Huiqiao Yao is originally from Beijing, China. Now she is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in pre-modern Chinese literature and intellectual history. She received her BA in Chinese language and literature from Renmin University of China and got her Master's degree in premodern Chinese literature from Columbia University. Her MA thesis focuses on the discourse of demons and the ambiguous magical identity of Auntie Sheng in The Three Sui Quash the Demon's Revolt 三遂平妖傳.

Currently, she is completing her dissertation entitled "Popularizing the Sage: Wang Yangming and Vernacular Confucian Hagiographies in Late Imperial China," which focuses on the legacy depicted in the biographies of various genres of the late-Ming philosopher Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472-1529). By characterizing a variety of biographical writings about him as “vernacular Confucian hagiographies”—including vernacular stories, illustrated manuals, lineage records, chronicles, plays, and recorded sayings—she highlights the religious dynamics underlying these seemingly secular cultural products, drawing attention to a process of proselytization in the Confucian tradition similar to the promotion of Buddhist and Daoist figures through print and other media. By juxtaposing textual and visual presentations of Wang, for instance, she demonstrates how illustrated manuals simultaneously elevated Wang as a Confucian sage and popularized him, so that he could be admired by people across different social strata. As the first monograph that reconstructs the apotheosis of Wang in his early reception history, this interdisciplinary work sheds new light on the interaction between elite and popular literature and between the “three teachings” during late imperial China, contributing to our understanding of the booming print culture of the late Ming. 

Apart from her research, she writes and translates poetry in both Chinese and English as well as listens to and writes comments on Japanese Enka 演歌 music.