We are told that through cruel manipulations, including strangulating her own infant daughter to falsely implicate Gaozong's then current barren empress, Wu Zetian replaced her as empress in 657 and dominated the rest of Gaozong's reign. Japanese modern statue of Kannon commemorating I always think that's the most interesting things about primary sources - the bias. All in all, Wus policies seem less scandalous to us than they did to contemporaries, and her reputation has improved considerably in recent decades. Emily Mark studied history and philosophy at Tianjin University, China and English at SUNY New Paltz, NY. Patronage of Buddhism. It was Lu Zhi who, in 194 B.C., wreaked revenge on a rival by gouging out her eyes, amputating her arms and legs, and forcing her to drink acid that destroyed her vocal chords. Her travel writing debuts in Timeless Travels Magazine. The Tang emperor Taizong was the first to promote Wu, whom he gave the nickname Fair Flatterera reference not to her personal qualities but to the lyrics of a popular song of the day. It is a challenge to recover real people from this morass of bias. Cold, ruthless, and ambitious, the Han dynasty dowager murdered her rival, the beautiful concubine Lady Qi, by amputating all her limbs, turning her into a human swine and leaving her to die in a cesspit. Princess Taiping put an end to her plans when she had Wei and her family murdered and put her brother Ruizong on the throne. Her reign was peaceful and prosperous; she introduced the meritocratic system of entrance examinations for the imperial bureaucracy that survived into the 20th century, avoided wars and welcomed ambassadors from as far away as the Byzantine Empire. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Web. Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Hauppauge : Nova Science Publishers, 2003; Richard Guisso, Wu Tse-Tien and the Politics of Legitimation in Tang China. Anyone she suspected of disloyalty, for any reason, was banished or executed. For centuries she was excoriated by Chinese historians as an offender against a way of life. Her mother ne Yang was of aristocratic birth with mixed Chinese and Turkic blood, the result of generations of intermarriage when five nomadic tribes overran north China and founded dynasties in the 4th to 6th centuries. Wei had her father appointed Chief Minister to her husband and tried to push through other measures favoring her family. She ruled China with complete authority and no one dared to challenge her when she was in control. Amherst : Prometheus Books, 1990; T.H. Complete List of Included Worksheets Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document. From 697 onward she found it so diffi-cult to win support that she attempted to return the throne to her son Zhongzong. . The mute and limbless concubine was then tossed into a cesspit in the palace with the swine. https://www.worldhistory.org/Wu_Zetian/. Ouyang, Xiu. Historian Kelly Carlton writes: Wu had a petition box made, which originally contained four slots: one for men to recommend themselves as officials; one where citizens might openly and anonymously criticize court decisions; one to report the supernatural, strange omens, and secret plots, and one to file accusations and grievances. The Fall of Kaifeng [ edit] In 1126, Emperor Huizong abdicated in favor of his son, Emperor Qinzong, the elder brother of Gaozong. In their place, she appointed intellectuals and talented bureaucrats without regard to family status or connections. Wu (she is always known by her surname) has every claim to be considered a great empress. The historians always portray Wu as ruthless, conniving, scheming, and bloodthirsty, and she may have been all of these things, she may have even murdered her daughter to gain the throne, but any of these claims should only be accepted after considering their source. Controversial ruler of Tang China who dominated Chinese politics for half a century, first as empress, then as empress-dowager, and finally as emperor of the Zhou Dynasty (690705) that she founded . A Japanese example: In the late 7th century, Japans Emperor Shomu and Empress Komyo both were involved in Buddhist buildings. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. One critic, the poet Luo Binwang, portrayed Wu as little short of an enchantressAll fell before her moth brows. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Wus memorial tablet, which stands near her tomb, was erected during her years as empress in the expectation that her successors would compose a magnificent epitaph for it. Empress Dowager. C.P. The Chinese TV series Women of the Tang Dynasty (2013) featured the actress Hui Yinghong as Wu Zetian and was very popular, attesting to the continued interest in China's first and only female ruler. It seems possible that the fate ascribed to Wang and the Pure Concubine was a chroniclers invention, intended to link Wu to the worst monster in Chinas history. The Woman Who Discovered Printing. Cookie Settings, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too., as we have already had cause to note in this blog, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. Meanwhile, the Turks invaded Gansu, and the Tibetans posed a threat to Chinese possessions in Central Asia. Swedens fascinating Queen Christina was nearly as infamous for eschewing her sidesaddle and riding in breeches as she was for the more momentous decision that she took to convert to Catholicismwhile mustering her troops in 1588 as the Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel, even Elizabeth I felt constrained to begin a morale-boosting address with a denial of her sex: I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.. Determining the truth about this welter of innuendo is all but impossible, and matters are complicated by the fact that little is known of Wus earliest years. Sources about Wu Zetian's life are a hodgepodge, which some condemning her as the devil himself and others testifying she was an absolute angel. This spy system served her well in giving her early warning of any plots in the making and enabled her to take care of threats to her reign before they became actual problems. In 690, she declared herself emperor after deposing her sons and founding her own dynastyZhou. Functioning in a male-oriented patriarchy, Wu Zetian was painstakingly aware of the gender taboos she had to break in political ideology and social norm. Princess Taiping had shielded Li Longji from her mother when he was young and supported him in his efforts to take the throne. In Chinese mythology , Huang-Di (pronounced hoo-arng-DEE), also k, Ho-shen One explanation for Wus success is that she listened. Ruthless and decisive, she stabilized and consolidated the Tang dynasty at a time when it appeared to be crumblinga significant achievement, since the Tang period is reckoned the golden age of Chinese civilization. To entrench her biological family as the imperial house, she bestowed imperial honors to her ancestors through posthumous enthronement and constructed seven temples for imperial sacrifices. Bellingham, WA: Center for Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 1978. Picking through the bias to try to get to the real story is always fascinating and - in my mind - fun. Submitted by Emily Mark, published on 17 March 2016. Lady Wu played the role of the shy, respectable emperor's wife well in public but, behind the scenes, she was the actual power. However, the date of retrieval is often important. After Gaozongs death, in 683, she remained the power behind the throne as dowager empress, manipulating a succession of her sons before, in 690, ordering the last of them to abdicate and taking power herself. The most serious charges against Wu are handily summarized in Mary Andersons collection of imperial scuttlebutt, Hidden Power, which reports that she wiped out twelve collateral branches of the Tang clan and had the heads of two rebellious princes hacked off and brought to her in her palace. "The Reigns of the Empress Wu, Chung-tsung and Jui-tsung," in Denis Twitchett, ed., Cambridge History of China. With a heart like a serpent and a nature like that of a wolf, one contemporary summed up, she favored evil sycophants and destroyed good and loyal officials. A small sampling of the empresss other crimes followed: She killed her sister, butchered her elder brothers, murdered the ruler, poisoned her mother. Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps, Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Sima, Guang. The story of Wu's murder of her daughter and the framing of Lady Wang to gain power is the most infamous and most often repeated incident of her life but actually there is no way of knowing if it happened as the historians recorded it. However, the date of retrieval is often important. She commissioned statues of the Maitreya in the Longmen Caves outside Luoyang. She also reformed the department of agriculture and the system of taxation by rewarding officials who produced the greatest amount of crops and taxed their people the least. Lady Wang had no children and Lady Xiao had a son and two daughters. (108). The most spectacular are the stone temples and statues chiseled into grottoes at Longmen, near her capital. Changing the dynasty was the easier task and was accomplished by securing the approval of the Confucian establishment. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. As we know, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Mike Dash From 655, when she became the empress of Emperor GaoZong of Tang (son of Emperor TaiZong), until 683 . Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China. To recruit a new class of administrators through competition, the examinations that had played only a secondary role in the recruitment and promotion of civil servants in Han times (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) She not only created many different cultural and political policies, but she displayed what a women could do in government. (3). She attracted the attention of many of the young men at court and one of these was the Prince Li Zhi, son of Taizong, who would become the next emperor, Gaozong. Your Privacy Rights The primary and secondary sources on Wu Zetian are abundant and problematic, reflecting an almost exclusively male authorship that has portrayed her as a beautiful, calculating, brutal woman who ruled China as the only woman emperor in name and in fact. Even today, Wu remains infamous for the spectacularly ruthless way in which she supposedly disposed of Gaozongs first wife, the empress Wang, and a senior and more favored consort known as the Pure Concubine. Thus the Wu family was now elevated to the imperial house. This particular minister was silenced but that did not silence the rest; they just were more careful not to speak their mind in front of her. The only woman ever to rule as emperor of China, Wu Zhao (Wu ZeTian) was born in 624 C.E. As an effective woman ruler, she challenged the traditional patriarchical dominance of power, state, sovereignty, monarchy, and political ideology. The Analects of Confucius Primary Source Activity - Google Drive - Print & Digital. Empress Lu Zhi (241-180 B.C.) World History Publishing is a non-profit company registered in the United Kingdom. The area around Changan could not produce the amount of food required to feed the court and garri-sons, and the transportation of grain up the Yellow River, traversing the Sanmen rapids, was exceptionally expensive. "Empress Wu and Proto-Feminist Sentiments in T'ang China," in Frederick P. Brandauer and Chn-chieh Huang, eds., Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China. As early as 660 CE, Wu had organized a secret police force and spies in the court and throughout the country. 3, no. Thereafter the empress favored Confucianism. Thank you! A history known as the Comprehensive Mirror records that, during the 690s, 36 senior bureaucrats were executed or forced to commit suicide, and a thousand members of their families enslaved. Original image by Unknown. In 705, Wu Zetian's grandson, the later Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712756), slaughtered the Zhang brothers in spite of Wu Zetian's protest and forced her to return the Li-Tang imperial family to power.