Her father was the Chinese diplomat Yü Keng [fr]; and her mother was Louisa Pierson, who was herself the half-Chinese daughter of a Boston merchant working in Shanghai.

Der Ling's father Yü Keng [note 1] was a member of the Hanjun Plain White Banner Corps, and according to his daughter he was a Lord.

He was known for his progressive, reformist views; for his determination to educate his children, including the girls, in western schools, which was highly unusual in their generation; and for his unvarying support of the Empress Dowager Cixi.

While a young girl, she travelled with her father to Rome, and received papal blessing by the hand of Pope Leo XIII during a private meeting.

Der Ling had a brother, John Yu Shuinling, who studied photography in France and later took the only photographs of Empress Dowager Cixi still in existence.

[5] Using the title of Princess, which would create controversy for her in both China and the United States in the future, Der Ling wrote of her experiences in court in her memoir Two Years in the Forbidden City, which was published in 1911.

In this book, Cixi is not the monster of depravity depicted in the popular press and in the second and third hand accounts left by foreigners who had lived in Beijing, but an aging woman who loved beautiful things, had many regrets about the past and the way she had dealt with the many crises of her long reign, and apparently trusted Der Ling enough to share many memories and opinions with her.