Lady Xian
Li noblewoman during the Sui dynasty of Chinese history
Lady Xian (or Hsien, Chinese: 冼夫人; pinyin: Xiǎn Fūrén; Jyutping: sin2 fu1 jan4; Vietnamese: Tiển phu nhân; 512–602), also known as Lady of Qiao Guo (or Ch'iao Kuo; Chinese: 譙國夫人), born as Xian Zhen (冼珍), was a hereditary chieftain of the Li people, born to the chieftain of the Xian tribe in Southern China, in what is now Guangdong. She has been deified as the "Saintly Mother of Lingnan" (岭南圣母). She died during a tour of Hainan. Former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai called her "the First Heroine of China", and Chinese Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin praised her as "the role model that the later generations should learn forever". Lady Xian is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.
Life
Lady Xian was born in 512 to the chieftain of the Xian clan of the Li people in Southern China. She lived during the Sui dynasty in what is now Guangdong in Southern China. Her family were hereditary leaders of their clan.
She was a notable leader who successfully defended her clan against its enemies, eventually earning her title as Lady of Qiaoguo. Her clan's people were in frequent conflict with neighboring clans.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lady Xian” is li noblewoman during the Sui dynasty of Chinese history. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lady, Xian and noblewoman, not as a finished interpretation.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6470671. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lady Xian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.