Nellie Yu Roung Ling

Nellie Yu Roung Ling (; 188216 January 1973), also spelt Nelly, was a Hanjun Plain White bannerwoman and dancer, who is considered "the first modern dancer of China". She was the younger daughter of Yu Keng and Louisa Pierson, the other one being Lizzie Yu Der Ling. Although not a member of the Qing imperial family, Roung Ling was given the title of "" while serving as a lady-in-waiting for Empress Dowager Cixi. She was also known as Yu Roon(g) Ling, especially in the works of her sister Der Ling.

Early life Roung Ling in butterfly dress during her performance of Rose and Butterfly in Paris, 1902. Born in an upper-class family, to a Chinese father and a Chinese-American mother who was the daughter of an American naval officer. The Yu sisters, like their two brothers Charles Yu Hsingling and John Yu Shuinling, received Western education in American missionary school—then an almost unheard-of proceeding amongst high Manchu officials—and were fluent in English. The British diplomat Sir Robert Hart described them as "a noisy family of English-speaking children, were fluent also in Japanese and French".

In 1895, Roung Ling's father Yu Keng was appointed minister to Japan, he later took his family there. It was in Japan she discovered her vocation for dance, where she gave an impromptu performance of a Japanese dance (crane-tortoise) she had learned from a servant, before the assembled Japanese dignitaries.

In 1899, Roung Ling left for France with her father for taking up his new post as minister-plenipotentiary to the French Third Republic. In Paris, she was placed in charge of the sisters of the Sacred Heart Convent School located at 77 Rue de Varenne.

The Yu siblings led a cosmopolitan life in Paris, they socialised, frequented the theatre and performed at their parents' parties. The weekly magazine reported that the four children of Minister Yu Keng "superbly performed" the English comedy in three acts, Sweet Lavender, The Yu couple gave their daughters unheard-of freedom to enjoy European-style ballroom dancing with close body contact with foreign men. Their lifestyle caused outrage for other Manchu mission officials, the family was denounced to the throne. But the Empress Dowager liked what they were doing and waited impatiently for their return. Roung Ling also got the opportunity to study modern dance with Isadora Duncan. For the latter she improvised a few dance steps during their first meeting, Duncan was deeply impressed by her talent and decided to teach her for free; she thus became one of the first Chinese to learn Western choreography. The French writer Marc Chadourne called her the emperor's "Saint Helena"; years later, she told the former with melancholy, that the emperor had proposed to her to be his concubine.

Roung Ling temporarily moved to Shanghai in 1905 due to her father's illness. "It is amusing now to think of those days", she recalled almost twenty years later, in 1926, "I was so young and so little that I could not possibly wear the beautiful and elaborate Manchu head dress and without it the court costume wasn't complete; so they dressed me in boy's clothes. I was glad because they were so much more comfortable to wear but still it took more than an hour every morning to have my hair dressed. We had to get up early, always by half past six or seven o'clock to be ready to go to the empress' apartments to wish her 'good morning'. [...] I always went to audiences with the empress. It was quite a long way to go in the palace; but it was easy for me in my boy's clothes to get about. I used to stand or sit on the floor behind a screen where I could hear everything, but of course I was too young to understand much of what was said." and was counsellor in the office of the Republican president with the rank of general. During the Republican era (1912–1949), she was appointed Mistress of Ceremonies to President Li Yuan-hung, and the couple enjoyed a prominent position in Peking high society.

During the 1920s, she organised numerous charity performances and participated in many other charity events. In 1921, she gave a speech in English about her life in the Manchu imperial court at the Teng Shih K'ou Congregational Church, in aid of the "School for Poor Children" charity funds.

The American writer Grace Seton-Thompson met Roung Ling while being greeted in a public audience with President Li Yuan-hung. "The event was organised by Madame Dan, mistress of ceremonies to the president. She is also Madame President's contact with the diplomatic circles in Peking", Thompson wrote in her travelogue Chinese Lanterns; "she skillfully combines the elegance of the West and the nobility of the East, forming a charm beyond imagination. [...] But, these are not all the factors that make up her personality. The 'secret' lies in her femininity from the inside out, in a warm and loving heart. Those cumbersome rituals actually take up very little of her time. She has devoted her life to charity, which has almost become a habit."

In addition to charitable activities, Roung Ling was involved in English teaching projects and a fashion design programme; for the latter she founded China's first women's clothing design research society. She also acted as hostess for an exhibition of excavated textiles and robes titled Marco Polo's invitation. The British writer Harold Acton acknowledged Roung Ling's pivotal cultural role in the new Republic in his book Memoirs of an Aesthete.

In the mid 1920s she expressed her desire to become a film actress, but that dream was not realised.

In 1926, the American diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray filmed a three-minute sequence of Roung Ling performing a "Sword Dance" in front of the Temple of Heaven.

In 1930, she published in English a historical novella about the Fragrant Concubine of the Qianlong Emperor titled Hsiang Fei: A Love Story of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung. A second edition was released in 1934. In 1936, she wrote a foreword for the Chinese translation of Der Ling's Imperial Incense, at the invitation of its translator .

After the communist takeover of China in 1949, Roung Ling and her husband managed by various strategies to negotiate their survival during the early years of Mao's regime. After an interview in April 1957, the photojournalist Zhang Zudao gave a description of his first impression of Roung Ling which shed some light on her later life: "She has a well-featured face, no wrinkles except for the forehead. Bright eyes, fair skin, she is of well-proportioned, medium stature, with a tidy haircut with both sides tucked neatly behind the ears. A thin coat of face powder and lipstick, close-fitting black velvet dress in Chinese style with shiny antique silver buttons, making her look elegant especially in a 'workerised, peasantised and soldierised' society where the monotonous short hair for everyman, pigtails for everywoman and bluish-grey uniform for everyone."

She penned a memoir titled (, or more idiomatically, 'Memoir of My Life at the Manchu Imperial Court'), which was published in 1957 recounting her early years in the imperial palace as a lady-in-waiting. It was a bestseller when it was published, and was later severely criticised for its "propaganda of the Four Olds".

At the height of the sociopolitical purge movement of Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), labelled a symbol of "feudalism, bourgeoisie and revisionism" due to her early years in France and the imperial Qing court, and the social status she held during the Republican era, she was dragged from her apartment by a group of Red Guards who broke both her legs as a symbolic action. She had to live in a dilapidated single-storey bungalow because of the forcible occupation of her residence by a residents' committee.

The Dan couple had no children of their own, but left an adopted daughter, Lydia Dan (, 1915–2002; the future Lydia na Ranong []), whose biological father was Wang Tseng Sze (, 1890–1944), the first secretary of the Chinese Legation in Paris during the 1920s. Lydia married Chok na Ranong and became a confidante of senior royals of Bangkok.

Publications Hsiang Fei: A Love Story of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung, Peiping: The Yu Lien Press, 1930 (second edition 1934; foreword by Hardy Jowett) Qinggong suoji (, idiomatic translation: 'Memoir of My Life at the Manchu Imperial Court'), Beijing: Beijing Publishing House, 1957

In popular culture The Yu sisters' life in the imperial court was dramatised in the 2006 television series Princess Der Ling, in which Roung Ling was portrayed by Sun Yifei.