Yù Délíng 裕德菱 (ca. 1875–1944), romanized in her own publications as Der Ling or Princess Der Ling, was a Manchu noblewoman of the Bordered Yellow Banner and memoirist. Her father, 裕庚 Yù Gēng, served as Chinese Minister to Japan (1895–1899) and to France (1899–1903). Growing up in Tokyo and Paris, Yù Délíng and her sister Rónglíng 容齡 acquired European languages and were exposed to Western culture; Yù Délíng later claimed to have studied dance briefly under Isadora Duncan in Paris.
After her father’s posting ended, the family returned to China in January 1903. Through imperial connection, the two sisters were summoned to the Qīng court and served as ladies-in-waiting to Empress Dowager Cíxī 慈禧太后 from 1903 to approximately 1905. During this period Yù Délíng became an intimate observer of court life, including audiences, theatrical performances, the Empress Dowager’s personality, and the late Qīng political atmosphere. She left court when her father’s health declined.
In 1907 she married Thaddeus White, an American diplomat stationed in China, and became a naturalized American citizen. She subsequently lived in the United States and wrote a series of English-language memoirs about Cíxī’s court: Two Years in the Forbidden City (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1911), Imperial Incense (1933), Son of Heaven (1935), and others. Her books shaped Western popular perception of Empress Dowager Cíxī for much of the twentieth century, though they have been critiqued by modern scholars for factual embellishments and self-promotion.
The Chinese-language text Qīng Gōngjìn Èr Nián Jì 清宮禁二年記 (KR4k0203) is a Chinese-language version of Two Years in the Forbidden City, likely produced in the early Republican period. Her birth year is often given as 1875 but some sources suggest ca. 1877–1880; the uncertainty reflects the common problem of date-recording for Qīng Manchu women.
CBDB: not identified. No DILA authority record (non-Buddhist figure).