My original digital history project

Echoes of
Herstory.

Five portraitsDigital historyResearch & performance

Five women. Five forms of strength.
I bring their stories to life through film.

01 / The story

History,
through my lens.

Who gets to write her history?

In Echoes of Herstory, I bring five women from Chinese history and legend into conversation with the present. Through historical reading, costume, performance, and first-person narration, I explore courage, creative voice, responsibility, intellectual authority, and the right to lead.

In each portrait, I connect a different life with a question of my own. I turn research into an act of interpretation: stepping into character, listening closely, and finding my voice in the present.

Created by: Jingyi Qian
My role: Founder & creative director
Practice: Research · Writing · Performance · Filmmaking

02 / The series

Five lives. Many ways to be strong.

Five portraits, one frame at a timeHover over a character to explore her story

Portrait 01 / 05

Hua Mulan

The courage to cross a boundary

The legend of Hua Mulan begins with a daughter taking her father’s place in the army. Her journey brings together two kinds of courage: crossing the boundaries imposed on women and accepting personal danger to protect someone she loves. Her story asks what becomes possible when duty meets determination.

I connect Mulan’s courage with a present-day question: who gets to decide what a woman can do? Through her story, I explore how choosing our own actions can also begin to change the stories others tell about us.

Portrait 02 / 05

Li Qingzhao

A voice that endures

The Song dynasty poet Li Qingzhao found a precise language for intimate experience: changing seasons, small moments of beauty, and feelings that are difficult to name. The contrast between her earlier life and the upheaval of war, displacement, and loss raises a question: how could a distinctive poetic voice endure through such disruption?

I find Li Qingzhao’s strength in the care she gave to words and memories. Her life makes me reflect on preserving my own voice when life feels beyond control—and on trusting that quiet thoughts and private emotions deserve to be heard.

Portrait 03 / 05

Qin Liangyu

Leadership under pressure

Qin Liangyu faced the demands of leadership during a time of conflict. Personal grief existed alongside continuing responsibility: even through loss, she needed to make decisions and care for others. Her strength emerges through perseverance under pressure.

I connect these responsibilities with my own experience of student and community leadership. I reflect on what it means to unite, guide, and support a group: to acknowledge sorrow, think clearly when circumstances are difficult, and keep moving when others need direction.

Portrait 04 / 05

Ban Zhao

The quiet force of knowledge

Ban Zhao’s work as a historian opens a window onto women’s intellectual authority in a scholarly world dominated by men. Her contribution to the Book of Han sits alongside the more contested legacy of Lessons for Women. Together, these works raise questions about knowledge, influence, and the restrictions within which women lived and wrote.

In Ban Zhao’s life, I find a reason to reflect on the quiet practice of study. How can persistence and expertise create room for a voice—and help knowledge survive within restrictive institutions?

Portrait 05 / 05

Wu Zetian

Who is allowed to lead?

Wu Zetian’s claim to power brought the demands of rule into conflict with expectations about a woman’s place. In my research into her changing historical reputation, I ask how assumptions about gender shape the language used to describe ambition and authority.

For me, that history raises questions about leadership today: what does it mean to recognize unfair rules, speak about them clearly, and take responsibility for changing them? I use Wu Zetian’s story as a starting point for considering who is allowed to lead and how that judgment is made.

Follow the changing verdicts ↓

03 / TCR history research

Wu Zetian & female
political legitimacy.

Independent Researcher October 2025 – February 2026

I wrote a 7,387-word English research paper, The Female Emperor of Many Faces: The Historical Afterlife of Wu Zetian, arguing that later historians reshaped the ruler’s image to debate legitimacy, morality, and effective rule.

Comparing Tang, Song, and Ming–Qing historiography, I trace a shift from pragmatic ambiguity to Confucian moral judgment and late-imperial reassessment. I focus on how the standards of judgment changed—and what those changes reveal about female political authority.

Me portraying Wu Zetian, looking back in a shadowed imperial corridor — In character / Wu Zetian Who is allowed to lead?

7,387: Words · English research paper
24 / 25: NWB evaluation · A (Very Good)

How I read the sources

Read the structure
Where historians placed Wu Zetian’s reign became a judgment about her right to rule.
Listen to the language
Words about ambition, motherhood, and disorder reveal the values behind a verdict.
Compare the criteria
Private morality or public achievement? Different standards produce different portraits of the same ruler.

Following the changing verdicts

I compare arguments across four periods, including differing views within each era.

01Tang

Ancestor & contested ruler

The court honored an imperial ancestor; writers debated how effective government could coexist with a disputed claim to rule.

Essay · pp. 5–10 ↗

02Song

Power through a moral lens

Moralists made gender and dynastic succession tests of rightful rule, even as some acknowledged her political ability.

Essay · pp. 13–19 ↗

03Ming–Qing

Whose standard of virtue?

Thinkers disagreed over whether a ruler’s private morality or public achievements should carry more weight.

Essay · pp. 20–26 ↗

04Modern

A different measure

The twentieth-century readings I compare in my essay give greater weight to political skill, talent recruitment, and social change.

Essay · pp. 26–28 ↗

Continue the reading

The Female Emperor of Many Faces

The Historical Afterlife of Wu Zetian

7,387 words36 pagesComparative historiography

Read the paper PDF ↗Explore the research process ↗

Echoes ofHerstory.

History,through my lens.

Hua Mulan

Wu Zetian & femalepolitical legitimacy.

Read the structure

Listen to the language

Compare the criteria