Hu Sanniang is a character in the novel Water Margin. Wikidata names her Hu Sanniang. The same materials also give the nickname Yizhangqing and the star name Dihuixing. Neither the nickname nor the star name replaces the title. This entry calls her one of the three women commanders of Liangshan, and the story is set in the Great Song.[1][2]
In battle
She is the daughter of the lord of Hu manor and the younger sister of Hu Cheng, the Flying Tiger. She was betrothed to Zhu Biao. She fights with a pair of sun-and-moon swords and can take prisoners with a rope from the saddle. When Song Jiang attacked Zhu manor, Hu manor sent troops to help. Her rope took Wang Ying, Qin Ming, and others one after another, and for a time no one on Liangshan dared to meet her. Song Jiang sent Lin Chong. Lin Chong captured her, and Song Jiang gave her to his father, Lord Song, to watch. Hu Cheng then made peace, agreeing that anyone from Zhu manor who fled to Hu manor would be bound and sent to Liangshan, in exchange for Hu Sanniang.[2]
On the mountain, and her death
After Zhu manor was destroyed she took Lord Song as an adoptive father and became Song Jiang's sworn younger sister. The article calls her the first woman commander of Liangshan. Song Jiang matched her with Wang Ying. Husband and wife together handled the internal affairs of the Liangshan forces, and she ranked fifty-ninth. In the later campaign against Fang La, Zheng Biao killed Wang Ying. She went to take revenge and was struck from her horse by a stone bullet Zheng Biao threw. She died and was posthumously titled Lady of Huayang commandery.[2]
A few further notes in the article
The article says that in chapter 55, fighting Huyan Zhuo, she tells the Hua general to rest and watch her take the man, that in chapter 51 she bows her thanks when Song Jiang makes the match, and that she joins the oath at the great assembly. The 120-chapter version adds a line in the Tian Hu campaign: when Qiong Ying spears Wang Ying in the thigh, Hu Sanniang curses her. In earlier sources the name Yizhangqing is not this woman. In the Eulogies of Song Jiang's Thirty-Six it appears in the verse for Yan Qing, and the Anecdotes of the Xuanhe Reign of the Great Song has a Yizhangqing Zhang Heng. The article also lists performers in several films and television versions. Those names are not copied out here.[2]