Cai E 蔡鍔

Cai E 蔡鍔 (1882-1916), whose conflict with Yuan Shikai indirectly led Shen Congwen and many other young Hunan boys to join the army. Better known on the internet, apparently, for his relationship with the courtesan Xiao Fengxian 小鳳仙.

According to the entry on Xinhua books, Xiao Fengxian was a Mongolian orphan from Hangzhou who had by age 16 taken up residence at a bordello 妓院 in Beijing. It was good Xiao Fengxian who helped General Cai escape Yuan Shikai's clutches in Beijing to return to the southwest where he would successfully raise up an army to oppose Yuan's scheme to establish a new monarchy by signing his nation away to the Japanese. General Cai was successful, and Yuan's plans were toppled, but Cai himself was to die within the same year of the lung disease that had long plagued him. Xiao Fengxian, waiting patiently in Beijing, was devasted. She sent down to his funeral a pair of elegiac couplets 挽聯:

不幸周郎竟短命，早知李靖是英雄。

and

萬裏南天鵬翼，直上扶搖，那堪憂患余生，萍水姻緣終一夢；

幾年北地胭脂，自愁淪落，贏得英雄知己，桃花顏色亦千秋。

Later in life Xiao Fengxian left prostitution to become a common secretary, then wife of another general, then an impoverished widow, and finally a kindergarden teacher for the new Communist government. She died around age 60, says Xinghua. Her life was the subject of a 1953 movie ; see Marked Women, p. 99-100 for other revolutionary prostitutes.

In September, 2008 the aging Hong Kong actor Damien Lau and younger actress Kathy Chau played Cao E and Xiao Fengxiang for a new soap opera version of this story.