi's contemporary and a fellow native of Suzhou, the renowned gentlewoman poet Xu Yuan 徐媛 (1560–1620), daughter of an imperial retainer, was celebrated as a child prodigy. In contemporary literati discourse she gained the sobriquet ‘Reincarnation of Xie E [Daoyun]’ Xie Ehou shen 謝娥後身. 2 The late Ming iconoclastic thinker Li Zhi's emphasis on the concept of the ‘childlike mind’ (tong xin 童心) moreover offered a new philosophical foundation for the literati's fascination with the child prodigy within the Neo-Confucian context. 3
