Wu Zhao: China's Only Woman Emperor 0321394267, 9780321394262

Citation preview

Library eft World Biography

China’s Woman Emperor

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N. Hari Rothschild

Series Editor

Peter N. Steams

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Wu Zhao

The Empire under Wu Zhao

N. H a r r y Roths ch ild U niversity o f N o rth F lo rid a

Wu Zhao C h in a ’s Only Woman Emperor

T h e L ib ra ry o f W o rld Biography Series E ditor: Peter N. Stearns

New York San Francisco Boston London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore Madrid M exico City Munich Paris Cape Town Hong Kong Montreal

PAUL ROBESON LfBRARY

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Janet Lanphier Executive/Marketing Manager: Sue Westmoreland Production Coordinator: Scarlett Lindsay Senior Cover Designer/Manager: Nancy Danahy Cover Photo: Wu Zhao. Image in public domain. Frontispiece Image: © Pearson Education Manufacturing Manager: M ary Fischer Electronic Page Makeup: Alison Barth Burgoyne Printer and Binder: R.R. Donnelley and Sons Company, Harrisonburg Cover Printer: Coral Graphic Services, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rothschild, N . Harry. Wu Zhao : China’s only woman emperor / N. Harry Rothschild. — 1st ed. p. cm. - (Library of world biography) Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-321-39426-2 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-321-39426-7 (alk. paper) 1. Wu hou, Empress of China, 624-705. 2. Empresses—China— Biography. I. Title. II. Title: China’s only female emperor. D S749.42.W 8R68 2008 9 5 1'.0 1 7 092-d c22

2007045370

[B] Copyright © 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. N o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States. Please visit our website at www.ablongman.com ISBN-13: 978-0-321-39426-2 ISBN-10: 0-321-39426-7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10—DO H — 10 09 08 07

Editor’s Preface

vii

Author’s Preface

ix

Genealogies o f the House o f Tang and the House o f Wu

xvii

I

What’s in a Name?

1

II

Historical Preconditions for the Ascent of a Woman Emperor: Steppe Culture, the Silk Road, and Buddhism

1\

III

From the Sichuan Countryside to the Inner Palace

17

IV

Empress Wu: A Changing of the Guard

37

V

The Two Sages

49

VI

Celestial Empress and Grand Dowager

65

VII

Wu Zhao as Lover: Lady of Perfect Satisfaction

93

VIII

Sage Mother Rising

103

IX

Queen of Terror

125

X

Bodhisattva of Mercy

137

XI

Emperor of the Zhou Dynasty

157

XII

Octogenarian in Retreat: Succession, Factionalism, and Craneriding in the Final Years

181

Conclusion: The Vain Quest for Wu Zhao

205

A Note on the Sources

215

Chronology

221

Glossary

223

Index

231

Editor preface

"Biography is history seen through the prism o f a person."

—Louis F is c h e r It is often challenging to identify the roles and experiences of in­ dividuals in world history. Larger forces predominate. Yet biog­ raphy provides important access to world history. It shows how individuals helped shape the society around them. Biography also offers concrete illustrations of larger patterns in political and intellectual life, in family life, and in the economy. The Longman Library of World Biography series seeks to capture the individuality and drama that mark human character. It deals with individuals operating in one of the main periods of world history, while also reflecting issues in the particular society around them. Here, the individual illustrates larger themes of time and place. The interplay between the personal and the gen­ eral is always the key to using biography in history, and world history is no exception. Always, too, there is the question of personal agency: how much do individuals, even great ones, shape their own lives and environment, and how much are they shaped by the world around them? Peter N. Stea rn s

Authons If reface

What’s in a Source? Wu Zhao (624-705), the only woman to become emperor of China, was a nonesuch, a singular and striking figure. Fraught with drama, murder, intrigue, mysticism, deception, sex, and madness, her story is both wildly improbable and highly com­ pelling: a fiercely ambitious woman’s stunning ascent from her early years of provincial obscurity as the second daughter of a lumber merchant to her enthronement as emperor of the vast Chinese nation. Though Chinese history is filled with empresses, the wives of ruling emperors, and even powerful dowagers, widowed empresses who sometimes held sway over weak sons who sat on the throne, neither any woman before her nor any woman since has occupied this position at the very apex of po­ litical power. Tracing the tangled course of her life sheds vital light on the nature of court, society, and gender relations, and on the roles of ritual, symbol, and aesthetics in imperial politics in traditional China. The biographer who would tell this story must sift through a tremendous volume of material written on Wu Zhao, sources both primary and secondary, Confucian and Buddhist, Chinese and Western. Despite this abundance of material, as an histori­ cal figure Wu Zhao remains difficult to grasp. Standard histo­ ries, annals compiled by court order to chronicle the events of the past dynasties, often present her as an illegitimate, ruthless usurper who, surrounded by male favorites, ruled through nepo­ tism and terror. Flowery rhetoric written by her propagandists depicts her as a benevolent and sagacious maternal figure, a de­ vout Buddhist monarch, nurturing the children of her empire.

Various legends and myths of nebulous origin further cloud the picture. In these diverse sources one often finds glaring inconsis­ tencies. Even today, details pertaining to the most fundamental aspects of Wu Zhao’s life remain uncertain: Scholars still argue over when and where she was born. Researchers revisit the many questions that continue to swirl around Wu Zhao: Did she murder her own sons because they impeded her path to the throne? Was Li Hsien Wu Z hao’s son or the son of her elder sis­ ter? Did Wu Zhao poison her husband, Emperor Gaozong? Was her belief in Buddhism sincere? Was her Buddhist monk-adviser really her lover? H ow did a woman rise to become emperor in a patriarchal, Confucian society? What was the intent behind the Blank Stele erected upon Wu Z hao’s death? This biography at­ tempts to answer all of these questions. The three main sources that provide the better part of the material for this biography are standard histories: Liu X u ’s Old Tang History (completed in 945), Ouyang X iu ’s New Tang H is­ tory (completed in 1060), and Sima Guang’s Comprehensive Mirror for the Advancement o f Governance (completed in the 1080s). The Old Tang History contains a basic annals, a yearby-year, month-by-month account of significant events, ap­ pointments, and court events during her reign. It also includes biographies of Wu Zhao’s kinsmen and political allies like her monk-lover Xue Huaiyi. The New Tang History contains two separate accounts of Wu Zhao, the first a basic annals and the second in “ Biographies of Empresses and Consorts.” I also drew heavily upon court chronicles from 648 to 705 in the Compre­ hensive Mirror—records that are supplemented by important commentaries. Written more than two hundred years after Wu Zhao’s death, the standard histories, the Old Tang History, the New Tang History, and the Comprehensive Mirror issue from an era when politics and customs—especially customs regarding women— all changed radically. Liu X u ’s harsh verdict, delivered at the end o f his account of her reign was: “ Empress Wu’s conspiracy to seize the position of Empress Wang by choking the breath from her own swaddling infant; her mincing and pickling of enemies,

grinding their bones into dust—who would not claim this to be egregious?” Students familiar with Western history might be surprised at the nature of Chinese standard histories. Unlike Western histo­ ries, these sources contain a great deal of what is represented as dialogue between rulers and officials. For instance, the Compre­ hensive Mirror contains an extensive discussion between Wu Zhao and her court ministers in which the officials tried to dis­ credit the old empress’s favorites, the Zhang brothers, while convincing her to expediently cede her throne back to her son Li Xian. On the eve of exile, one minister warned Wu Zhao, “ Though I’m old and there’s only one chance in ten that I’ll return alive, there will m ost certainly come a day when Your Majesty will think o f me again.” “And when will that be?” Wu Zhao queried. “ On the day these two little brats [the Zhang brothers] bring about the calamitous end of your dynasty!”

Set down in the Comprehensive Mirror almost four centuries after the debate occurred, this dialogue is not a simple tran­ scription of an argument in Wu Zhao’s court. The biographer must always recall that official history had a political purpose. Court historians carefully doctored, crafted, and refined these dialogues with the aim of contrasting the moral integrity of principled ministers with the oily sycophancy of their backbit­ ing opponents. The Comprehensive Mirror includes the fiery speech of such an “ upright” minister, who browbeats Wu Zhao, saying, “ The legitimacy of your rule is built upon the founda­ tion of the House of Tang. Yet though in terms of his years and his virtue the Crown Prince is in full bloom, Your M ajesty has forgotten the deep bond of gratitude between mother and son and jealously keeps hold of his precious throne. H ow do you have the face to visit the ancestral temple of the House of Tang?” H ow reliable are these official sources? At times, these offi­ cial sources are patently unreliable. The Comprehensive Mirror described how Wu Zhao smothered her own newborn infant then blamed the child’s death on Empress Wang, who earlier had dandled the child for a few minutes. Did Wu Zhao feign

horror when she and Gaozong discovered their tiny child dead? Was a scribe concealed behind the curtains of the nursery taking notes as these horrific events unfolded? The biographer must be a detective. Later in the same text, during the trial of Empress Wang, the infant’s death is not even mentioned. Empress Wang was deposed not on the grounds of being a murderer, but largely because she had given Gaozong no heir. This leaves the reader to question whether the incident ever occurred at all. Fortunately, there are many sources outside of these three main histories that can help provide a more nuanced and bal­ anced perspective. Court records from Wu Zhao’s era are collated in the Essential Documents o f the Tang, a wide-ranging topical collection of important official documents from the Tang dynasty (618-907) compiled by Wang Pu in the late tenth century. The Complete Collection o f Tang Documents, compiled by Dong H ao in the mid-Qing dynasty (1644-1911), contains an array of documents contemporary to Wu Zhao, from elegant epitaphs to edicts announcing new reign eras to court memorials to prefaces for ceremonial manuals. The Complete Anthology o f Tang Poetry contains both verse written for and poems written by Wu Zhao. Buddhist documents remain from her era, contained both in the vast Taisho Tripitika—a massive compilation of Buddhist sutras, treatises and laws—and among the scrolls found in the Dunhuang caves. Local histories like Song M inqiu’s Treatise on Henan, written in the first half of the Song dynasty (960-1279), include accounts of events that occurred in Luoyang during Wu Zhao’s lifetime. Unofficial sources like the Taiping guangji, compiled by Li Fang during the early Song dynasty, also offer a rich repository for stories relating to Wu Zhao and her reign. These sources contain many documents attributed to Wu Zhao herself, and many others written by her supporters and propagandists. The Complete Collection o f Tang Documents alone provides four chapters of imperial edicts, imperial orders, essays, memorials, and epitaph inscriptions, all purportedly written by Wu Zhao. I also draw heavily on Regulations for Ministers, a largely unexplored but very important political treatise, and The Complete Anthology o f Tang Poetry, which contains 46 of her poems.

Essential Documents o f the Tang is a rich source for cere­ monies like the feng and sban rites, Buddhist prohibitions, and the construction and renaming of Buddhist temples. I have also drawn on Du You’s Comprehensive Institutions, a history from the late Tang that proved a valuable repository of court music and a useful source for the intense debate on the proper number of ancestral temples. Given the often-biased nature of the official histories, I have also looked to less obvious and orthodox sources. Unofficial sources like the Taiping guangji, a collection of miscellany from the Song dynasty, provide valuable popular perspectives and con­ tain fragments of many sources close to Wu Zhao’s period such as the Chaoye qianzai, D a Tang xinyu, and Sui-Tang jiahua. Some of the many episodes lifted from the Taiping guangji in­ clude the Royal Astrologer’s warning to Taizong that a “ female emperor” would supplant the Tang, descriptions of Buddhist master painter Weichi Yi’s works, and Di Renjie’s interpretation of Wu Z hao’s dream about a parrot with broken wings. Also included are stories of Ming Chongyan showcasing his magical talents for Gaozong, the sudden emergence of M ount Felicity, and the presentation of a clumsily wrought three-legged sunbird at Wu Z hao’s court. Some stories strain the limits of. credulity, such as the tale of the mysterious golden toad with the character “Wu” on its back in imperial vermilion or the story of a wildman who drank an entire crockpot of bean sauce in a single draught. The Taiping guangji also contains a seditious poem about the two flames and a mysterious ditty about a single strand of hemp cutting down the Heavenly Pivot. While the three main histories contain a negative bias against Wu Zhao, flowery praise written by literary masters to legitimize Wu Z hao’s political authority is just as problematic. When Wu Zhao established her own dynasty, one of her rhetoricians, Chen Z i’ang, gushed, “ As Sage Mother and Emperor o f the people, Your Majesty is benevolent and filial, reverent and honored, di­ vine and enlightened,” as recorded in the Complete Collection o f Tang Documents. Buddhist propaganda like the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra contains prophecies of a Buddhist monarch who would “ reign over the territory of a country with the body of a woman.” In his commentary on the Flower Garland

Sutra, Wu Zhao’s Buddhist supporter Fazang wrote, “ Saintly and divine, she [is] . . . infinitely good and infinitely beautiful, she displays the Ten Goodnesses beyond all limits.” On the in­ scription of the Coiling Dragon Terrace Stele that Wu Zhao erected for her parents, talented aesthete Li Qiao described the miraculous birth of the woman emperor’s father amidst fivecolored mists and auspicious vapors. This inscription, found in the Complete Collection o f Tang Documents, reflects an obvious effort on Wu Z hao’s part to exalt her own genealogy. Local histories also provided useful material. The Treatise on Henan focused upon place names in Luoyang, helped provide details about Phoenix Viewing Tower, the site of Wu Z hao’s death in 705. The Dengfeng County Annals contain stories about Wu Z hao’s poetry outing to Stony Torrents. Some sources contain rather dubious if colorful local lore, such as the story from Legends o f Mount Song of Wu Zhao hearing the bird warning against women drinking alcohol. Thus, a biographer is left to weigh the conflicting materials, blending the biased official histories, the Buddhist propaganda and prophecies, the fulsome memorials, and the tall tales from unofficial sources into a coherent narrative of Wu Zhao’s life and political career. While based on primary sources, this biog­ raphy does not contain footnotes or citations. I also avoided the tedious practice of prefacing each event or quote with, “ accord­ ing to the Comprehensive Mirror and Essential Documents o f the T an g . . . ” or “ the accounts in the Old Tang History and the Taiping guangji differ from the records in the New Tang History in that . . . ” At the end of this volume, A Note on the Sources provides further information on the way sources are employed. The Glossary indicates where in the historical records one can find major characters, peoples, and places.

Acknowledgments The guidance and wisdom of several prominent scholars from mainland China, specifically Hu Ji and Zhao Wenrun, both professors in the Department of History at Shaanxi Normal University in X i’an, have proved invaluable in the writing of this biography. Both scholars were very gracious with their time

and insights. Cheng Zheng of the Shaanxi Academy of Fine Arts, author of The Three Hundred Li Museum: Stone Carvings o f the Eighteen Tang Tombs, generously traveled with me to both Shunling, the tomb of Wu Z hao’s mother, and Qianling, the fu­ nerary park where both Gaozong and Wu Zhao are buried, dis­ cussing numerous legends and tales relating to each venue. Special thanks are due Suzanne Cahill, whose timely advice on early drafts greatly helped in shaping this project. Linda Cooke Johnson, too, offered valuable counsel, both in her con­ scientious editing and in helping frame the “Author’s Preface” and “Notes on the Sources.” A debt of gratitude is also due the other scholars chosen by Longman to review the draft of this biography, particularly Pamela Sayre, who took the time to edit the entire manuscript. I would also like to offer special thanks to Kami Smith, Ashleigh Dean, and Chris Sylvester for their gener­ ous assistance in editing the manuscript and offering valuable suggestions; and to David Wilson in the Center for Instructional Research and Technology at the University of North Florida, whose technical virtuosity was invaluable in preparing maps and charts. And thanks to Steven Robinson for allowing me to use his photograph of Fengxian Temple. Finally, I must thank Chengmei, my wife, and Viola Luolan, my daughter, for their encouragement, support, and ceaseless efforts to keep the irrepressible Liu Hurricane out of my study.

A Note Regarding Names With the exception of Li Hsien, whose name is written in the Wade-Giles system of romanization to distinguish him from his younger brother (or, rather, half-brother) Li Xian, all Chinese names herein have been written in pinyin. I have used the Chinese name for Mochuo, the Turkish khan who plagued Wu Zhao in the late 690s and first years of the eighth century, rather than Bag Chor or Qapaghan, as he is otherwise known. I have used Sanskrit names of Buddhist monks like Siksananda and Bodhiruci, rather than render them in pinyin. Chinese emperors are almost always known by posthumous temple names rather than personal names. Herein, I use posthu­ mous temple names for the first three Tang emperors, Gaozu

(High Progenitor), Taizong (Grand Ancestor), and Gaozong (High Ancestor). However, in Wu Z hao’s case and for her two sons, Li Xian and Li Dan, both of whom serve as emperor in the course of the narrative, I have chosen to use their personal names. I use Wu Z hao’s self-determined personal name rather than her posthu­ mous title because to call her Empress Wu, Wu Zetian or Empress Conforming to Heaven simply serves to recast her, following Confucian “rectification of names,” as a lesser being and to deni­ grate her remarkable career. I keep the personal names of Li Xian and Li Dan because using their personal names rather than more solemn and formal posthumous names reflects their junior status, not only as sons to a redoubtable mother but in the eyes of history. N . H a r r y R o t h s c h il d

Genealogies of the House of Tang and the House of Wu E

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S'0 . %j^ntmlJ£4_byJli§^|e:^ This assessment is both jm km d and unfair. Certainly, Gaozong was aware o f his limitations and of the capability of Wu Zhao, her keen wit, her surpassing intelligence, and her political acumen. During G ao­ zong’s life, however, Wu Zhao never wielded total authority, nor did she independently command the imperial court. Rather, Gaozong and Wu Zhao developed a genuine partnership, shar­ ing the ponderous responsibility of imperial authority. As with most partnerships, the two members of the imperial couple were not always in perfect accord. At times, they worked at cross purposes and had serious conflicts. Almost invariably, Wu Zhao won these struggles of power and will. G aozojigJiadjJrjuX i^m stitutiaa. Before he reached his thir­ tieth birthday, on the pretext that the empire was.aU>eace_3Q£L -thete_were no^gressingflfeirs to warrant anxiety, he began to hold court e^OWJthsp-dayrather than>e y e £ y 4 ^ In fact, it was due to his declining health. The histories record a solar eclipse as the imperial cortege left Bingzhou in 660 and headed to Luoyang, recently designated the Eastern Capital. This is the his­ torians’ way of saying that the male Emperor, the sun, had

fallen under the umbra of the Empress. N ot long after the impe­ rial train reached Luoyang, Gaozong was stricken by a serious illness that would plague him for decades to come. Assailed by fever, his humors out o f kilter, the young Emperor’s head swelled, his eyes lost focus, and he became dizzy and disori­ ented. It appears that Gaozong had a stroke. Unable to attend to his public duties as Emperor, he called upon the person he trusted most, Wu Zhao, to assist him. At this time, there was little alternative; they could not very well place the responsibili­ ties of state upon the eight-year-old Crown Prince Li Hong. This opened up the opportunity for Wu Zhao’s direct involve­ ment in the public, male arena. Once she entered this arena, she did not leave. Until Gaozong’s death in 683, she often sat be­ hind a curtain in the audience hall and jointly deliberated upon administrative decisions with her husband. With her broad learning, intelligence, and consummate skill in understanding and manipulating people, Wu Zhao proved a very capable politician. Still, Gaozong was not her puppet, and she never singlehandedly dominated the court. During her first decade as Em­ press, there is little evidence to show that she played a major hand in military affairs and foreign policy, such as the massive campaigns against Korea in the 660s. Instead, she shared politi­ cal authority with Gaozong. Because both made decisions and wielded political influence, people of the time called the couple the “Two Sages.” Back in antiquity, the first two kings of the Zhou dynasty, the classical era from which Wu Zhao would later draw her dynastic name, were also known as the “Two Sages.” Confucian scholars have harshly criticized Wu Zhao, citing her public political involvement as evidence that she was a woman of bald ambition who coveted power. Alternatively, one could argue that she was motivated by a desire to relieve G ao­ zong’s burden, a wife bent on protecting her ailing husband from the mental and emotional strain of his lofty office, while carrying out his wishes and policies. Gaozong was certainly not an invalid. Though his spells of illness were intense and recurring, they generally only lasted several weeks to a month. Less than two months after he fell ill

in Bingzhou, he was back in the saddle, out on a hunt to the southwest of Luoyang. In 661, Gaozong wanted to personally command the campaign against Korea, but Wu Zhao, con­ cerned that the hostile northerly climate would prompt a recur­ rence of his illness, dissuaded him. Curiously, on this occasion and others, she influenced her husband by court memorial rather than private plea. Still, neither Gaozong’s illness nor their shared political du­ ties hindered their intimacy. In 662, Wu Zhao bore another son, Li Dan, and roughly two years later, at forty, she had a daugh­ ter, the Taiping Princess. She tenderly doted upon this last and youngest girl child, their only surviving daughter. Wu Zhao believed in prophecies and omens—particularly those that betokened her rising fortune. In 663, reports surfaced that a qilin, a Chinese unicorn, had been sighted to the northeast of Luoyang and, a few days later, that the beast had left an impres­ sion of its hoof before the newly constructed administrative and ritual heart of Luoyang, Hanyuan Palace. The qilin—Japanese Kirin Beer takes its name from this mythic creature—is a color­ ful hybrid with a dragon’s scales, a horse’s hooves, a wolf’s brow, and the tail of an ox. Believing that the auspicious ener­ gies of the extraordinary creature could be channeled into a name that redounded to her greater glory, she sponsored an edict that changed the reign name of the following year to Uni­ corn Virtue. In 665, the Royal Astrologer Li Shunfeng, the self­ same man who 17 years earlier had made a prophecy about a “ female ruler” in Taizong’s Inner Palace, designed a new “Uni­ corn Virtue calendar, which the Two Sages officially imple­ mented. Perhaps Wu Zhao had learned that this man’s advice had prevented Taizong from killing one-third of the imperial harem en masse, herself included! In this case, the omen, the appearance of an auspicious crea­ ture, was harmless, but sometimes her belief in the occult took on a more ominous aspect. As her father had back in Sichuan, she sometimes summoned magicians and miracle workers. In 664, Guo Xingzhen, a D aoist practitioner of the magical arts, began to visit her frequently in the Inner Palace. He was skilled in a sort of black magic used to overcome one’s enemies, arcana

not dissimilar to that which Wu Zhao had accused her former rival, Empress Wang, of using against her. Particularly within the walls of the imperial palace, use of such dark magic was a crime punishable by death. The Tang Code of laws states, “When sorcery is directed toward the emperor, all involved shall be punished by decapitation.” A eunuch reported Guo Xingzhen’s visits to the Inner Palace to Gaozong, who was infuriated. He secretly summoned Shangguan Yi, one of the few chief ministers not in Wu Zhao’s camp, to ask his advice. The minister replied, “ The August Empress is arrogant and unrestrained. Within the four seas, all are gravely concerned. I humbly request that you depose her.” Impulsive Gaozong, still in a pique, assented and ordered him to draft the edict. Once again, Wu Zhao was saved by the alacrity of her wide network of eyes and ears. The news reached her swiftly, and she rushed to find her husband sitting with a draft of the edict in hand. Confronted by his wife, in a trice Gaozong’s terrible re­ solve melted, softening into weak indulgence. Holding up the edict with cringing deference, he prevaricated, “This was never my intention. This is all due to Shangguan Yi’s instruction.” With that, he tore the edict of deposal to pieces. Her faithful ally X u Jingzong, ever prepared to precipitate the fall of his mistress’ enemies, wasted no time in presenting Gaozong a memorial implicating his fellow chief minister in a desperate plot to restore exiled former Crown Prince Li Zhong. According to his clever memorial, a decade earlier, the eunuch who had “ fabricated” the story of Wu Z hao’s sorcery had been a domestic in the household of the former Crown Prince at the same time Shangguan Yi had been Li Zhong’s adviser. In a des­ perate ploy to restore the old order, Shangguan Yi and the eu­ nuch had hatched this vile scheme to malign Wu Zhao by ac­ cusing her of practicing black magic. Gaozong unquestioningly accepted X u Jingzong’s interpretation of events. By imperial edict, Shangguan Yi’s estate was confiscated, he was impris­ oned, and shortly thereafter he died. His son, too, was impli­ cated and dispensed with in prison. Curiously, Shangguan Yi’s i nfa n t granddaughter, Wan’er was spared and made a palace

slave. Later this tiny girl would grow up to be a talented essay­ ist, poet, and official under Wu Z hao’s administration. N ot surprisingly,- a chill of terror gripped the court in the af­ termath of Shangguan Yi’s death. Those considered Shangguan Yi’s political allies were demoted and sent away from the capi­ tal. Gaozong’s ministers were increasingly hesitant to speak openly or to criticize any imperial decision. A year later, he turned to his ministers and asked them, in a manner that almost reflected hurt, “ With an open heart I seek your remonstrance, yet why is it that no one comes forward to remonstrate?” Li Ji, the sole member of the “ old guard” who had supported Wu Zhao’s bid to become Empress, answered with oily elegance, “ Because of Your M ajesty’s perfect goodness, there is no matter about which us humble ministers might remonstrate.” As news arrived in the provinces that the men who had sup­ ported him to become Crown Prince were being driven from court and killed, star-crossed Li Zhong had become progres­ sively taken by paranoia, dressing in his wife’s clothing and concealing himself. Eventually, word of his madness circulated in court, and he was downgraded to commoner and exiled to the deep Southland. There, when his alleged role in Shangguan Yi’s plot became known, he was forced to commit suicide. In respect to her own kinsmen, Wu Zhao had two contradic­ tory aims. On one hand, she wished to dissociate herself from past empresses and dowagers notorious for using their influence to stock the court with family members. On the other, she wanted to elevate the fortunes of the Wu clan, both living and dead, for she would lose face if all her kinsmen had neither rank nor title and were perceived as graceless and inelegant bump­ kins. To this end, she elevated her parents at every opportunity. However, her wish to raise up the living Wus was complicated by her pronounced dislike for her closest Wu kinsmen, her older half brothers and their children. To mark the felicitous occasion of her ascent to Empress, she invited her entire clan to a celebratory feast. At this juncture, her elder brothers and one nephew were serving as vice-ministers in the court. Recalling her shabby treatment at the hands of her

Wu in-laws in Bingzhou during her husband’s funeral, Wu Zhao’s mother Madame Yang, now grandly titled Lady of Rong, drunkenly exulted, “ Do the lot of you still recall the old days? How do you like things now?” Playing the role of the ideal Confucian minister with gusto, a cheeky grandnephew, whose official duty was keeping imperial bodyguards in good fettle, pointedly countered, “ A real official is appointed on the basis of merit, not family connections. That sort of station brings disaster, not honor.” The word for “ honor” he used in this rhetorical flourish was rong, the same as that in her title, Lady of Rong. The implication that her titles and status were dishonorable filled Wu Zhao’s mother with a seething rage, and after the banquet was over, the cantankerous grand dame insisted that her daughter settle scores that she might get back some of her own. On the pretext that she wished to avoid the appearance of nepotism, Wu Zhao had her half brothers and nephews de­ moted to provincial posts. This explains the timing of Wu Z hao’s Admonitions on Maternal Relatives. She could, in a sin­ gle swoop, banish loathed family members from the capital and present herself as a conscientious Empress bent on keeping her family from meddling in court politics. N ot acclimated to a re­ gion that most northerners found miasmal, one of her step­ brothers died not long after taking office among the mountains and swamps of the southwest. Wu Z hao’s younger sister died early on, but her relationships with her elder sister and her sister’s children proved both intri­ cate and prickly. Her elder sister’s husband, an official in the Ministry of Justice, died young, leaving her widowed with two children. When Wu Zhao entered Gaozong’s harem, this eye­ catching young widow frequently visited the Inner Palace, earn­ ing from the Emperor both an affectionate sobriquet, “ Beauty of the State,” and a title, Lady of Han. During Wu Zhao’s three successive pregnancies as Lady of Luminous Deportment, the Lady of Han became Gaozong’s favorite, Wu Zhao’s sexual body double. While this caused some sisterly tension, their combined sororal efforts prevented Gaozong from straying from Wu Zhao’s apartments during this critical juncture.

The Lady of Han passed away in the mid 660s. With grow­ ing interest, Gaozong had watched her daughter from her mar­ riage to-thefbffieial in the Ministry of Justice blossom into a lovely, nubile woman. After her mother’s death, Gaozong in­ vested this young woman as the Lady of Wei. On the pretext of visiting her aunt, the Empress, this beauty entered the Inner Palace with ever greater frequency and enjoyed Gaozong’s sex­ ual attentions. Thus, Gaozong bestowed his imperial favor upon Wu Z hao’s niece, Wu Z hao’s elder sister^ and Wu Zhao herself. The calculating Wu Zhao watched their rapture with growing alarm, knowing all too well that once Gaozong be­ came consumed with passion and lust these overheated emo­ tions would dictate his decisions. So when the middle-aged li­ oness, who had recently borne her sixth child, learned that Gaozong was considering bringing the young nymphet formally into the Inner Palace, she did not hesitate to act. In 666, after Gaozong returned from the grandest of imperial sacrifices, the feng and shan rites, at M ount Tai, Wu Zhao’s nephews, who as provincial officials had accompanied the impe­ rial progress, held a congratulatory banquet. Wu Zhao’s mother, M adame Yang, allowed her detested in-laws to use her residence to host the festivities. Mistakenly, the two nephews believed their decade serving as petty officials in the provinces had cooled the wrath of their aunt Wu Zhao and great-aunt, and that now, after hobnobbing with the Emperor and court officials on the journey to Mount Tai, their time had arrived, that they were on the verge of being recalled to court and wreathed in honors. Mother and daughter worked tandem. Wu Zhao saw this gala event as an opportunity to eliminate her younger rival. The Lady of Rong was a vindictive woman with a good memory who had long sought an occasion to destroy the grandnephews who twice had insulted her. Among the noble and beautiful in attendance was the Lady of Wei. Secretly, if we take the histories at their word, Wu Zhao added a toxic supplement to the meat filling of her dumplings, causing the young woman to die, suddenly and agonizingly. Im­ mediately, the Empress pointed an accusatory finger at the hosts, her nephews. After a summary trial they were found guilty and

executed. Posthumously, she changed their surnames from Wu to Viper, to distance herself, to sever any kin ties, and to avoid taint­ ing her precious name with their noxious and unlucky presence. One is left to imagine a scenario in which Wu Zhao executed this sinister design, or, indeed, whether or not the Lady of Wei’s untimely death truly was her doing. Perhaps, without attracting undue notice, the Empress casually wandered, clutching the deadly vial, through the milling ruck of kitchen domestics, until she found the platter earmarked for the Lady of Wei and then, deftly peeling back a loose dumpling wrapper, slipped the poison in unobtrusively. Unlikely, because at a Chinese meal individual dishes are not served. Rather, a variety of platters are placed on the table, and people help themselves. Perhaps they were seated close together and, with affected sweetness, the Empress picked up the fatal dumpling with her own chopsticks and proffered it to the Lady of Wei as a token of her friendship and esteem, a great honor the young woman could hardly decline. This seems implausible as such a scenario would likely implicate Wu Zhao. More probably, one of Wu Zhao’s close subordinates, a serving girl or attendant, did her mistress’ bidding. N ot yet feeling entirely vindicated, the Madame Yang asked her daughter to find a pretext to arrest Mrs. Shan, the wife of her eldest grandnephew, a woman she felt had treated her with par­ ticular contempt in the past. On a fabricated charge, Mrs. Shan was beaten with a whip of thorns until she died a grisly death, with patches of rent flesh dangling from her exposed bones. Wu Zhao’s remaining stepbrother, the last of Wu Shiyue’s living sons, was quietly killed in exile. To deflect suspicion of her involvement and to install a new Wu clan heir to attend to her father’s sacrifices, she bestowed the Wu surname and the honorific hereditary title Duke of Zhou upon Helan Minzhi, the brother of the deceased Lady of Wei. Confucian historians bent on vilifying Wu Zhao have manufac­ tured a scene in which she, at the funeral of the Lady of Wei, watched suspiciously as a tearful and distraught Gaozong com­ miserated with this younger brother of his dead favorite. When the youth glanced coldly in her direction, she said to herself, “This brat suspects me.” In this version of events, this single telling glance, coupled with her jealously at the youth’s moment

of shared grief with Gaozong, was more than ample fodder to spark in Wu Zhao an enmity toward the young man. And once her hatred Was-kindled, it generally was doused only after her enemy’s life was extinguished. Wu Z hao’s decision to make Helan Minzhi a Wu and Duke of Zhou after the funeral suggest this story was fabricated. Fur­ thermore, she supported the young man’s rise in court, placing him in charge of scholarly projects, collating histories and classi­ cal texts along with some of the most celebrated scholars of the day. Ungrateful, genuinely suspicious of and angry at Wu Zhao, dashing Helan Minzhi was much more interested in womaniz­ ing than in classical scholarship. The profligate seduced and ravaged the palace girls attending Wu Z hao’s daughter, the Taiping Princess. Then, ignoring the scandal, he raped a consort that Wu Zhao and Gaozong had handpicked for their firstborn, Crown Prince Li Hong. When his grandmother, the Lady of Rong, died in 670, rather than wearing appropriate mourning garments, the wayward Helan Minzhi continued to revel, hiring singing girls and entertainers. Giving him one last chance, Wu Zhao put him in charge of overseeing the construction of a Bud­ dhist statue that might offer her mother blessings in the after­ life. Flouting her orders, he appropriated the funds for further carousing and drinking. Thus he revenged his sister. Unable to further countenance such blatant disrespect to her recently deceased mother, Wu Zhao wrote a memorial outlining these crimes. Helan Minzhi was stripped of the Wu name and his noble titles and exiled to the distant southwest. Along the way, he hung himself from a tree branch with his horse’s reins. On the whole, Wu Zhao not only showed no particular favor to her Wu kinsmen, but for the most part she truly loathed them. Though some have remarked on her preternatural de­ tachment from human emotion, she was not detached in the least. Her relations with family members were not informed by abstract political ideals of the proper role for maternal relatives; they were intensely personal and emotional. Wu Zhao did, however, to the very end, remain a filial daughter, dutiful to both parents. When her mother passed away in 670, she was wracked with a deep sadness. With both

her siblings and parents gone, she was stricken by keen pangs of loneliness. Her mother was posthumously elevated to Loyal and Chaste Lady of Lii. By imperial mandate, all court officials and eminent women of state were ordered to go to her residence and shed tears of mourning. Her father was also bestowed with new honorific titles. She even transported his remains from dis­ tant Bingzhou so that her parents might be reunited in death. She constructed her mother’s funerary park, Shunling, on the scale of an imperial tomb near the city of Xianyang, where it re­ mains in the shadow of the modern-day X i’an-Xianyang Inter­ national Airport. The locals treat the tomb of M adame Yang with great respect. The walls are gone, and local peasants live, weed, plant, harvest, and shepherd milking goats among the 1,300-year-old statuary. Today date orchards and fields of veg­ etables surround the stone figures of stalwart ministers and aus­ picious animals flanking the spirit path that leads to the briarcovered tumulus where she is interred. These regal tomb guardians are seen as benevolent, luckbringing protectors. The massive pair of one-horned beasts are reputed to have scared off local brigands. Lucky rams secure both the blessing of Wu Z hao’s mother in the netherworld and the good fortune of country folk in this world. By far the most lore surrounds the stone lions. One legend claims that ever since the lions were carved, no hail has stricken the region. In one re­ lated local tale, a stone lion once rescued a carter from a mur­ derous bandit. Though the petrified man never saw the lion strike, the telltale blood of the robber adorned the stone lion’s mouth like lipstick of gore. The lion gently told the carter, “ If no further bad men come along, please smear my lips with oint­ ment from time to time.” It is also said that if there is a drought in the region, all the common folk need to do is send young maidens to wash the pair o f ten-foot-tall lions under the moon and stars. A local rhyme attests to the efficacy of this cleansing in alleviating a drought: Wash the lion’s head, water down the streets shall flow. Wash the lion’s body, soaking rains make the crops grow.

And even today, in the vicinity of Shunling, when young wives want a son or barren women want to conceive, they rub the

genitals of the male lion. Over the many centuries, myriad hands of hopeful countrywomen have worn the genitals a pol­ ished b la c k .'*'- '—_ As one of the Two Sages, Wu Zhao never shied from the po­ litical stage. In 662, when the titles of administrative bureaus and court officials were changed, she simultaneously changed the titles of the consorts within the Inner Palace. Though in the­ ory, this bureaucracy of women was not related to the bureau­ cracy of the central government, this measure created a seeming connection between the two. She altered the titles to make them sound as though they were “ bureaucratic,” akin to those of the ministers in the outer court. In the place of the old titles like Beauty, Talent, or Lady of the Precious Bevy, that clearly defined women as sexual companions for the Emperor’s pleasure, mid­ ranking concubines now bore titles such as Recipient from the Inner Chamber, Recipient of Edicts, or Guardian Immortal. These official-sounding titles suggested that women in the harem had formal duties like ministers in the outer court. Tacitly, this move helped to normalize her own increased political presence. The greatest and most public ceremonies of state performed during Gaozong’s 34 years as Emperor were the feng and shan sacrifices at M ount Tai, the easternmost of China’s five sacred mountains. These extraordinary rites were only performed in times of great peace and prosperity, when a worthy sovereign might broadcast to the empire and to neighboring lands a sense of cosmic harmony and order. These ceremonies publicly con­ firmed that Heaven had bestowed upon the ruler, or in this unique instance, rulers, the mandate to govern. Assuming a humble posture of ritual obeisance, the ruler offered sacrifices to Heaven and Earth to reciprocate the celestial blessings and terrestrial bounty they had so generously bestowed. Such styl­ ized modesty belied the grandiose and elaborate scale of the feng and shan ceremonies staged by the Two Sages. The rarest of imperial rites, the feng and shan have been per­ formed by only seven rulers in Chinese history. Often rulers were thwarted by long-winded court debates over proper cere­ monial form, adverse climatic or cosmic signs, barbarian inva­ sions, or a ruler’s fear that he was unworthy. Even during the

reign o f Taizong, the rites were discussed at length, yet never performed. Xu Jingzong had long encouraged Gaozong to perform these rites, both as a means to glorify his Empress and for the Emperor to place his own indelible mark upon history. After Tang armies subjugated the Western Turks in the early 660s, Gaozong had expanded the Tang empire from the Eastern Sea all the way to Persia. The empire reached its greatest extent with the conquest o f Koguryo in 668, though Tang forces were overextended and the periphery was not solidly garrisoned. Other court ministers joined X u Jingzong in urging Gaozong to carry out the grand rites. Midway through 664 he agreed, and a date was finally fixed for the first lunar month of 666. Though Wu Zhao sorely desired to participate, traditionally the Empress had no part in the feng and shan. Previously, the Em­ peror had played the central role while high officials performed secondary and tertiary rites. However, since no one had per­ formed the rites in centuries, the ceremonial procedures were not clear. As the procession headed to Mount Tai, Wu Zhao presented a formal petition to her husband requesting that she take part in the rites. Her timing was impeccable. H ad the request come ear­ lier, the issue of her participation would have been bandied about the outer court, creating a brouhaha and delaying the ceremonies. This formal petition sheds light on the nature of the Two Sages’ polity. The fact that she memorialized Gaozong showed that, at least in ceremonial form, she still recognized him as superior. In one segment of the petition, which showcases a brilliant balance of stylized humility and ornate prose, Wu Zhao argued: “ Heaven and Earth have their fixed positions. The virtues of obdurance and pliancy are distinct. Both classics and commen­ taries contain examples of how, in performing rites and cere­ monies, these differences are well heeded. According to ancient regulations, the shan sacrifices to the earth deity and to deceased imperial ancestresses at the square jade altar should be performed by high ministers. Yet according to the Confucian rites, this mixing of men and women is improper. Fortunately, the ritual protocol is not yet fixed. In extending ceremonial honors to for­ mer empresses, how can we use ministers and officials o f the outer court? For the Empress to present secondary offerings at

the jade altar is in accordance with the square orientation of the earth god. Presenting fragrant foods to the gods and ancestors in jade bowls is inrtrnth a duty for women of the inner apartments. I hereby petition that I lead the wives of high court officials to present libations and offerings in the shan rite.” In essence, Wu Zhao argued that as the shan rite would fea­ ture a sacrificial offering to Earth and to the deceased wives of the first two Tang emperors, it was her duty as First Lady of the empire and as a dutiful daughter-in-law to honor Earth and her illustrious ancestresses-in-law. After all, symbolically, the Earth is the Emperor’s mother and Heaven his father. And in Chinese dualism, female essence and a square shape are associated with Earth, while the male essence and circle are aligned with Heaven. Following her logic, were the male ministers to present the sec­ ondary sacrifices, it would violate ritual etiquette. The female role was not only necessary in the name of Confucian propriety, but it also conformed to natural harmony, helping keep the fe­ male yin and male yang essences in balance. Thus, in the name of the ritual decorum of Confucianism, the very ideological system that denigrated her on the basis of her gender, she justified her appearance in the rites. Concluding with a modest flourish, she deftly added, “ Though the light from a firefly or a candle is not great, it still adds radiance to the sun and m oon.” Swayed, Gaozong issued an imperial edict proclaiming, “When the shan sacrifice is presented, the Empress shall offer the secondary sacrifice.” Also at the prodding of his fellow “ Sage,” Gaozong made an eleventh-hour change in the ceremo­ nial accoutrements, exchanging stalks of grain and earthenware gourds for plush cushions and ornamental spouted tripods. Hu­ mility and understatement might have reflected Gaozong’s virtue, but grandiose ornament and ceremony better served Wu Zhao’s efforts to amplify her public visibility. Thus, on the lunar New Year of 666, Gaozong performed the feng sacrifice to Heaven at a circular three-story altar several miles south of Mount Tai. The shan sacrifice to Earth took place on the third day. Gaozong provided the primary offering to the earth spirits at an octagonal yellow altar set on a square plat­ form, with eight sets of stairs leading down. The square shape and yellow color were symbols of Earth. Wu Z hao’s moment

had finally arrived. When the Emperor’s offering was complete, those in charge withdrew. Behind silken canopies carried by eu­ nuchs, she ascended the altar to present secondary offerings. As she had suggested, women of the imperial harem and wives of high-ranking ministers then performed tertiary offerings. Atop the altar, they poured libations into ritual vessels and serenaded the earth gods. At a distance, furtively laughing in their sleeves, Confucian officials ridiculed the spectacle. Nonetheless, by inte­ grating not only herself, but wives of court officials, imperial kinswomen, and the women of the Inner Palace, Wu Zhao rede­ fined these ancient rites to create a prominent role for women. The feng and shatt sacrifices concluded with the Altar of Au­ diences ceremony at which Gaozong held court from a square altar in front of the temporary palace at the foot of M ount Tai and received the congratulations of his ministers. On the round­ about return trip the entourage stopped in the hometown of the renowned sage Confucius, bestowed upon him the title Grand Preceptor, and sacrificed a lamb in his honor. Several weeks later at the birthplace of Laozi, Gaozong showed his veneration for the founder of Daoism, and reputed first ancestor of his Li clan, by granting him the title Superior August Emperor of Mysterious Origin. Both Wu Zhao and Gaozong understood that it was important not to alienate either the Confucian or the Daoist establishment. The logistics of the feng and sban rites were staggering. The imperial entourage numbered in the thousands, extending for miles and miles. The journey took four and a half months and covered more than 2,000 miles. The entire breadth of the horizon was clustered with the yurts of foreign chieftains and emissaries from “ as far east as Korea, and as far West as Persia.” Their mounts and livestock—horses and camels, and vast flocks of cat­ tle and sheep—clogged the roadways. Also accompanying the Two Sages were the women of the imperial harem, attendant palace eunuchs close in tow, the full complement of Palace Guards, provincial officials and the entire array of court officials, civil and military. A veritable army of cooks and menial servants was required to attend to basic concerns like food and lodging. At Mount Tai, countless workers scrambled to construct massive earthworks according to the prescribed ceremonial regulations.

For their part, Gaozong and Wu Zhao took great pains to make the rites inclusive. By design, the ceremonies primarily honored-the H eaven and Earth, rather than imperial ancestors. Towns the procession passed through were granted a year’s tax relief. Accompanying officials were given promotions and new titles. Local elderly men and women were granted prestige ti­ tles. Gaozong feted the empire with a week-long thanksgiving feast. The performance of the feng and shan sacrifices was a shared political triumph, exalting both Emperor and Empress. The Two Sages ascended eternal and imposing M ount Tai, straddling the divine realm and the earthly world, prostrating themselves before the gods while symbolically joining their company. The years following the feng and shan sacrifices, however, tarnished the luster o f the grand ceremonies. The two capitals in the Yellow River heartland were stricken by snowless winters and solar eclipses, crop-withering droughts and catastrophic floods, plagues of locusts and unseasonable hail, all of which hurt the livelihood of the peasant masses. People of this era be­ lieved that nature reflected Heaven’s approval or disapproval of a ruler’s governance. Natural catastrophes were Heaven’s way of censuring an immoral ruler. Seriously alarmed, Gaozong and Wu Zhao sought to regain Heaven’s favor by following longstanding Confucian prescrip­ tions to display austerity and good governance. To help bring timely rain during a parching drought in 670, the Two Sages changed the name of the reign era, shunned the primary imper­ ial palace and reduced sentences o f prisoners, in case the griev­ ances of the unjustly accused had prompted Heaven’s ire. M eat was rationed within the palaces and the use o f grain to ferment alcohol was forbidden. The rulers summoned scholars to delib­ erate upon the proper form of rites and music in securing the blessing of Heaven. Wu Zhao offered to abdicate, a stylized act of ritual humility. Perhaps it was an effort to cast herself as a latter-day Cheng Tang, a mythic ruler from distant antiquity who, during a seven-year drought, cast himself upon a burning heap of kindling as a living sacrifice. In the case of Cheng Tang, a timely rain fell on the parching lands before the worthy king

was immolated. Usually, of course, such ceremonial abasement before Heaven was reserved for the Emperor rather than the Empress. Gaozong refused her offer. The Two Sages tried further measures to restore popular goodwill and create harmony between the natural and human worlds. They ordered charity grain to be distributed from state granaries. In 673, they prohibited fishing with nets and forbade people to use hunting rings to surround and kill beasts. Still, the ill omens continued. The kite’s tail ornament, designed to ward off fire, fell from the roof of the ancestral temple. To further placate angry spirits and ancestors, all frivolous music was sus­ pended. To secure harmony between the world of men and the realm of nature, twelve elegant ritual songs were composed with titles like “ The Four Seasons” and “ The Eight Winds,” and played in all of the great temples and shrines countrywide. Wu Zhao had further cause for concern. Her stalwart sup­ porter X u Jingzong, who had been the most powerful minister at court for 13 years, retired in 670 and died in 672. In his ab­ sence, other court ministers harshly criticized X u and, with Gaozong’s approval, began to rewrite his national annals on the grounds that they were untruthful. Wu Zhao’s old enemy, Grand Uncle of State Changsun Wuji, was posthumously reha­ bilitated and buried near the tomb of his liege, Taizong.

Celestial Empress and Grand Dowager Celestial Sovereigns In the autumn of 674, Gaozong and Wu Zhao announced new titles, Celestial Sovereign and Celestial Empress, honorific ap­ pellations with no precedent in Chinese history. Their titles were chosen purposefully, assumed only after the two rulers had bestowed grander titles upon the two deceased Tang emper­ ors and their respective empresses. To conceal this exercise in self-aggrandizement in a guise of Confucian modesty, Wu Zhao maintained that “ Celestial” was chosen not for self-glorification, but out of filial regard, to avoid repeating the lofty titles used to honor their ancestors. They then announced the advent of Highest Origin, a new reign era to match their newly crafted genealogy. To understand the resonance of the “ Celestial” titles, it is im­ portant to recall that the Li imperial family claimed descent from the venerable founder of Daoism, Laozi. Whereas Confu­ cianism is concerned largely with this-worldly ethical and social matters, Daoism is full of prophecies, mysticism, magic, and recipes for immortality. In Daoist circles, the Celestial Sovereign was a powerful mythic emperor. Daoist prophecies of the time contained cryptic rumblings of the second coming of this “ Ce­ lestial Sovereign.” Gaozong, as Emperor and a descendant of Laozi, was a perfect candidate. As “ Celestial Empress,” Wu

Zhao also symbolically joined the company of Daoist sages and immortals. Later that same year, Wu Zhao publicly promul­ gated Twelve Decrees. In one, the Celestial Empress pro­ claimed, “The divine achievement of the empire issues entirely from Laozi, the August Emperor of Mysterious Origin. I humbly petition that from the imperial princes on down all shall study the works of Laozi.” In a remarkable break from Confucian tradition, Laozi’s famous work, the Daodejing, for­ mally became a text that scholars were required to study for the civil service examinations. The Twelve Decrees Wu Zhao issued in 674 were more sym­ bolic than real, not so much true decrees as an effort to project the image of the two Celestial Sovereigns as ideal Daoist rulers who sought to succor the common people. In a perfect Daoist state, an Emperor governs not by waging war, implementing laws, issuing edicts and punishing wrongdoers, but through ef­ fortless action. Harmonizing with the dao, the pattern of nature and Heaven, the ruler does not allow worldly designs to inter­ fere with planting and harvest, thus enabling the peasants to pursue their livelihood. To encourage agriculture and silk weav­ ing, she urged a lightening of taxes and corvee labor. Claiming that the empire needed to be transformed by the dao rather than by weapons, she called for a large scale disbandment of troops. She ordered an extension of cultivable lands near the palaces, formerly forbidden ground. She prohibited extravagant Buddhist construction and wasteful public works. She sought to increase channels by which common folk and lesser officials might communicate with the throne, and forbade slander. She also honored good officials with rank and reward. Collectively, these decrees broadcast an image of simple, frugal, and virtuous government that was not consistent with the realities of the court. These reforms did not mark a genuine and substantive shift to Daoism. The court continued to operate on Confucian principles of government, and Buddhism still flourished in court and country. Despite their rhetoric of fiscal thrift, Gaozong and Wu Zhao were inclined to extravagance. In addition to grand rites of state like the feng and shan, they erected several new palaces and

frequently traveled back and forth between the two capitals. Outside the capitals, they built summer palaces in the moun­ tains. Gaozdng-often went on imperial hunts. Furthermore, with ongoing border wars on several fronts in the mid-670s—west in Tibet and northeast in the recalcitrant Korean protectorate— dramatic military de-escalation was not a real option. Wu Z hao’s most enduring and efficacious decree was the measure that ordered the length of mourning for the mother to equal that for the father. According to Confucian rites, the pre­ scribed mourning period for one’s father was three years, while the mother was only mourned for one year if the father was still alive. Very possibly in honor of her recently deceased mother, Wu Zhao decreed that the periods of bereavement for both par­ ents should be the same. She wrote, “The rites of the ancients are not set in stone. Though in one’s heart the mother and father are revered with equal esteem, according to practice the father is mourned for three years, while one wears mourning garments for their mother for but a single cycle. This is not long enough. Even birds and beasts recognize their mother. Truly beyond fathom are the depths o f nourishment and kindness that moth­ ers offer their children. A mother grows tired and careworn raising her young. I hereby petition that the mourning period for the mother henceforth be three years.” Despite opposition to what some saw as a subversion of the fundamental natural and human principle of male superiority and female sub­ servience, her regulation of equal mourning became accepted ritual practice. Gaozong’s illness worsened. Fatigued by court duties, he of­ ten summered at the Palace of Nine Perfections in the mountains west of Chang’an. Dizzy and feeble, he summoned legendary physicians, enticing them away from their rustic mountain dwellings with gifts of mansions and splendid teams of horses. Still, his condition continued to deteriorate. Increasingly, in the early 670s, routine court matters were left to Crown Prince Li Hong, now in his early twenties. Though Li Hong may have timidly clung to his parents when he was young, as he came of age he developed into an independent-minded young man with

a strong sense of justice. He was widely admired by the popu­ lace, Gaozong held him in high esteem, and the ministers of the court saw him as a modest, serious, and respectful youth with a deep regard for Confucian learning. Li Hong was particularly sympathetic to women. At sixteen, he petitioned the throne to spare the wives of army deserters from the Korean campaigns. In 671, the Crown Prince discov­ ered that two of his half-sisters, the daughters of Pure Consort X iao, were sequestered in a desolate corner of the Inner Palace. In court, he demanded that they be freed and allowed to marry. After his public appeal, Wu Zhao found partners for the cast­ off princesses. In the summer of 675, the Crown Prince accompanied his parents, the Celestial Sovereigns, to the Imperial Park, just north of Luoyang. On this outing, at the youthful age of twenty-three, he died suddenly in a palace on the park’s western fringe. In the Old Tang History, it is simply recorded that Li Hong died while in the Imperial Park. However, the New Tang History, written two centuries later, contends that the “ Celestial Empress murdered the Imperial Prince” and also that “The two daughters of Pure Consort X iao were secreted away in side apartments of the palace and at nearly forty were still unmar­ ried. Crown Prince Hong advocated on their behalf to the Em­ peror. Furious, the Empress poisoned the Crown Prince.” An­ other Northern Song history, the Comprehensive Mirror for the Advancement o f Governance, relates the same story involving the two spinsters, and adds, “ When the Celestial Empress acted with arrogance and presumption, the Crown Prince, on several occasions, wrote memorials opposing her. . . . people of the time believed that the Celestial Empress poisoned him.” Though the story of the vicious, power-hungry mother poi­ soning her promising, virtuous son served as a tidy Confucian parable, neither of the motives ascribed to Wu Zhao by histori­ ans rings true: her desire to usurp the throne and her anger over the Crown Prince marrying off Pure Consort X iao’s daughters. Both Wu Zhao and Gaozong had groomed Li Hong to be Heir Apparent. Time and again, they placed him in charge of court matters. Furthermore, if Wu Zhao truly harbored ambitions to

usurp the throne, Li Hong was hardly her only obstacle: Gaozong was still alive and she had three other sons. Though some histories claim that*Li H ong’s concern for his half-sisters infuri­ ated Wu Zhao, causing a rift between mother and son, the inci­ dent involving the Pure Consort’s daughters occurred four years before his eventual death. Wu Zhao was clement in her own way; in her mind, the sins of the parent did not always extend to the child. Just as she would allow the granddaughter of her bitter enemy Shangguan Yi to become her personal secretary, so Wu Zhao herself petitioned Gaozong to elevate the two princesses in rank and allowed them to marry. Curiously, this request appears in the New Tang History, the very source that most strongly accuses Wu Zhao of murdering her own son. The Crown Prince had inherited his father’s frail constitu­ tion. Official eulogies including Gaozong’s personal “ Edict to bestow upon the Crown Prince the posthumous title Filial and Respectful Emperor” all contain references to his illness. Sickly and weak, the Crown Prince had long suffered from tuberculo­ sis. In one eulogy it was written, “ from the moment his tiny in­ fant hands could grasp the evil-warding scepter, the Crown Prince suffered from a heavy respiratory illness.” On the outing to the Imperial Park, at a moment when Li Hong seemed to be feeling better than usual, Gaozong confided in his fragile son that he was considering abdicating the dragon throne to him. Fraught with anxiety, Li Hong was overwhelmed by a sudden attack of his illness. As Gaozong’s edict puts it, “ his old malady became increasingly severe.” Shortly thereafter, Li Hong ex­ pired. After his death, the Crown Prince was buried with rites befitting an emperor and given the posthumous title his parents had chosen. Almost immediately, Gaozong appointed his second son Li Hsien Crown Prince. While this new Crown Prince lacked Li Hong’s charisma and sense of justice, he had shown great apti­ tude in Confucian learning as a youngster and thus had gained among the ministers a reputation as an ardent patron of classi­ cal scholarship. Rapidly, he built a coterie of skillful Confucian rhetoricians.

Though Li Hsien’s scholarly ability impressed Gaozong, the young prince was untried and had not yet won his father’s full confidence. Early in 676, still grieving deeply for Li Hong, feel­ ing beleaguered and ill, Gaozong summoned his ministers to discuss the unusual possibility of retiring and abdicating to the Celestial Empress Wu Zhao. Appalled at the suggestion, one minister remonstrated, “ The Son of Heaven administers the outer and the Empress controls the inner. The Emperor is to the Empress as the sun to the moon. Each celestial body has its set place and they do not mutually contend—this is the way of Heaven. If this proper sense of place is lost, the result will be chaos. H ow can Your Majesty take the empire, the bequest of your grandfather Gaozu and your father Taizong, and pass it on to the Celestial Empress?” Another minister quickly seconded: “ My colleague has spo­ ken words of absolute loyalty. It would be wise for Your Majesty to heed them!” The point was clear. Wu Z hao’s most ardent supporters had retired from the court or died. Shortly afterward, both of these high-ranking ministers became tutors of Crown Prince Li Hsien, joining his growing faction of supporters in court. Curiously, many of his backers were scions of the great aristocratic clans whose influence Wu Zhao had so deftly pruned a generation earlier. It is certainly no quirk of fate that in 676, the very year G ao­ zong offered to abdicate to Wu Zhao, a phoenix, sovereign of all avians and an auspicious symbol of female authority, was purportedly sighted in Chenzhou, prompting the inauguration of a new reign era called Phoenix Regulator. That same year, Wu Zhao urged Gaozong to perform the feng and shan rites for a second time. Gaozong agreed, but a series of border incursions by the Tibetans in the southwest prevented the plan from being put into action. Even more telling, however, Wu Zhao went alone to the Gate of Brilliant Prosperity in 678 to hold an audi­ ence with all of the court officials and leaders of foreign states. There is no indication that Gaozong was ill on this occasion. Perhaps because of the uncertainties surrounding her— Gaozong’s failing health, her enemies in court, and the issues with succession—the year 676 marked a change in Wu Zhao’s

attitude toward the imperial throne. Even though Gaozong had aborted his proposed abdication, the Celestial Sovereign’s pro­ posal left a deepimpression upon the Celestial Empress. Gaozong, who clearly had no problem with the idea of a female emperor, had seriously considered installing her in his stead, and the court had not dismissed her accession as laughable. Now a seasoned politician attuned to the pulse of court and state, it no longer seemed so farfetched or absurd that she might one day occupy the throne. Still vigorous at fifty and as sharp-minded as ever, unconvinced that her three remaining sons possessed the mettle to rule, Wu Zhao first began to seriously mull the possibility of setting herself upon the throne. Though weary Gaozong did not pursue the possibility of enthroning Wu Zhao further, the vacil­ lating ruler had effectively named not one, but two, heirs appar­ ent: his wife and his son. Naturally, this ambivalence set ironwilled Wu Zhao and ambitious Li Hsien at odds. Though some ministers boisterously opposed her accession, most of the court, either scared of her terrible vindictive nature or convinced that she could effectively govern, had remained silent. They were wise to hold their tongues. Like her mother, Wu Zhao bore longstanding grudges against all who had slighted, attacked, or betrayed her. A decade later, though the official who had first spoken against her had passed away, she targeted the man’s grandson, having the young man executed on a fabri­ cated charge. As the youth was led to his death, he spewed an unending stream of heaven-rattling curses at Wu Zhao. To avoid further untimely outbursts, she initiated a new practice: gagging prisoners en route to execution. Furious at the grandson’s cheek, she ordered his body dismembered. She then commanded that the offending family’s tombs be exhumed, their coffins smashed, and their bodies burned to ashes. Wu Zhao knew that the very idea o f a woman ruler was anathema to most court ministers. But Confucian values, a rich and inexhaustible source of normative authority, pervaded soci­ ety, culture, and politics. These values, she had learned during her two decades of political involvement, were not immutable, cast in stone. They were framed in language and interpreted by men. Media, men, and language could all be reshaped. A consummate

politician, Wu Zhao possessed the skill to make this cumber­ some liability, a system that rejected her on the basis of gender, into an asset. In modern parlance, one might call this ability “ spin,” and when it came to this sort of political spinning, in the imperial court, the most intricate of webs, she proved a most adept spider indeed. Thus, during Gaozong’s protracted illness, she cast herself as a good Confucian wife, becoming in­ volved in the outer court solely to protect the property and es­ tate of her husband’s family. As when she maneuvered her way into the feng and shan rites, she presented her motivation in terms of her ardent desire to follow proper ritual protocol, rather than as an effort to exalt her person. Though Wu Zhao was well versed in Confucian rites and eti­ quette, she could not manage this manipulation all alone. As her support in court dwindled, she gathered together a private band of brilliant literary and poetic minds, talented scholars of low rank, who, because they were allowed to enter the Inner Palace through the northern Xuanwu Gate to consult with her, became known as the Scholars of the North Gate. These men served as her unofficial advisers, compiling tomes of Confucian scholar­ ship geared toward consolidating Wu Z hao’s political authority. The Celestial Empress’ consultation with the Scholars of the North Gate on contemporary political matters deeply vexed court ministers. Because the Scholars “ participated in and ren­ dered decisions on matters of court,” their presence divided and undermined the authority of high officials. These outsiders helped establish Wu Zhao as a patron o f Confucian learning at the same time that they enabled her, and Gaozong at times, to make decisions of state, while circumventing normal channels of administration. This extra-bureaucratic group compiled and edited treatises on ideal Confucian behavior, like Biographies o f Exemplary Women, and commentaries on the classics of antiquity, such as Essentials on the Book o f Music. They wrote manuals of statecraft like New Admonitions for the Hundred Officials, Statutes for Maintain­ ing Urban Control, and New Prohibitions from Phoenix Hall. They also authored massive compilations like the Compendium o f Literature and the Ocean o f Characters, a famous dictionary. Rather than merely collating classical knowledge, this group

consciously mustered and retooled past legal and administrative texts to support Wu Z hao’s sovereignty. The great volume of high-caliber Confucian scholarship that resulted from their am­ bitious efforts marked Wu Zhao as an enthusiastic patron of Confucianism, rather than an opponent. Unfortunately, almost all of these works have disappeared. In the late 670s, with Li Hong dead and Gaozong’s illness becoming ever more severe, the tensions over the question of succession grew with each passing day. Wu Zhao made one fi­ nal effort at rapprochement with Li Hsien, having her Scholars of the North Gate compile Orthodox Patterns for Princelings and Biographies o f Filial Sons, presumably to guide and shape his behavior. However, Crown Prince Li Hsien paid little heed: Rather than defining his role as obedient princeling and filial son, his own band of scholars produced works that cast him as one ready to assume the mantle of a Confucian monarch. N ow in his early twenties, Li Hsien had no intention of dwelling in his mother’s shadow. In the terms he and his minions sought to reestablish, women did not cast the shadows: They were the shad­ ows, dwelling in the yin umbrage of the male’s substantive yang. The most poignant root of this mother-son power struggle was not political, but deeply emotional and personal: Li Hsien was not Wu Zhao’s son. H e was really the son of her elder sister, the Lady of Han, who, as a young widow in the early 650s, had frequented Wu Z h ao s apartments and enjoyed Gaozong’s sex­ ual attentions. In her ruthless three-way intramural struggle for favor and status with Pure Consort X iao and Empress Wang, Wu Zhao passed off her elder sister’s child as her own; a second son could only help strengthen her position. According to offi­ cial records, in the final month of 654, a mere eight months af­ ter she bore the daughter she allegedly smothered, Wu Zhao birthed Li Hsien prematurely, along the road to Taizong’s tomb, where Gaozong was to honor his deceased father. In the seventh century, premature children born while traveling in the dead of winter had little chance of survival. The palace servants knew better; during the imperial progress, the Lady of Han had secretly given birth to this boy child in Wu Z hao’s apartments. When Li Hsien was scarcely a month old, before a full-fledged scandal

could develop, to make it appear as though the new princeling was Wu Zhao’s legitimate son, Gaozong gave him a princely ti­ tle. Nonetheless, rumors persisted. When Li Hsien was appointed Crown Prince in 676, these long dormant rumors that he was a bastard born o f Wu Zhao’s elder sister resurfaced and spread rampantly through court and country. As long as such talk was not openly circulated, Wu Zhao and Li Hsien could, in form and etiquette, act as mother and son. However, the untimely revival of these ugly rumors both humiliated the Celestial Sovereigns and injured the pres­ tige of the newly-appointed Crown Prince. Li Hsien’s scornful reception of her Biographies o f Filial Sons seemingly validated these rumors. His casual dismissal of her scholarly instruction was tantamount to saying, “ I’m no son of yours. I owe you no filial reverence.” Wu Zhao, in turn, sought an opportunity to destroy Li Hsien. In 679, she found her chance. Both Wu Zhao and G ao­ zong held Ming Chongyan, a renowned mystic, in high esteem. On one occasion, Gaozong hid two courtesans in an under­ ground cellar and ordered them to play music. When Ming Chongyan entered, Gaozong said, “ I often hear such mysterious strains of music issuing from this ground. Can you tell me if it is auspicious?” Ming Chongyan replied that it was indeed auspi­ cious and pinned two peach charms on the ground above the hidden chamber. Suddenly there was silence. Gaozong laughed and summoned forth the courtesans. The girls said that they had seen two open-mouthed dragon’s heads appear above them and had been too terrified to continue. Gaozong was delighted, aware that Ming Chongyan had grasped his ruse all along. Later, he and Wu Zhao questioned Ming Chongyan about their chil­ dren. The magician remarked that both of their younger sons were favored with noble and kingly features, but that the visage of the Crown Prince revealed that he was unfit for the throne. When Li Hsien heard this, he was wracked with anxiety. Shortly afterward, under mysterious circumstances, Ming Chongyan was murdered along the road. While overseeing the court, the Crown Prince was unable to crack the case or even to find any leads. Wu Zhao suspected that he was behind the murder.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prince, fond of music and women, had an affair with one of his mother’s household domestics, lav­ ishing silk and gpld-upon the woman. Though a court minister brought the relationship to Gaozong’s attention, the Celestial Sovereign dismissed it as a piffling matter. The Celestial Em­ press, however, was very interested in this matter and ordered several officials to undertake a thorough investigation. In the course of their search, they turned up several hundred sets of black armor hidden in the stables of the Crown Prince’s palace, evidence that most of those in court saw as a sure sign that he was plotting to usurp the throne. To further incriminate Li Hsien, his mistress confessed that the Crown Prince had been involved in the murder of M ing Chongyan. Gaozong, who had always been fond of Li Hsien, badly wanted to pardon him. However, Wu Zhao, confident that she had the backing of the court, now took the moral high ground afforded by wielding hardline Confucian principle, saying, “Heaven and Earth will not tolerate a son who harbors rebellious designs, so how can the intent of the Crown Prince to eradicate his own flesh and blood be forgiven so lightly?” To display evidence of Li Hsien’s treachery to the common people, the armor was burned pub­ licly south of Heaven’s Ford Bridge, in the heart of Luoyang. The Crown Prince was demoted to commoner status and taken to Chang’an, where, along with his three sons, he was secreted in an out-of-the-way palace. Those considered his accomplices and associates were rounded up and summarily killed, Li Hsien was removed to a prefecture in northern Sichuan. His sons lived in confinement for almost two decades, where, at the behest of their step-grandmother, they were subjected to a regimen of beatings and torture. Only one of these grandsons outlived Wu Zhao. To his death, he bore the scars of his terrible sequestration. He could always predict the coming of rain, prompting a stunned young cousin to remark, “ You must have magic powers!” He sadly explained, “I have no powers. It’s just that when I was hidden along with my father in a secret palace, every year I would receive several beatings, so that I was badly scarred. When it’s about to rain, there is a dull ache in my spine.”

With the death of Crown Prince Li Hong in 675 and the deposal of Crown Prince Li Hsien in 680, a somber mood descended upon the court. When Li Xian, next in line as heir apparent, was appointed Crown Prince, ministers and scholars did not rally around him as they had around Li Hsien. In times of flux, ministers often wait to see which way the political winds blow before casting their lot. By the time Li Xian was appointed Crown Prince, the Emperor’s health had deteriorated to the point where he often could not hold court. Li Xian, as he was being groomed to become the next Emperor, sometimes supervised the court in his father’s absence. During Gaozong’s final years the Celestial Sovereigns fre­ quently visited the hot springs near M ount Song and stayed at Fengtian Palace, their newly constructed mountainside summer escape. When the erection of this summer palace was proposed, for the first time in more than a decade a voice of remonstrance was heard in court. Li Shan’gan objected, admonishing Gaozong that the erection of this extravagant summer palace was most untimely: “ Over the past several years, vegetables and millet have almost completely failed to ripen, causing people everywhere to perish of starvation. The Four Barbarians are encroaching upon the borders, keeping soldiers and chariots in constant action. Your Majesty should humbly and silently consider a way to make these disasters abate, rather than rashly expanding construction of palaces and halls, giving weary laborers no rest. There are none in the empire who do not despair!” Though the Celestial Sovereigns ignored his advice, they were troubled. In 682 and 683, with Gaozong dying, a fresh outbreak of natural disasters led many to believe that the co­ rulers had forfeited the M andate of Heaven. The surging Luo River wrecked Heaven’s Ford Bridge and inundated four city blocks. In Shandong to the east, great floods caused massive damage and death, leaving starving throngs of itinerant wretches in their wake. After the spring planting, ten million rabbits materialized out of the mist to devour the newly-planted shoots, then receded into thin air. The floods were followed by months of parching drought. An earthquake caused villages to crumble. A pestilence killed tens of thousands of head of cattle.

Teeming caterpillars and swarms of locusts descended to de­ vour any crops that still remained. Roving bands of brigands looted and killed JBeople resorted to cannibalism. In the streets of the two capitals, the dead pillowed atop one another. By edict, Gaozong ordered able court officials to help bury the dead. In the southwest, availing themselves of the chaos, the Tibetans re­ peatedly raided the borders. The sun was blood red. Night after night, an ill-omened comet, a sign of imminent disaster, was seen traversing the sky. The Mandate of Heaven was an important political concept in dynastic China. When a ruler was virtuous and concerned with the well-being of the common people, Heaven rewarded the ruling family with good harvests and a harmonious empire. If, however, a ruler was self-indulgent and extravagant, con­ scripting common folk to build lavish palaces without heeding the natural cycles of planting and harvest, Heaven would pun­ ish him by revoking the mandate. Natural disasters were Heaven’s punitive vehicle, a means to convey its anger with the ruling dynasty. Wu Zhao and Gaozong were both highly sensi­ tive to this political principle. As they had in the early 670s, the Celestial Sovereigns took measures to regain Heaven’s sanction, such as shunning the main palace and revising the sentences of prisoners. Amid these grim catastrophes, the Celestial Sovereigns des­ perately sought to bolster waning public morale and broadcast good tidings. State granaries were opened, and grain was sold at low prices or charitably distributed to the starving masses. They recalled military support staff from the borderlands, allowing them to return to their families. This effort at compassion went horribly awry, however, as many of those summoned home died of hunger along the route, collapsing on the roadside. In any event, Fengtian Palace was built, and in the summer of 682 they headed for the mountains. Hoping to find some rem­ edy for the Emperor’s ever-worsening illness, a cure for his mor­ tality, they consulted with Daoist ascetics like Pan Shizheng, a master of self-cultivation, breath control, and longevity. G ao­ zong once asked Pan Shizheng what the mountain had that he needed. The Daoist responded, “The mountain has clear springs

and pine trees—what, then, does it lack?” Gaozong sighed ad­ miringly, mulling the stark contrast between simple mountain life and the ceaseless vexation of his imperial office. On these sojourns, Wu Zhao sought opportunities to perform ceremonies that might at once secure the good will of Heaven and further exalt her image as Celestial Empress. On the slopes of M ount Song, she erected stone plaques to honor two Daoist goddesses, the Mysterious Jade Woman and the Queen Mother of the West, a powerful divinity known to dwell among fellow immortals in a lofty mountain citadel. As the Mysterious Jade Woman was the mother of the Tang’s dynastic ancestor Laozi, paying homage to her was a means of revering her in-laws’ an­ cestors. She also honored the mother of Qi, the wife of Yu the Great, the famous flood-queller and founder of the mythic X ia dynasty in the third millennium B.C. According to legend, pur­ sued by her unruly husband, this woman had turned into a stone that split open to birth Qi. On one of the slopes of Mount Song, one can still find the Stone o f Q i’s mother. By honoring these female divinities, Wu Zhao affiliated herself with them. Mount Song began to emerge as an important ritual center, anticipating its pivotal role in Wu Zhao’s authority. Despite the ritual measures they took to placate a disapprov­ ing Heaven, it cannot be said that the Celestial Sovereigns were particularly sensitive to the suffering of the populace. In addition to Fengtian Palace, Gaozong and Wu Zhao had two other leisure palaces constructed for their frequent retreats. During these years of extreme scarcity, Wu Zhao once more urged Gaozong to perform the feng and shan sacrifices, an absurd suggestion given the grim state of affairs. The constant Tibetan incursions and spate of natural disasters made it clear that this was not an era of greater peace, a fact that court ministers vigorously pointed out. Consequently, the plans were shelved. However, not all of the Sovereigns’ extravagances were built at the expense of the taxpayers. In order to have a famed archi­ tect build a Hall of M irrors, they raised 200,000 strings of cash by selling manure from the well-fed chargers of the imperial sta­ bles. Concerned that in the eyes of posterity this ignoble venture might befoul the name of the dynastic house, Gaozong remarked

to a senior minister, “ The profit is great indeed. But I fear that future dynasties will say that the men of the House of Tang were sellers of horse .dung. This is not a lofty reputation.” Manure sales were suspended, but the Hall of Mirrors was built. After Gaozong led the senior minister on a tour of the completed hall, the minister commented disapprovingly, “According to proper ceremony, just as there are not two suns in Heaven, there cannot be two rulers on Earth. Ju st now, I saw myriad images of the Son of Heaven on each of the four walls! This is highly inauspicious!” Swayed by his argument, Gaozong ordered the hall razed. The Celestial Sovereigns doted on their youngest children, Li Dan and the Taiping Princess, who remained largely sheltered from the political turmoil. Wu Zhao showed special favor to­ ward her daughter. As an eight-year-old in 672, the Taiping Princess was ordained a Daoist nun. Five years later, to avoid marrying a Tibetan chieftain, she was nominally made abbess of a Daoist temple. In 681, the marriage of the seventeen-yearold Taiping Princess into the aristocratic Xue family prompted a gala celebration, with festive torches lighting the broad av­ enues of Luoyang. However, when Wu Zhao discovered that the brothers of her new son-in-law had consorts from lowly backgrounds, she exclaimed with outrage, “ H ow can my daughter possibly keep the company of these country bumpkins for sisters-in law! ” Such haughty sentiment reveals that, nearing sixty, she now styled herself a full-fledged member of the aris­ tocracy that had once spurned her. Her snobbery goes a long way toward debunking the romantic image, a myth perpetuated by some modern Communist historians, of Wu Zhao as a champion of the impoverished commoner. In 683, when the Taiping Princess had her first son, Wu Zhao ordered a local amnesty in Luoyang. Whereas annual in­ come for princes did not exceed tax and grain revenues of one thousand households and the income for princesses was set at 350 households, the Taiping Princess was later granted a huge allowance of 3,000 households. In 682, when Crown Prince Li X ian’s new son turned one month old, the infant was named Imperial Grand Heir. The proud

grandparents announced a new reign era, declared a general amnesty, and threw the empire a three-day thanksgiving feast. Confucian histories and have tried to show that Wu Zhao plotted Gaozong’s demise or tried to keep him incapacitated. These histories contain the story of a pair of celebrated doctors who proposed the use of needles to drain Gaozong’s blood in order to relieve his extreme swelling and hypertension. The story implies that Wu Zhao, fearing her husband really might be cured, rounded on the physicians and threatened them with death for suggesting that Gaozong’s imperial countenance be marred in such a manner. Ailing Gaozong nonetheless begged to be bled, and once it was done his condition improved. There­ upon Wu Zhao did a theatrical about-face and exclaimed, “ Heaven has bestowed these masters of medicine upon m e!” The accounts describe this sudden reversal of attitudes to make manifest her cunning hypocrisy. There were also popular rumblings that Wu Zhao was behind her husband’s illness. A story circulated concerning a pharma­ cologist invited to cure Gaozong. He was digging a hole to set up a medicine stove to prepare ingredients, when suddenly a golden toad with the vermilion “Wu” of Wu Zhao’s surname on its back, a creature of the moon and the female yin essence, jumped out of the ground. The creature was placed in the pond in the Imperial Park. Later, a palace servant found a similar toad, something Gaozong found both unsettling and highly in­ auspicious. That night, the servant was violently murdered. The story of the toad’s reported interference with preparations for Gaozong’s cure indicates a popular sense that Wu Zhao treach­ erously sought to sabotage efforts to treat her husband. As ver­ milion was reserved for imperial edicts, the color of the Wu character supposedly revealed her ambition to usurp the throne. There is, however, no reason to see these stories as anything other than standard Confucian defamation and colorful popu­ lar rumor, respectively. There is no tangible evidence that Wu Zhao sought to injure or incapacitate Gaozong. N or did she have motive. To a great extent, her position was dependent upon his. In his absence, her fate was uncertain.

Grand Dowager: Taking Over Court and Issuing^Edicts On a chill day in Luoyang during the final month of 683, Gaozong finally succumbed to his illness. Though his imperial will instructed that Crown Prince Li Xian be named Emperor before the coffin immediately after his death, there was an awk­ ward interval of five days before the young man’s formal coro­ nation. This was, in part, Wu Zhao’s doing. The provision of her husband’s will that most interested her read: “ Great matters of state that can not be decided, both civil and military, shall be determined by the Celestial Empress.” During the interval, a chief minister named Pei Yan memorialized that as a new Emperor had not been formally installed, the Celestial Empress needed to oversee the court and attend to matters of state. For a quarter century, Wu Zhao had been involved in deci­ sions o f state. N ow as Grand Dowager, as the widowed Empress was known, she was at sixty an energetic and vital force with no intention of quietly retiring from the political stage. F a m i l i a r with her presence, many officials operated on the premise that as Gaozong’s wife she was no longer a member of the Wu family, but the matriarch of the imperial Li clan. They expected her, as a dutiful wife, to look after the family estate, the empire, and upkeep the ancestral temples of the imperial family. N ot only had she gained a taste for administration, she genuinely styled herself as the protectress and First Lady of the Tang empire. Thus, from the very moment of Gaozong’s death, Wu Zhao sought to justify and maintain her political involvement. She had shared political authority with her husband and now contrived to do the same with her son. Her son, Li Xian, was not as tractable as she had hoped. Im­ mediately after his coronation, he installed his primary consort, a woman of the prestigious Wei family, as Empress Wei. Empress Wei was an ambitious woman who held sway over Li Xian. Within mere days, Li X ian appointed his father-in-law chief minister and elevated his brothers-in-law to important posts. When Pei Yan steadfastly opposed, Li Xian declared furiously, “If I wish to give the empire to Wei Xuanzhen, what is there to

stop me? How much easier then to grant him the position of chief minister?” Pei Yan rushed to inform the Grand Dowager. Wu Zhao gathered the court officials, who on this occasion were in unanimous accord with her, to help force her wayward son off the throne. Pei Yan and several generals led a group of imperial bodyguards, and Li Xian, after a brief and ignominious two-month stint as Emperor, was promptly deposed and demoted to Prince of Luling. As he was led off, Li Xian petulantly asked his mother what his crime was. She responded, “ You wished to hand the empire to Wei Xuanzhen. H ow is that not a crime?” He was dragged off and secreted in another part of the palace. After three decades as Empress, seeing her weak-willed son treating the imperial office in such a cavalier fashion, she did not hesitate to use her influence to rally the court and remove her own child from the throne. In fact, Li Xian never really intended to turn the throne over to the Wei family; he merely intended to convey the message to a meddling court minister that his imperial prerogative was not to be questioned. More significantly, in the eyes of Wu Zhao and the court, his preoccupation with winning his wife’s favor showed that his priorities were sadly askew, that the frivolous young Emperor was entirely out of touch with the grim realities of the time. Li Xian had inherited an empire in crisis. During Gaozong’s final years, the catastrophic spate of floods, wither­ ing droughts, pestilential epidemics, and plagues o f locusts, in tandem with a renewed series of border raids by Turks and Ti­ betans, had left the Tang dynasty in a precarious state. A strong, experienced hand was needed to rein in the chaos. In Wu Z hao’s mind, only one person was capable and qualified for the job— she herself. More than anything else, the ardent back­ ing she received from the court loudly attested to Li X ian’s gross incompetence. In essence, her son’s careless remark pro­ vided the Grand Dowager with the necessary pretext to remove him from power. Li Xian had not been groomed from birth to rule the empire but had been suddenly thrust into the spotlight after the death of his brother Li Hong and the exile of his half-brother Li Hsien. During two years of intense preparation under the guid­ ance of the most sagacious ministers in court, he showed little

indication that he possessed the outstanding ability and wit needed to rule. Twenty-one years after he was deposed in 684, he once again was-set on the throne. During his second tenure as Emperor, as in his first, he proved a weak and inept ruler. While his father and mother shared power and worked for a common purpose, he slavishly fawned upon, indulged, and feared his wife. In return, she cuckolded and humiliated him. On one occasion early in this second stint as Emperor, he in­ vited Wu Zhao’s rakish nephew, Wu Sansi, into the Inner Palace and tallied the score as Empress Wei and the man played backgammon, their feet entwined beneath the table. When this affair between Empress Wei and Wu Sansi grew into a widely known scandal, he ignored the growing din of lewd rumors, punishing those who dared broach the subject. Other episodes from this later tenure likewise illustrate his flippant approach to governance. To amuse his wife, he invited officials into the In­ ner Palace and staged tug-of-war contests between the ministers and imperial concubines. He set up a simulated marketplace, ordering his concubines to play vendors and visiting nobles to play traveling merchants. At one wine-saturated feast he singled out an unmarried and unwitting official and staged a farcical wedding, where, to the great amusement of the company, the new bride who emerged from behind a bamboo screen was Em­ press Wei’s former wet nurse, an aged southern barbarian slave woman. In short, Li Xian was an empire-wide laughingstock who possessed neither self-respect nor respect for the imperial office that he held. Wu Zhao moved quickly in an effort to silence potential ri­ vals. In the spring of 684, immediately after Li Xian was de­ posed, she named her youngest son Li Dan Emperor. Li Xian was banished from the capital and kept under close watch. His father-in-law Wei Xuanzhen was demoted to a faraway provin­ cial post. The senior princes, remaining sons of Gaozu, the first Tang ruler, were given lofty titles and rich sinecures, but no real authority. Gaozong’s sons by other women were moved to dif­ ferent prefectures several times, lest they develop cliques touting them as the rightful heirs to the House of Tang. Mere days after Li Dan’s ascent, she dispatched a general to keep exiled former

Crown Prince Li Hsien under surveillance. In short order, the zealous official drove the harried Li Hsien to commit suicide. Without express authorization from Wu Zhao, the military offi­ cer would never have dared be so brazen. Though she blamed the death on the general and exiled him to the provinces, the man was later recalled and restored to his former rank. From this juncture on, there was no longer any pretense about the seasoned Grand Dowager sharing power with an inex­ perienced and politically naive son. Acting as regent, Wu Zhao inhabited the central palace in Luoyang and relegated Emperor Li Dan to a lesser palace, where he adjourned with alacrity. Though at twenty-one he was far more discerning than his fool­ ish elder brother, and better versed in Confucian scholarship, he had never been appointed Crown Prince. With no training for the role, no supporting faction of court ministers, and no incli­ nation to tangle with his formidable mother, who to that point had been well disposed toward him, he willingly became a fig­ urehead Emperor and ceded the real authority to Wu Zhao. As Celestial Empress co-ruling with Gaozong, while seated in court she had remained hidden behind a purple curtain, heard but not seen. N ow the curtain was removed, and Wu Zhao alone “ over­ saw the court and issued edicts.” In court, she quickly moved to create a faction of high-ranking ministers who were personally loyal to her. Liu Weizhi, one of her Scholars of the North Gate, became a chief minister. Despite her concern about accusations of nepotism and the parallels ministers invariably would draw to Empress Lii, she also ap­ pointed her nephew Wu Chengsi, who showed a knack for using symbols, ceremony, and ornate rites to amplify her authority, a chief minister. Confucian historians often mark Wu Z hao’s tenure as Grand Dowager as an era when nepotism and male favorites, two scourges of good government, flourished. Though she did appoint Wu Chengsi chief minister in 684, she showed him no particular favor and demoted him three months later. The following year he was reappointed, only to be dismissed after a mere three weeks. On the other hand, she eliminated those who opposed her. One elderly minister had often told Gaozong in the Emperor’s waning years, “ The power of the Celestial Empress is far too

great. You should take measures to curtail her influence.” In the summer of 684, when a man from the vicinity of M ount Song presented Wu' Zhao an auspicious stone, this same minister snorted, “This sort of cheap fraud could never deceive the em­ pire.” The official was promptly demoted to a provincial office for his skepticism. In the fifth month of 684, nominal Emperor Li Dan was sent westward to supervise the funerary procession of Gaozong. In a mere half year, Qianling, Gaozong’s vast imperial necropolis, had been constructed northwest of Chang’an at an auspicious geomantic locale, M ount Liang. Whereas M adame Yang’s tu­ mulus Shunling was mounded up on a flat plain, the spectacular funerary park Wu Zhao constructed for husband Gaozong, where she would join him 22 years later, was built into the mountainscape and became widely regarded as a benchmark for later imperial tombs. Initially, Wu Zhao wanted to accompany the long procession, but many court ministers stridently insisted that her stabilizing presence was needed in Luoyang. To honor her husband she wrote a lengthy 8,000-character eulogy commemorating Gaozong’s achievements. The text was inscribed on a 25-foot tall stone plaque that had been hauled all the way from Central Asia and set along the spirit path leading to the tomb entry. She also wrote a long personal composition that was set before Gaozong’s coffin. In this panegyric, she praised him effusively, writing that sagely Gaozong “ was born knowing the six civil arts as the spirits had bountifully granted him keen perceptions. . . . His integrity was abundant, his absolute benevolence boundless.” Wu Zhao framed him as a sovereign who put duty to state be­ fore his own health and well being: “ He shouldered the great responsibilities of state until his dying gasp; he bore the accu­ mulated cares of the masses until he breathed his last. Alas and alack!” Cleverly, she also claimed that like Gaozong, she too must place duty above personal need or sentiment. Thus, the eulogy goes on to subordinate her personal grief as a bereaved wife to the cumbersome mantle of imperial responsibilities that she must assume: “Yet now I must overcome this deep distress and brace myself; turn these confused feelings to strength and be

resolute.” When a husband dies, it is the duty o f a good Confu­ cian wife to manage and preserve the family estate for posterity. In the eulogy, she framed herself as just such an exemplary Con­ fucian widow. Though her grief was certainly genuine, her mo­ tives were not that simple. The primary impediment to her authority was clear: her gen­ der. She offered to make Liu Rengui, a trusted civil minister and military officer, Regent of the Western capital, Chang’an. He declined on the grounds of his advanced age and poor health. He then added a comment, one on the tip of every Confucian minister’s tongue that no other man dared utter, comparing her role as Grand Dowager to that of infamous Empress Lu of the H an dynasty. Rather than punishing the minister, she praised his sincerity, his resolute conviction, and his loyalty to the House of Tang, and repeated her offer. In a humble petition, she tried to persuade him to reconsider: “ It is only because the Emperor is mourning his father and is thereby prohibited by ceremonial regulations from speaking that this insignificant person has taken his place in governing the state. I sincerely hope that you solely consider your duty to protect and uphold the House of Tang, and set aside talk of retirement.” By 684, Wu Zhao was already a brilliant politician, eminently capable of molding Confucian rhetoric to fit her needs. As she often did in court memorials and petitions, Wu Zhao couched her requests in terms of Confucian principle. She explained to the staunch minister, in humble terms befitting a woman, that she had taken charge not to fulfill her own ambitions, but because her son Li Dan, as a good filial son, must abide by silence to honor his father prop­ erly. Ultimately, she won over Liu Rengui, whose support she badly needed, by appealing to his diehard loyalty to the Tang. Swayed, he took the position and administered Chang’an with a skilled and calm hand. In the ninth month of 684, with Gaozong recently interred at Qianling and obedient Li Dan installed as Emperor, Wu Zhao issued a series of reforms calculated to consolidate her hold on political power. The colors of court robes and banners were changed to follow the Zhou dynasty of antiquity. Names of of­ fices were also altered. The Department of State Affairs became the Pavilion of Culture and Prosperity. Within this department,

the names of the ministries were changed from State, Educa­ tion, and Rites to their ornate archaic names, Heaven, Earth, and Spring, respectively. Fancy new names adorned other ad­ ministrative bureaus: the Chancellery became Roc Tower; the Secretariat, Phoenix Pavilion; and the Censorate, the Pavilion for Making Government Respectable. Luoyang was elevated to become her Divine Capital, suggesting a propitious locale from which her celestial virtue might issue. She renamed her imperial palace the Great Origin. Such reforms, usually reserved for dy­ nastic transitions, were more than simple ornamental changes. Collectively, they created a distinctive aesthetic aura that marked Laoyang with her personal imprint. At the suggestion of her nephew, chief minister Wu Chengsi, she then contemplated a further reform that created an instant furor: creating seven ancestral temples for the Wu clan. Only one clan was allowed seven ancestral temples, the imperial clan.

In the minds of the court, this act blatantly usurped the imperial prerogative and, taken in tandem with her reforms of court names, titles, and colors, clearly anticipated her intent to over­ throw the Li clan’s House of Tang and establish a new dynasty. Among the most vocal opponents of these reforms was Pei Yan, the powerful minister who had backed her participation in court during the transitional period immediately following Gaozong’s death and helped her oust Li Xian. His remonstrance was direct and cutting: “As Grand Dowager, your generous motherhood should extend to all in the Empire, not just selfishly favor your own blood kinsmen! Have you alone not heard of the disastrous reign of Empress Lu! ” In an effort to distinguish herself from the disreputable Han dynasty dowager, Wu Zhao calmly replied, “ Empress Lii gave influence and authority to her living kinsmen, and this brought about disaster. What harm is there in my posthumously honor­ ing the deceased!” In the end, she compromised, constructing a five-generation shrine to pay homage to her Wu forebears in their ancestral home of Bingzhou. She bestowed lofty noble ti­ tles upon her ancestors and ancestresses from her great-greatgreat grandfather and great-great-great grandmother down to her father and mother. This was a step toward creating a new Wu genealogy, one fit for an emperor. Her reforms made members of the different branches of the imperial Li family very uneasy. In Yangzhou, under rebel Xu Jingye, a group of disgraced officials, fallen aristocrats and lesser imperial scions—disaffected opportunists with little to lose— started a rebellion in the name of deposed Emperor Li Xian and with alarming speed raised an army of 100,000 men.Wu Zhao countered, sending a massive force of 300,000 troops to crush the rebels, led by cunning and aggressive Korean General Blacktooth. He was just one of many non-Chinese civil and military of­ ficials in her administration who provided her with loyal support. Over several months, the Yangzhou uprising was suppressed with surprising ease. Tellingly, the populace showed little incli­ nation to support the rebels. Rebel leaders squabbled and failed to coordinate with one another. Some wanted to form an al­ liance with dissatisfied groups in the northeast, while others de­ sired to set up a government in the nearby traditional southern

capital, Nanjing. Some rebelled in the name of Li Xian, while others found a man who resembled deceased Crown Prince Li Hsien and, claiming that he had not perished, tried to use his presence to inspirit troops. Still others wanted to establish a new, independent dynasty. The leaders were captured and killed, the troops dispersed. Seizing on the upheaval created by the Yangzhou uprising, the powerful chief minister Pei Yan hatched a plot to have armed soldiers grab Wu Zhao when she traveled to the Bud­ dhist grottoes at Longmen to worship. He intended to restore full authority to figurehead Emperor Li Dan. However, he was thwarted when a long stretch of rainy weather caused Wu Zhao to cancel the outing. Her myriad eyes and ears had caught wind of the plot, yet she bided her time. To bring down someone like Pei Yan, whose authority was second only to hers, required more than just vague rumors. Stories began to circulate that Pei Yan had ties with the Yangzhou rebels. His nephew had joined their ranks. Children in Pei Yan’s mansion sang a cryptic song: One sheet of flame, Two sheets of flame, Young purple-clad Li Dan The throne shall claim.

Such children’s songs, far from being innocuous little ditties, were often thought to contain mysterious prophecies, predict­ ing imminent change or foretelling the rise of seditious forces. This song was no exception. The two “ sheets of flame” in the poem were the rebel leader in Yangzhou, spreading conflagra­ tion of rebellion from without, and Pei Yan, creating an inferno within the court. In fact, there is little evidence that Pei Yan was actually in league with the Yangzhou rebels. For one, he supported the transfer of real political authority to current figurehead Li Dan rather than deposed Li Xian, whom most of the Yangzhou ban­ dits backed. In the midst of the uprising, when Wu Zhao gath­ ered her ministers and solicited their advice, Pei Yan bluntly stated, “ Li Dan, the Son of Heaven, is now mature. If you but restore authority to your son, the Enlightened Emperor, then

the bandits will end their campaign and disband.” The court was divided. Some accused Pei Yan of sinister designs, remark­ ing that he seemed to know a little too much about how the bandits might respond, prompting his arrest. In response, Pei Yan’s supporters rallied to his defense, claiming that he was a loyal pillar of the House of Tang. The voice of staunch Tang loyalist Liu Rengui, the regent overseeing Chang’an while Wu Zhao’s court remained in her Divine Capital, tipped the balance in her favor. Having heard through a messenger that Pei Yan had indeed been plotting against Wu Zhao, Liu Rengui sent a memorial proclaiming, “ This messenger knew that Pei Yan was plotting to rebel but did not come forward.” N ow confident in the court’s backing, she had Pei Yan executed immediately. Pei Yan’s death had a ripple effect. Many who had supported him in court or written memorials on his behalf were demoted or executed. Foremost among these men was a general of great prestige, Cheng Wuting, who had distinguished himself fighting against the Turks along the northern steppelands of modernday Inner Mongolia. Having sent a secret memorial on behalf of imprisoned Pei Yan, Cheng Wuting was accused of being in league with both the embattled chief minister and the Yangzhou rebels. By Wu Zhao’s edict, he was executed in the midst of his own military encampment. Surprisingly, his troops did not inter­ fere. When the Turks learned of his fate, they were delighted, reveling for days. They even made their fallen respected foe a patron saint o f war, erecting a shrine where they honored him before raiding Tang territories. There is a Chinese proverb: bai liati cheng gang—through a hundred smeltings, one becomes steel. Having weathered such a series of crises in 684, Wu Zhao emerged more confident in her authority, with a much stronger hold over the court. One day early in 685, just after the Yangzhou uprising was quelled, she angrily rounded on her congregated ministers, hollering, “ Serv­ ing the former Emperor for thirty years, We have tirelessly wor­ ried over and toiled for the Empire. The wealth and rank that you ministers now enjoy—this We have granted you. The secu­ rity and peace of the Empire—this We have fostered. When the former Emperor passed away, he entrusted to Us the court and

the altars of state. To fulfill this charge, We have dared not cher­ ish Ourself, but have devoted Our care entirely to the people. Yet the rebel lieadsrare all court ministers and generals! Why are these officials so ungrateful? How is it that among the retinue of long-serving officials who received Gaozong’s imperial be­ quest there are recalcitrant and insubordinate men like Pei Yan? And how is it that from among the families of eminent generals, a man like Xu Jingye can emerge to gather lawless desperadoes? And what of an ever-victorious career general in charge o f sol­ diers like Cheng Wuting? The prestige of these three was great indeed. And yet when they opposed Us, We were able to destroy them all. If any of you believe that you surpass these three, then make your move straight away. If not, reform your hearts and serve Us with due reverence.” All of those assembled bowed their heads, not daring to look up in her direction. They answered, “ As Your Majesty commands.” Her sharp-tongued challenge reduced the court to tremulous obedience. Like an Emperor, she now issued edicts using the “ Royal We.” Every man there knew that she backed her keenedged, if elegant, words with lethal action. In destroying the Yangzhou rebels and eliminating her enemies, she had secured the compliance of both the court and the military. After 30 years of involvement in court matters and politics, she felt that she had a legitimate proprietary claim to the empire, that she, more than her sons or any of the ministers in court, was its rightful guardian.

Wu Zhao as Lover: Lady of Perfect Satisfaction There was a man in Wu Z hao’s time named Xue Aocao whose prodigious member was the source o f legend. Though women sorely desired this handsome, educated and clever fellow, upon beholding his “ meaty instrument,” which when erect could sup­ port a full bucket o f rice from its head without drooping in the slightest, even the most seasoned prostitutes fled in wide-eyed terror and awe. When the lustiest and most experienced of these women finally allowed Xue Aocao an opportunity, he was unable to enter her. It seemed as though, forced to bear this monstrous burden, Xue Aocao was cursed to pass through life a virgin. But then, a eunuch attendant carried word of Xue Aocao’s immense penis to the palace. Wu Zhao, unsatisfied with her male favorites since the death of Gaozong, summoned him by imperial decree. The empire in the late seventh century con­ tained roughly 70 million people and, presumably, 35 million women. At seventy years of age, widowed Wu Zhao, Emperor of China, was the only woman capacious enough to accommo­ date Xue Aocao. After their initial passionate, palace-shaking bout of lovemaking, her delight was so great that she bestowed upon her youthful lover the title Lord of Perfect Satisfaction. Thereafter, she demanded that he no longer address her as Your Majesty, for she considered him a husband rather than a mere subject. During one lovemaking session, when Xue Aocao finally

inserted the entire length and breadth of his member, his relent­ less ardor forced Wu Zhao to beg for mercy, and she cried out, “ My own Dear Father, you are slaying me with pleasure. Please stop for a moment—these vigorous comings and goings are hard to endure!” This never happened. These events are depicted in a six­ teenth century Ming dynasty novella, The Lord o f Perfect Satis­ faction, which portrays Wu Zhao as sexually insatiable, driven wholly by lust and utterly unconcerned with matters of govern­ ment. In the 1,300 years since Wu Z hao’s death, such represen­ tations are typical. In a poem that appears in Jin Ping Mei, the most celebrated erotic novel in traditional China, the author metaphorically evokes the heated intensity of the sexual chemistry between the two main characters by alluding to Wu Zhao and Xue Aocao in The Lord o f Perfect Satisfaction: This one gives vent to the warbling of an oriole; It much resembles Wu Zetian’s rendezvous with X ue Aocao. That one gives voice to the twittering of a swallow: It is just like Shen Yiji consorting with Empress Lii.

Thus, their mellifluous moans on the brink of orgasm mimicked the musical heartfelt songs of birds, an evocative and sensual parallel that resonated with the largely male readership. Through an imagined, common, wanton female lust, the male author linked Wu Zhao, the most notorious woman in Chinese history, to Golden Lotus, the most infamous anti-heroine in Chinese literature. In the famous Chinese classical novel Dream o f Red M an­ sions, a boudoir outfitted solely to fill one’s mind with amorous desires and lusty thoughts contained an antique mirror from the dressing room of “ lascivious empress” Wu Zhao. In a nineteenthcentury Qing dynasty novel, Destinies o f the Flowers in the Mir­ ror, Wu Zhao descends to earth as a hedonistic fox spirit to visit catastrophe upon the Tang dynasty. Among folk legends, there are even vulgar tales of a donkey-headed Crown Prince. As a fictional character, Xue Aocao served as a vehicle whereby educated and scholarly men, who constituted the majority of

the literate consumers at whom the work was directed, might feel that the only female Emperor in Chinese history had got her com euppancerNot only was she demonized as a bad ruler in thrall of her senses, but Xue Aocao’s sexual mastery of Wu Zhao and her capitulation restored proper hierarchy, and set male and female in their proper places. From the Confucian perspective, Xue Aocao, by birth the offspring of an adulterous concubine and a servant, was a fitting partner for Wu Zhao, who had likewise risen far above her proper station. His very name, Aocao, can be understood as “ Filthy.” O f course, the novella was also meant to entertain and titillate. Actually, this representation of Wu Zhao reveals far more about the writer and the Ming dynasty audience than it does about Wu Zhao as a lover or a sexual being. In The Lord o f Perfect Satisfaction, the elderly Wu Zhao, far from becoming sex-weathered and emotionally drained, re­ tained her youth, beauty, and an “ incandescent sexual desire that excelled the nymphomaniacs and most lustful prostitutes of the day.” Her body is described as flawless jade, having neither wrinkle nor crease. This image of Wu Zhao calls to mind a Daoist divinity, the Plain Girl, who seduced lonely woodcutters and fishermen in her lakeside hut. Through her consummate skill in the boudoir arts, she goaded these men to extremes of passion, absorbing all of their spent male essence, leaving them withered, enervated husks, while she remained ever virginal in appearance. Traditionally, Chinese historians portrayed Wu Zhao in a strikingly similar fashion, which makes it difficult to sort the real person from the Confucian fantasy of the paradigmatic evil woman. Almost all depictions of the private aspects of Wu Zhao’s life come through this sort of distorted Confucian lens which took pains, even a certain perverse delight, in magnifying her sexual appetites, turning her into a succubus capable of em­ powering herself by feeding off male essence. The traditional Daoist vision of sexuality emphasizes the need for male self control. A man, particularly an emperor like Gaozong with a large harem, needed to carefully regulate his emissions and avoid frequent ejaculation. Otherwise, he would

lose his male yang energy and become both sexually depleted and, without his male yang energy to sustain him, politically emasculated and thus less effective in the public, administrative arena. Wu Zhao, then, is often depicted as a sexual parasite; she fed off Gaozong’s lofty position, inflating her political authority at his expense. His deteriorated, illness-wracked physical body mirrored his diminished political authority. His loss was her gain: Because she sat in court with him, sharing power, she made him a lesser man, half a man. Her sexual appetite is shown in official histories as growing in direct proportion to her ascendant political power. As a young girl in Taizong’s harem, though the emperor thought her beautiful, she was unable to maintain his interest and never gained favor. Over a dozen springs and autumns, she did not bear him any children, nor was her rank increased. She re­ mained a Talent. Because Wu Zhao was the concubine of G ao­ zong’s father, in strict Confucian terms her relationship with Gaozong was incest. As Gaozong tended his sick father, he and Wu Zhao consummated their love. There is little doubt that their ardor was honed to a keen edge by a roiling cornucopia of filiality, lust, guilt, remorse, desire, and the perverse thrill of the forbidden. In the early 650s, when she was Gaozong’s favorite concu­ bine, Wu Zhao is described as being “ extremely yielding and submissive, to the point of utter shamelessness, in order to ac­ complish her larger ends. Gaozong said she knew how to serve him, and so she twisted public debate to her will and he installed her as Empress.” The characters for “ yielding” and “ submis­ sive” can also be understood as “ flexible” and “ pliant,” so that in sexual terms, it suggests she contorted herself into a wide range of gymnastic positions to cater to the Emperor’s peculiar tastes. In short, the histories suggest that she used her sexual wiles to win over and manipulate Gaozong. Curiously, contrary to Daoist tenets of sexuality, love and sex seem to have invigorated, rather than enfeebled Gaozong in the political arena. While during the first years of his reign G ao­ zong was easily cowed by powerful and aristocratic Confucian ministers, the force of the passion between him and Wu Zhao gave Gaozong the conviction to stand up to the “ old guard.”

Gaozong was an emotionally volatile sensualist, as was clearly illustrated on many occasions: his grief-stricken response to dis­ covering the deposed Empress Wang and Pure Consort X iao in a desolate tower; his tearful reunion with Wu Zhao at Ganye Convent; and his passionate affairs with Wu Z hao’s elder sister and niece. To grasp such a man’s fancy was one matter; to com­ mand his love and attention for more than three decades was another altogether. In matters of the heart, Gaozong feared his wife’s indomitable will and violent temper. When Gaozong and chief minister Shangguan Yi accused her of practicing sorcery in 664, she pleaded her case through sexual persuasion. The charges were dropped and the shocked Shangguan Yi was charged with conspiracy, leading to his imprisonment and death. Gaozong wanted to bring Wu Z hao’s niece into his harem, but dared not broach the subject with Wu Zhao. Under suspicious circum­ stances, the girl died shortly thereafter. Sexually and emotion­ ally, Gaozong was her creature. When the Confucian historians accused Wu Zhao of plotting with the Daoist magician to use sorcery against Gaozong in 664, they claimed that she intended to use a sort of poison called gu. In the Tang Code, making or keeping this poison was a crime punishable by strangulation. Sometimes gu indicated a potent potion that women of the Inner Palace used to overcome rivals, a toxic broth concocted of the combined venoms of scorpions, spiders, and snakes that, like writhing worms seething in the in­ testines, afflicted one from the inside out. On the other hand, gu can mean sexual excess, an all-consuming sexual desire so powerful that it reduces one to madness or saps all of one’s vi­ tality. The double entendre is, of course, intentional, suggesting that a woman—Wu Zhao in this instance—to slake her own bottomless lust, would willingly administer to her sick husband a potent aphrodisiac, despite knowing all too well that in the long run it would further enfeeble him. The only cure for this insidious poison was for a man to avoid the sensual realm of the Inner Palace and spend lots of time in the company of upright, moral Confucian ministers. Official sources also note that, even while Gaozong was still alive, men like the Daoist sorcerer or her Scholars of the Northern

Gate moved in and out of the Inner Palace with impunity. In Confucian eyes, these comings and goings of ungelded men sug­ gested improper intimacy, a breach of protocol and propriety. Despite such insinuations, there is no evidence that Wu Zhao was unfaithful to Gaozong during his lifetime. Even in the erotic novel, she remained constant until his death. Gaozong and Wu Zhao were in love. Through five children, 35 years and many political upheavals, they shared in triumphs and tribula­ tions. It is really only after Gaozong’s death that Confucian his­ torians begin to magnify her sexual appetite. When her husband Gaozong passed away, Wu Zhao became a Grand Dowager at sixty. During the Yangzhou rebellion, in her first year of widowhood, a disgruntled scholar named Luo Binwang, wrote a scathing manifesto attacking Wu Zhao’s character and questioning her legitimacy. His biting polemic be­ gan, “ M iss Wu, who has falsely usurped authority to run the court, is by nature cold and unyielding, by birth lowly and ob­ scure.” It continued, “ Innately jealous, her mothlike eyebrows allow other women no quarter. With her embroidered sleeves and artful slander, her vulpine glamour beguiled the ruler. Be­ neath her pheasant’s plumage, the former Empress Wang was trampled. This musky doe once plunged my true Sovereign into rutting frenzy, vying with his own father. Her heart is half viper and half chameleon. Her disposition is that of a ravenous jackal or wolf. . . . she is hated by men and spirits alike! Neither Heaven nor Earth can stand her!” Deftly, Luo Binwang used graphic animal imagery to paint Wu Zhao as something bestial, a cold-blooded creature with utter contempt for human ethics, willfully plying her monstrous sexual appetites to vicious, selfserving purposes. By casting her as a miscreant creature, he sought to de-legitimize her, to show that she was morally unfit to govern. A master of twisting language to her own ends, Wu Zhao ap­ preciated the skill and ardor with which Luo Binwang wielded his calligraphy brush. When her underlings presented her with the man’s inflammatory call-to-arms, she merely turned to them and wryly remarked, “ Ministers, this is your fault! How is it that

a man this talented has been cast out and isn’t serving in office?” This episode not only illustrates Wu Zhao’s preternatural cool under fire arid-her-sense of humor, it also clearly manifests her appreciation for the power of rhetoric. Shortly thereafter, the Qianjin Princess, a daughter of the Tang’s founding Emperor Gaozu now in her early fifties, recom­ mended to Wu Zhao a street vendor and apothecary from the Luoyang bazaar, an imposing and virile fellow described by the Confucians as “ debauched and venomous.” Originally, this ne’er-do-well of a peddler had caught the fancy of a serving girl on the staff of the Qianjin Princess. She passed word of his ex­ traordinary sexual abilities to her mistress, who, in turn, having sampled his wares, passed the tidings on to Wu Zhao, suggest­ ing that the Grand Dowager make him a part of her staff. This sort of sexual networking reveals a great deal about upper-class Tang women, attesting to an openness, a ribald sororal cama­ raderie that existed among them. Socially, they spoke freely of sexual matters and often took the initiative in arranging a ren­ dezvous with a prospective partner. Wu Zhao secretly summoned him and took an immediate liking to the man. On the pretext that he had ingenious ideas, she allowed him to freely enter the Inner Palace. One minister, who found this sort of comportment on the part of the Grand Dowager most unbecoming, remonstrated, “During Taizong’s time there was a man named Luo Heihei who was excellent at playing the pipa flute. Before he taught the palace women, Taizong had him castrated. Now that this man will bring his clever designs into the inner sanctum, I request that he, too, be castrated.” Wu Zhao denied the request, but, to give the ap­ pearance of propriety, appointed him abbot of the most venera­ ble Buddhist temple in all of China, White Horse Monastery. And so, as a newly-ordained Buddhist monk and a favorite of the Grand Dowager, the man most knew as “ M aster X ue” came and went as he pleased. Confucians portray this Master Xue—his Buddhist name Huaiyi means “ harboring righteousness”— as a talentless ras­ cal, a lowborn scoundrel plucked from the Luoyang bazaar

who rose to eminence solely on the merits of sexual prowess. The presence of this manly peddler of cosmetics in the Inner Palace, sharing the Emperor’s couch with the Grand Dowager, raised the hackles of court ministers. Such intimate favorites, whether male or female, are always despised by Confucian offi­ cials because favorites enjoy an access to the inner quarters, to the ruler’s private self, that ministers, limited to the outer court, are forever denied. Worse still, with access to Wu Zhao’s private and personal domain, this ignoble salesman of snake oils could gain her confidence and parlay his favor into political influence. In fact, Xue Huaiyi was a gifted Buddhist propagandist and a skilled architect who played a vital role in creating rhetoric and symbols to support Wu Zhao’s political ascent. In 695, Wu Zhao took a new lover, Imperial Physician Shen Nanqiu. Official records contend that Xue Huaiyi, raging with jealousy, burned down the immense ritual center at the heart of Luoyang, a complex he himself had constructed. This Shen Nan­ qiu is never mentioned in any other capacity than as a catalyst to fuel the mad monk’s incendiary passions. Xue Huaiyi’s jealous fury and Shen Nanqiu’s sudden emergence as a favorite— and equally rapid disappearance—smack of Confucian revisionism. Two dazzlingly handsome young brothers, Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi, became Wu Zhao’s favorites and entered the Inner Palace in 697. She established them as the heads of the Reining Cranes Institute. In Chinese folklore, the lofty and ele­ gant crane is associated with Daoism and immortality. In addi­ tion to the Zhangs, Wu Zhao accumulated a whole stable of handsome and virile young men in this Institute. Pretending to be a Daoist immortal, Zhang Changzong donned a feathered cloak, played a flute, and, to simulate an ascent to the ethereal world of spirits, reined and rode a wooden crane around the court. Thus her court became a D aoist utopia, and she enjoyed the company of these perfumed and colorful Daoist immortals, ever young and vital. To Wu Zhao they were as much flamboyant jesters, a com­ fort and an amusement in her senescence, as lovers. Still, her re­ lationship with the Zhangs was by no means entirely platonic. By the time the Zhang brothers gained her favor, Wu Zhao was

well into her seventies, and, like most emperors, keenly sensed her own mortality and sought remedy for this basic human con­ dition in Daoist- elixirs and rites. To supplement these medicines and potions, Daoist sexual alchemy offered a regimen for longevity. Following this prescription, Wu Zhao, like the Daoist divinity the Plain Girl, could rejuvenate herself by draining these pretty youths of their male essence, provided she did not surrender her own essence. There is also a story of Wu Zhao in her later years, like wicked M ara tempting the Buddha with his daughters, trying to entice renowned Buddhist Chan master Shenxiu into worldly desires by having her palace girls bathe him. When Shenxiu proved impervious to desires of the flesh, Wu Zhao recognized him as a great man. While there are many indications of Wu Z hao’s beauty, glamour, and power of persuasion, there are no paintings or im­ ages o f Wu Zhao remaining from her own time, and therefore there is no clear sense of what she looked like. There are por­ traits by court painters o f later dynasties, from centuries after her death, but these rigid and formal works that depict her as Emperor convey no sense of her distinctive beauty. There are also Buddhist statues in northern Sichuan and at Longmen pur­ portedly modeled after her visage. But these, too, are static and formal images that fail to convey the vitality, sensuality, and en­ ergy that Wu Zhao clearly possessed. The fortune-teller who saw Wu Zhao as a young child had remarked, awe-stricken, on her naturally regal bearing, her draconian mien and graceful phoenix-like neck, on her compelling magnetism that drew his attention. In another annal, it is written that, like her mother Wu Zhao, the Taiping Princess had “ a square forehead and a broad jaw.” While these physical attributes reflect a strong character and an iron will, they do not necessarily show breath­ taking beauty. Certainly, compared with male emperors who routinely enjoyed harems of hundreds, even thousands, of women—seventeenthcentury Qing dynasty Emperor Kangxi styled himself a paragon of sensual moderation because he kept a mere 300 women in

the Inner Palace—Wu Zhao’s handful of male favorites shows not unbridled sexual appetite, but tremendous restraint. The Confucian double standard is predictably blatant. It was both accepted and expected that every male Emperor would have a seraglio in the Inner Palace with nine ranks of concubines, yet Wu Zhao is often demonized because she took several male lovers over her twenty years of widowhood.

Sage Mother Rising With burgeoning self-assurance, on the lunar New Year in 685, Grand Dowager Wu Zhao announced a new reign era, Chuigong. This name, meaning “ with tassels dangling and hands folded the empire was governed perfectly,” evoked an image of ideal government drawn from “The Success of King Wu” in the classic Book o f Documents. In the aftermath of Li X ian’s deposal and the Yang Zhou uprising, Wu Zhao sought to convey a sense of imperial nonchalance and harmony. There­ fore she framed herself as a Daoist ruler who administered by “ effortless action.” To this end, during the reforms of the previ­ ous fall, she announced an amnesty, proclaimed an empire-wide tax break, honored and rewarded the elderly, and recalled sol­ diers serving on the frontiers. At the same time, even as her own power as Grand Dowager increased, she elevated the mother of Laozi, the founder of Daoism and ancestor of the House of Tang, nominating her as Grand Dowager of the Anterior Heaven. Statues of Laozi’s mother were placed in Daoist temples. Once again, to augment her own luster she strategically entwined her­ self with imperial ancestors o f the House of Tang. At the beginning of 685, Wu Zhao awarded a man who had helped resist the Yangzhou rebels, a relative of the rebel chief and member of a branch o f the imperial Li clan, with cash and

title. She changed his surname to her own, Wu. She wanted to send a message to the empire: Family was subordinate to state. Officials who put the well-being of the state as their foremost agenda would be rewarded. Those who acted for selfish, famil­ ial, or parochial motives would be punished. As de facto ruler, she was the ultimate arbiter of what defined “the well-being of the state” and what fell under the category of “ selfish and parochial motives.” Naturally, what she interpreted as behoov­ ing “ the well-being of the state” dovetailed perfectly with her political and personal interest. And anything that opposed her will, she relegated to the category of “ selfish and parochial mo­ tives,” denouncing it as seditious. The result was something that she had been working toward ever since she and Gaozong had eliminated the “ old guard” : establishing the ruler as a powerful and autocratic figure set high above the court. She had a knack for eradicating highborn, powerful, and charismatic ministers, the sort of men who would otherwise dominate the court. Over the decades, the handles of reward and punishment, of promo­ tion and demotion, had become the prerogative and possession o f the ruler and the ruler alone. Thus, with the elimination of Pei Yan in 684 and the death of stalwart Liu Rengui, the regent o f the Western Capital who died early in 685, the rest of the court trembled before her authority. Ministers during Wu Zhao’s time and historians since have struggled to pinpoint where her role as devoted Confucian widow keeping the empire intact for her sons and grandsons of the House of Tang ended, and her ambitions for her natal Wu clan began. For instance, in the fall of 685, she issued an edict proclaiming, “ Henceforth, when sacrifices are made to Heaven and Earth, offerings shall also be presented to the great found­ ing sovereigns of our Tang dynasty: Gaozu, Taizong and G ao­ zong.” This rhetorical position muted her critics in court. To oppose her, the sponsor of these rites, would be to oppose the cumulative merit and achievement of three generations of Tang emperors. Even now, it is unclear to what extent the edict was a product o f sincere reverence and to what measure it was wily rhetoric, an effort to throw the court off her scent as she pre­ pared to found her own dynasty.

After the Yangzhou uprising, Wu Zhao, already suspicious by nature and jealous of the power and influence of her court min­ isters and generals^ was in a constant state of anxiety that verged on paranoia. She feared dissent would bring about chaos and attached a high premium to loyalty and unanimity. To create a culture of loyalty to her person in court, she compiled a new manual called Regulations for Ministers. This cleverly wrought text, written with the help of Liu Weizhi, the past head of her Scholars of the North Gate and current chief minister, created a behavioral ideal of total loyalty for court ministers. By design, it sought to diminish the influence of high-ranking ministers and glorify the ruler, while ensuring that ministers realized that such an arrangement was for the greater good of the state. The ideas contained in the Regulations for Ministers were not antitraditional. Rather, they were principles lifted from a hodge-podge of classics, giving the new text a certain canonical authority. According to the opening chapter of Regulations for Minis­ ters, “The Same Organism,” the ruler was the “ heart-mind” of the body politic, the state, while ministers served as the arms and legs. In this theory of statecraft, an appendage that did not function properly was detrimental to the whole organism. Wu Zhao warned that if the larger body, the state, sickened or per­ ished, individual organs and limbs would suffer. Therefore it was vital that a minister wholeheartedly and single-mindedly toil to secure the equilibrium and health of the larger organism. Otherwise, he would become a canker, a disease that must be excised for the body to function healthily. Using the shared body as metaphor, she reminded ministers that they had a pow ­ erful personal stake vested in the state. The “same organism” was not just an abstract idea. In 685, when a demoted official complained to the chief ministers, one man replied, “ Don’t blame us! The Grand Dowager meted out your punishment. ” Liu Weizhi immediately claimed that the de­ motion resulted from petitions sent by ministers rather than from Wu Zhao’s command. When Wu Zhao heard this she low­ ered the rank of the minister who had sidestepped blame and further elevated Liu Weizhi, commenting to the attendant min­ isters, Ruler and officials are a single organism. How is it you

lay responsibility for the bad on the ruler, and take credit for the good yourself?” This principle of governance was set forth clearly in “ Absolute Loyalty,” the next chapter of the manual: “ Within the palace walls, the minister conceals the faults of the ruler. To the outside world, he broadcasts praise of the ruler’s glory.” A minister’s own prestige was utterly inconsequential; the ruler’s image and reputation were his primary concerns. Liu Weizhi, her co-author, knew this and consciously shielded Wu Zhao from negative publicity. The other minister did not. Highly conscious of public perception, Wu Zhao expected loyal ministers to skillfully manage public relations, with a deep commitment to protecting and glorifying her image. This minis­ terial credo was made abundantly clear in Regulations for Min­ isters. To show absolute loyalty to the ruler, the minister gave his utmost effort, never seeking any reward. Rather than ingra­ tiating himself with honeyed words, the minister, despite the risk of angering the ruler, offered honest criticism to steer his sovereign in the right direction. The epitome of selflessness, oblivious to his own “ safety or danger,” the ideal minister never sought praise from nor flattered the ruler, always placing public duty before private interest. Regulations for Ministers further demanded prudence and secrecy, for once the words the ruler had spoken were circulated, “ even a team of horses could not chase them down.” Finally, a minister must be both incorrupt­ ible and honest. Officials were reminded of the timeless Confu­ cian notion that governance was about morality and rites, not salary and profit. The most radical idea in Regulations for Ministers is the no­ tion that family is subordinate to the state. In the Analects, Confucius is reputed to have said that a son should not report his father to authorities for stealing a sheep. Rather, truly up­ right sons should cover for their fathers, just as fathers should cover for their sons. This precedence of filial piety over loyalty was restated in the Tang Code, promulgated shortly before Wu Zhao became Empress, which held that filial piety was a greater virtue than loyalty. Article 46 stipulated that, except in the case of plotting sedition or some such capital crime, family members were expected to mutually protect and conceal each other. On the contrary, Regulations for Ministers claimed that “ in antiquity

loyal officials served their ruler first and then their parents, placed the nation first and then concerned themselves with their household. WhyPJIhe ruler is the root of the parents. Without the ruler, the parents would not exist. Without the nation, the fam­ ily could not exist. Therefore, ruler is first and parents second; the state is first and the household second.” Loyalty to state, not filial devotion to parents, was the paramount virtue. After all, following her argument, father and son are separate beings, but ruler and minister belong to the “ same organism.” As head of state, but lacking a well-established family network of her own, it was a wise political strategy on Wu Z hao’s part to equate state with public-minded good and family with self­ ishness. M aking the bond between ruler and minister supersede the blood tie between father and son diminished the import of the entire male cult of ancestors, thereby effectively weakening the patriarchal basis of authority. In short, Regulcitions for Min­ isters redefined political power so that it issued not from a cult of ancestors in the past but from the ruler in the present. Every­ one serving in her court was made familiar with the text that repetitively and forcefully drummed into the ministers an ethic of unassuming subservience, unswerving loyalty and total selfabnegation. Wu Z hao’s court was no longer a forum for debate but a testing ground for a minister’s personal loyalty. In 693, to foster this culture of loyalty, she elevated the text to canonical status, placing it alongside the works of Confucius and ritual manuals of the distant past as a mandatory text for all officials taking the civil service examinations. At the beginning of 686, Wu Zhao issued an edict offering to restore full administrative authority to her son, Li Dan. Know­ ing that she was insincere, and thoroughly terrified of his mother, the Emperor steadfastly declined. Wu Zhao resumed governing the country as before. The Confucian historians take pains to point out that this unnatural breach of proper political order caused a disturbance in the natural rhythm of the cosmos. They record that a solar eclipse immediately followed. The so­ lar orb, a symbol of male imperial authority, was blotted from the sky. In 687, there were reports of metal raining from the sky, a further sign that the five elements—metal, earth, water,

wood, and fire—were in a state of disequilibrium. As catastro­ phes like droughts, floods, and famine failed to convey suffi­ cient Confucian outrage, historians o f subsequent dynasties in­ vented omens to show Heaven’s disapproval of Wu Zhao. The Book o f Documents, written more than a millennium before Wu Z hao’s time, contains the passage, “When the hen crows to welcome the dawn, the family is doomed.” Therefore, in the New Tang History, to paint Wu Zhao as a usurper bent on de­ stroying the House of Tang, Ouyang Xiu wrote that once Wu Zhao took charge of the court in the late 680s, “throughout the empire in every prefecture hens changed into roosters, or half­ changed.” The message was clear: A woman in a position of paramount power was an abomination, an aberration of nat­ ural and human order. Omens were important in Tang politics. Political factions contended to interpret the larger meaning of earthquakes, fires, comets, and the appearance of fantastic creatures. Thus, when in the autumn of 686, not far from Chang’an, amidst great wind and rain, thunder and lightning, a 200-foot-tall mountain reportedly jutted forth from the ground, it provoked an intense debate in Wu Zhao’s court. One faction claimed that in the af­ termath o f the seismic upheaval a divine pool had appeared on the mountain in which a yellow dragon swam to and fro, regur­ gitating fist-sized pearls. Hidden drums resounded, welling up from the heart of the magical mountain. Wu Zhao liked this in­ terpretation, which took the peak’s miraculous appearance as an auspicious omen, styling it a miniature Sumeru, the paradisial Buddhist mountain. She declared that henceforth it would be called M ount Felicity. Many vied to offer their congratulations. However, some Confucian ministers viewed the event as a disaster. One official sternly memorialized, “ Your Majesty, a fe­ male ruler, improperly has occupied a male position, which has inverted and altered the hard and soft, therefore the earth’s em­ anations are obstructed and separated. This mountain, so born of the sudden convulsion of earth, represents a calamity. Your M ajesty may take this as ‘M ount Felicity,’ but your subject feels there is nothing to celebrate. To respond properly to Heaven’s censure, it is suitable that you lead the quiet life of a widow and cultivate virtue, otherwise I fear further disasters will befall us.”

Wu Zhao, with no intention whatsoever of “ leading the quiet life of a widow,” rejected this interpretation, and promptly ex­ iled the man tO-the_swampy, disease-ridden Southland. The occurrence of a mystical event or appearance of an omen was never serendipitous. Rather than attribute Wu Z hao’s fasci­ nation with omens to deep-seated superstition, which might suggest that she was naive, it is generally illuminating to read the omens as calculated maneuvering, a timely and strategic mustering of evidence to validate and legitimize her sovereignty. Her imperial authority was an invention, and omens were a vital supplement to her political repertoire. Yet there too, one must be wary, and not cynically dismiss all o f these omens as bald ma­ nipulation without considering the possibility that some measure of sincere belief was involved. Wu Zhao appreciated the value of auspicious omens. One un­ official source contains the curious story o f someone presenting a sunbird, a mythical three-legged crow, in the court Wu Zhao in 690, the year she inaugurated her Zhou dynasty. When this por­ tentous avian arrived, a minister said, “ One of the legs is fake.” Wu Zhao smiled and replied, “ Let the Court Historian record the event in the annals. What does it matter if it is real or fake?” When puppet ruler Li Dan also opined that the foremost leg was fake it incurred his mother’s displeasure. Soon, the leg fell off. Well aware the “ sunbird” was a clumsily wrought fraud, she nonetheless ordered it chronicled as an auspicious omen in court annals. Here and elsewhere, Wu Zhao is depicted as a charlatan who shamelessly manipulated omens to her political advantage. On other occasions, Wu Zhao seems to have been genuinely unnerved by signs and omens. Once, while traveling near to the Luo River, she lost track of her mounted escort. She felt the presence of a baleful influence and summoned a shaman. They happened to be passing by the tomb of a general who had per­ ished during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420) and the medium determined that the general’s spirit had become unsettled be­ cause kindling gatherers had stripped his tumulus bare. H ur­ riedly, Wu Zhao issued an edict prohibiting farming and forestry within one hundred paces of the tomb. Thereafter, dates and thorns grew on the mound.

Omens are a critical part of dynastic transition, but once a dynasty is established these signs diminish in importance. Chi­ nese rulers of freshly established dynasties tend to become wary and distrustful of omens, knowing all too well the potential util­ ity of prophecies to challengers. Thus, once her Zhou dynasty was established, Wu Zhao no longer needed to seek omens to le­ gitimize herself. In 694, when she plucked a pear blossom in the fall, almost all of the court ministers clamored to curry favor by praising its auspiciousness. One man, however, commented, “ Now, though most vegetation has withered and fallen, this branch has flowered. Yin and yang are out of kilter and the fault lies with us ministers!” Eight years earlier in 686 when Wu Zhao was working to accumulate prophecies and omens to prove that she possessed Heaven’s sanction to rule, she had ban­ ished the minister who viewed M ount Felicity’s emergence as an ill-omened terrestrial convulsion. Firmly established as Emperor in 694, however, she praised the outspoken minister who ques­ tioned the validity of the unseasonable flower as an auspicious token, for such omens no longer carried great political currency. Perhaps the most interesting of her many auspicious omens was a radish of prodigious size, more than three feet in diame­ ter, unearthed in the fields on the outskirts of Luoyang and pre­ sented to her. Wu Zhao quickly determined that it was auspi­ cious and commanded her cooks to create a delicious banquet with the colossal tuber. A radish, whether small or large, is by nature dry and pungent. Therefore, with great trepidation lest they disappoint their capricious sovereign, the cooks toiled through the night. They peeled the radish into fine, wispy strands and made a vast array of savory broths—chicken, fish, pork, beef, and vegetable. Steeped in the aromatic broths, the strands of radish were used like noodles and garnished with an array of meat, seafood, and vegetables. When the feast was spread, one course followed the next, flowing on and on, until Wu Zhao had enjoyed two dozen distinct soups, each filled with radish strands. Today this “ Water Banquet” remains a fa­ mous local cuisine in Luoyang. Wu Z hao’s autocratic handling of court matters and her jeal­ ousy of power in the hands of others led many to believe that

she had no intention of returning power to her son. Uneasy ministers and imperial kinsmen felt that her change of court colors, fondness-fer omens, and proposed changes to ancestral temples all signaled her ambition to usurp the throne. In the fall of 687, one man forged an edict that ordered the muster of troops in the name of deposed Li Xian. When his plot was ex­ posed, he was sliced in half. Other troubles were brewing. Envious of the rising popular­ ity of Li Xiaoyi, a general who had helped quell the Yangzhou uprising and a nephew of Tang founder Gaozu, Wu Chengsi slandered the charismatic officer before his aunt Wu Zhao. In 687, he reported that Li Xiaoyi had boasted, “The character for my name contains the loping hare, a creature of the moon. I have been chosen by Heaven.” For the superstitious Grand Dowager, the moon held great numinous power. In legend, the lunar hare helped the M oon Goddess grind ingredients for an elixir of immortality. Thus, this portentous hare might provide potent evidence of Heaven’s endorsement of Li Xiaoyi, a poten­ tially dangerous rival and imperial contender. Wu Zhao promptly exiled Li Xiaoyi to the provinces where he was even­ tually killed. After Li X iaoyi’s exile, Wu Zhao ordered all hares in the empire exterminated. One local troublemaker, rebuffed by a neighbor from whom he sought to beg a melon, reported to county officials that he had seen a white hare in the neigh­ bor’s melon field. The county official sent subordinates to search for the creature and trampled the field flat. Curiously, the troublemaker rose to become one of her “ cruel officials,” and became known as the “ White Hare Censor.” Li Xiaoyi’s unjust banishment further rattled the Li kinsmen. In a superficial effort to allay their fears, Wu Zhao set up tem­ ples to the three deceased Tang emperors. Yet she complemented this honor to her affinal family by simultaneously proposing to establish a grand ancestral temple for her Wu family. As it had four years earlier, this proposal sparked a furor over whether the Wu temple should have seven rooms, like the imperial family or five. The court was riven. One official petitioned that ritual propriety dictated that her family temple should include seven rooms, while the ancestral temple of the House of Tang should be reduced to five.

Another minister vehemently retorted, “ In ceremony, the Son of Heaven receives seven rooms, the various lords five rooms. Through the reigns of one hundred kings this ritual law has been fixed. Now, drawing on flimsy arguments, my colleague has set forth his unorthodox views, allowing his agenda of ex­ alting the authority of those who hold sway at court to dictate ceremony rather than relying on time-honored principle. The Grand Dowager has previously agreed that the number of rooms in the Wu family temple should be the same as that of those of other lordly clans—five.” Biding her time, Wu Zhao once again heeded the voice of the court. Ceremonial regulations were not inviolable or sacrosanct, un­ changing laws carved in stone. For many Confucian officials the question o f whether the Wu family should have five or seven tem­ ples depended less upon precedent in the classical canon—and more on opportunism and self-interest. Men of lowly back­ ground who owed their court position largely to Wu Zhao’s lib­ eral policies of appointment lobbied zealously for her cause. As her power waxed, their status increased. However, for members of the imperial Li family, their allies, and other longstanding aris­ tocratic families her looming ascendancy posed a growing threat. Without doubt, the monumental Bright Hall constructed in 688 was the most spectacular monument erected during Wu Z hao’s regency. Both Taizong and Gaozong had wished to build a Bright Hall, but abandoned the idea when their courts became bogged down in tiresome, long-winded debates about proper de­ sign. Wu Zhao, too, had long been smitten with the idea of con­ structing such a ritual edifice. In 685, she posed a question to Chen Z i’ang, a bright young Confucian official: “To harmonize with nature and the cosmos, what must I do?” He replied that she needed to coordinate “the mechanics of Heaven and Earth, the system of the female yin and male yang essences, the twentyfour ethers, the eight winds, the twelve months, the four seasons, the five elements and the twenty-eight constellations in a single, perfect ritual center, a Bright H all.” Wu Zhao did not allow the construction and design of the Bright Hall to become fodder for court debate. In the second month of 688, she assigned her monk-lover Xue Huaiyi, the flamboyant Buddhist abbot of

White Horse Monastery, Commissioner of Works and placed him in charge of the project. Previously, ministers had argued that the Bright HaiH should be built south of Luoyang, well out­ side the palace walls. However, Xue Huaiyi, supervising a mas­ sive labor force o f 30,000 men, built the ceremonial complex in the heart of the Divine Capital, on the site of a former imperial palace. He proved a most capable architect, fashioning a spec­ tacular cloud-piercing ritual hall that cleverly combined Bud­ dhist symbols and traditional icons into a magnificent ideologi­ cal hybrid, a composite symbol of Wu Zhao’s political authority. A traditional Confucian Bright Hall melded the shapes of square Earth and round Heaven into a single ritual and admin­ istrative center. Like the hand of a great clock, the ruler moved from room to room with ritual precision, in synchronicity with the seasons and the cosmos. Theoretically, the ceremonial ca­ dence o f his circumambulation would bring peace and harmony to the empire. In her announcement to present the completed complex, Wu Zhao proclaimed: “This Bright Hall is a locale for the Emperor to perform sacrifices to imperial ancestors and a place to conduct audiences with the great families. It is also an arena that may serve to reveal the mysterious designs of Heaven and Earth, to discern changes in the ethers and the weather, and thereby help avert disasters from occurring and catastrophes from coming to pass.” This complex, which Wu Zhao named the Divine Palace of Myriad Images, did not merely fulfill the traditional function of a Bright Hall, but went far beyond the vision of the ancients. First, it was not a single building but a larger ritual complex. The central ritual hall was more than 250 feet tall and had two floors joined by an immense pillar set in iron. The first floor, loosely based on the traditional Confucian model, contained rooms following the four seasons and twelve months, matched with their respective colors. The second floor was an astronom­ ical observatory. On the roof, nine dragons held aloft a canopy upon which perched a ten-foot gold-plated iron phoenix, poised for flight. It was an awe-inspiring feat of engineering to fix the phoenix 300 feet above the ground. Gazing up at the marvelous structure, people of the day felt as though from atop the ornate tower one might truly commune with spirits.

The second building, set to the north, was a five-story Bud­ dhist pagoda so tall that from its third floor one could look down at the lofty gilded phoenix. According to records, the building w as 975 feet tall, a firmament-piercing pagoda that housed a giant lacquered 880-foot Buddha so immense that its little toe could seat twenty or thirty people, and its nose was like a thousand-bushel boat. Even given the penchant of Chinese histories to exaggerate, it was certainly the tallest man-made structure in the world in its day. Beholding the awe-inspiring structure, one bold Confucian minister chastised Wu Zhao, comparing her to evil rulers of the past who had built extravagant mansions, wasting the energy and resources of the common people. He argued that, “ In past Bright Halls, thatch and rushes covered rough-hewn beams. This present structure is adorned in brilliant hues of vermilion and azure, ornamented with dragons and phoenixes.” His pointed critique was ignored. Others praised the Buddhist-Confucian hybrid Bright Hall. In the classic Book o f Songs, an ode tells that when a sage ruler of antiquity wished to construct a mag­ nificent tower the common people “ came as sons,” thronging like eager children to do the bidding of a benevolent parent, they built it in “ less than a day.” One minister, Chen Z i’ang, wrote a memorial congratulating Wu Zhao on the completion of the Bright Hall that evoked the ode: “ It was built in less than a day. Truly a divine achievement!” His rhetoric helped further the intended image of Wu Zhao as a charismatic magnet of virtue toward whom the masses, with a spirit of joyous filiality, would voluntarily gravitate. Wu Zhao formally inducted the complex with the proclama­ tion, “N ow that state altars are fixed on victorious ground and the court is auspiciously situated between Heaven and Earth, following the sequence of yin and yang, boats and chariots am ass, bringing tribute from far and near. Therefore by means of the merit of those who come as sons, I have attempted to bring to fruition the wishes of Gaozong.” Cleverly, recalling that in the late 660s she and Gaozong had considered the erec­ tion of a Bright Hall, she framed the grandiose project as a Confucian wife’s effort to commemorate her husband.

As Gaozong’s co-ruler, Wu Zhao had been widely known as one of the Two Sages, but in 688 the Sage became a Sage Mother. In the early summer, her nephew Wu Chengsi commissioned someone to chisel, “When the Sage Mother is among the people, the realm will enjoy eternal prosperity,” on a white stone, fillin g the graven characters with an amethyst-colored powder made of crushed herbs. A lackey presented the stone to Wu Zhao, claiming he had discovered it in the Luo River. Upon receiving this inscription foretelling the arrival o f a Sage Mother bringing lasting prosperity, Wu Zhao was beside herself with delight. The discovery of the engraved stone, which she called the Precious Diagram ,” evoked one of China’s most sacred and ancient artifacts: the mysterious Luo River Inscription. The Book o f Documents, one of the earliest Chinese classics, contains the passage, “When the Luo River gives forth the Inscription, the Sage will soon arrive.” Presumably, encoded in the cryptic Luo River Inscription was the blueprint of perfect governance left by sage rulers of antiquity, a mystic repository of wisdom that would remain hidden and submerged until drawn forth from its watery concealment by the charismatic and virtuous presence of a latter-day sage. Thus, the inscribed portent also served as a highly auspicious token of Wu Zhao’s political ascendancy. A clever propagandist, she moved quickly to broadcast tidings of the stone’s discovery. With a humble thanks to Heaven, she assumed the lofty title “ Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign.” Though she stopped short of actually proclaiming herself Emperor on this occasion, the char­ acter for “sovereign” in her title was part of the term for Em­ peror. It was apparent to all that she was rapidly moving in that direction. A s First Lady, Celestial Empress, and Grand D ow a­ ger, Wu Zhao had long styled herself mother of the empire. In an edict promulgated shortly after Gaozong’s death she had an­ nounced, “I gaze as a mother over the realm.” In Confucianism, a “ sage” could intuitively apprehend the nature of things and therefore act in perfect concord with Heaven and nature. Traditionally, Chinese “ sages” possessed extraordinary physical characteristics. One had four eyes; another, several ear holes; yet another, four nipples; a fourth was hunchbacked.

These defects made them other, separating them from common men. As a latter-day sage, Wu Zhao possessed perhaps the strangest defect of all—she was a woman. The same term that in Confucianism meant “ sage” had a different resonance in Bud­ dhism: It denoted a holy Buddha, a saint. Wu Zhao, a master of language and rhetoric, used the term to seamlessly encompass both meanings. At once, she was a benevolent mother, tenderly fostering harmony within the Four Seas, a worthy heir to the sagacious Confucian exemplars of antiquity, and a compassion­ ate bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint come to lead the faithful to prosperity in this world and paradise in the next. Later that same summer, Wu Zhao invested the Luo River, which cut through the heart of Luoyang, as the “ Perpetual and Eternal Luo,” and, deciding that mere “ Precious Diagram” did not do justice to the magical river-borne stone, changed its name to “ Heaven-bestowed Precious D iagram .” The spirit of the Luo River that had given forth the stone was entitled Marquis who M ade the Saint Apparent. She prohibited fishing in the river and ordered that the Luo be honored in the same fashion as the Yellow and Yangzi rivers. In this manner, the very ground around her Divine Capital of Luoyang was sanctified. A Sage Mother had risen from the Luo River. In that summer of 688, Wu Zhao announced that during the coming winter a grand ten-day public celebration would be held at her Bright Hall. She invited imperial kinsmen, members of the court, and a wide array of foreign chieftains. To the princes of the House of Tang, her progressively grand rites of self-exaltation and high-sounding titles were no longer the acts o f a loyal dowager protecting the interests of her in-laws. The magic stones, mystical mountains, and ritual halls all betokened her ambition to found a new dynasty. Many Li family princes feared that Wu Zhao intended to use the majestic stage afforded by the ten-day celebration to sever the mandate of the House of Tang and inaugurate her own dynasty. If this was the case, as imperial princes their very presence was a potential threat to her authority, as they constituted natural rallying points for rebels and generals calling for dynastic revival. Thus, to their princely ears, her invitation sounded like a poorly veiled death

trap. One of the princes asked his adviser if he should attend the celebration. The response was terse: “ If you go, death is cer­ tain.” As a resuk,-after some secret discussions in the fall of 688, they revolted. At the forefront were senior princes, the sons of Gaozu and Taizong. Gaozu, the first Tang emperor, had 22 recorded sons, and Taizong, his son and successor, had 14. Quite a few of these sons were still alive in the late 680s. Of course, all of these sons had many sons as well, and thus the im­ perial tree of the Li family had many branches. From this pre­ ponderance of prospective scions, it is easy to apprehend that succession could be a very confusing and delicate matter. Wu Zhao realized these princes were dangerous potential ad­ versaries. With the proper political support and court backing, some could claim the throne or, at the very least, rally support for puppet Li Dan or deposed Li Xian. Fortunately for Wu Zhao, the imperial princes were scattered all over the empire. This dispersion made it very difficult for them to plan a coordi­ nated rebellion. In the autumn of 688, the son of one senior prince sent a missive to another saying, “ The disease that devours my insides grows ever more severe. I fear that if it is not cured by winter, it may prove fatal. Precipitate action must be taken now !” The sickness was, of course, a metaphor for Wu Zhao, a cancerous growth that needed to be excised by princely action before win­ ter when her grand ceremony was set to take place. The same fellow circulated a false decree impressed with Li Dan’s seal, which read, “We have been secretly imprisoned. All of the princes are hereby summoned to rescue and liberate U s.” When this call to arms reached Li Chong in Shandong, the firebrand of a princeling issued a fake imperial decree contend­ ing, “The Divine Sovereign wants to usurp the Altars of Soil and Grain from our Li clan and transfer them to her Wu fam­ ily.” N ot waiting for wider reinforcement, the impetuous fellow contacted nearby princes, raised troops and abruptly moved on Luoyang. Before the rebellion even got started, it was betrayed from within. One of the princes, feeling the revolt was a futile, poorly orchestrated effort and hoping to preserve his own life, sent a messenger to report the brewing trouble to Wu Zhao. The element of surprise was lost. Even before the imperial

troops sent by Wu Zhao reached the rebels, hotheaded Li Chong had been rebuffed by the troops of a strategic walled city on the banks of the Yellow River. Abandoned by his troops, he was be­ headed by subordinates. Curiously, the town which turned away Li Chong’s ill-fated advance was known as the Waters of Wu. Only after its failure did tidings of his son’s short-lived upris­ ing reach Li Chong’s father, a senior prince in a district close to Luoyang. Knowing that he would be implicated, the senior prince hurriedly conscripted a ragtag army of locals. Desper­ ately, he tried to inspirit his lackluster troops by claiming the other princes had likewise raised grand armies to oust the Di­ vine Sovereign before she moved to eradicate the House of Tang once and for all. However, Wu Zhao, concerned about a rebel army so close to her Divine Capital, sent a punitive force of 100,000 that easily routed the 7,000 rebel troops. While rebel princes struggled to muster troops, there is no indication of de­ fections or low morale among imperial soldiers. Generals will­ ingly followed Wu Zhao’s commands, while the princes proved unable to rally popular support. The masses had no issue with Wu Zhao’s political ascendancy. M any kinsmen and allies of the rebel princes were stripped of their honorable surnames and branded Vipers. Names and branding were very important to Wu Zhao. Just as she demo­ nized her enemies with vile and unlucky labels, she affixed her own Wu surname, like a protective talisman, to those she loved. To safeguard the Qianjin Princess, a Li scion of the first Tang em­ peror, and an intimate of Wu Zhao’s who had recommended Xue Huaiyi, she bestowed upon the princess her own Wu surname. She made a conscious effort to exalt the Wu character of her surname. In the prophetic Commentary on the Great Cloud Su­ tra, a Buddhist text which circulated on the eve of her establish­ ing her own dynasty in 690, the character Wu is broken into two components: zhi, “ stop,” and ge, “ halberds.” Taken together, these components mean “ a cessation of weapons,” a rebus for the age of peace and contentment her rule promised to bring. She turned “ Wu” into an auspicious icon o f sorts by attaching it to building and place names, joining her Wu with another character to form a compound that announced the success, emergence, and prominence of the Wu family in general and of

herself in particular. Wucheng, the name of one of her palaces, consciously echoed the “ Success of King Wu” chapter in the Book o f Documents. A Daoist holy mountain in Hubei was named Wudang, “ the aptness of Wu.” Wu Zhao renamed her ancestral home Wenshui county “Wuxing,” “Wu Rising.” The Sishui River was changed to the Guangwu, “ Expansive Wu,” after an auspicious stone was found there in 688. Guangwu was also the name o f a famous Han dynasty emperor in the first century A.D. who had restored the dynasty after a period of weak rulers and a 15-year interregnum. Like Wu Zhao, he had moved the capital from Chang’an to Luoyang and built a Bright Hall. Such associations with glorious past rulers naturally helped augment her majesty. Names were a powerful magic, thought to reflect, if not to create, realities. The idea of “ rectification of names” as a cur­ rency of political authority had deep roots in Chinese statecraft. By reminding all of the embedment of her Wu in place names, she in effect created a sacred geography where the very rivers, mountains, and counties announced and celebrated her name. She was everywhere. She was everything. O f all the imperial rites performed during the first 70 years of the Tang dynasty, the ten-day celebration at Wu Zhao’s Bright Hall was the grandest and most spectacular. Followed by nomi­ nal Emperor Li Dan, Wu Zhao went to the banks of the Luo River where at a huge altar built for the occasion she formally accepted the Precious Diagram, the inscribed stone that the river had reportedly given forth. To the cadence of a score composed just for the occasion, “ Music to Honor the Luo River,” a grand array of ministers, military officials, and barbarian chieftains from every quarter paraded in her colorful train. Before the Luo altar, guests placed an unrivalled horde of tribute: exotic gifts from their native regions including splendid birds, miraculous beasts, precious gemstones, and other exquisite rarities. On the lunar New Year, the celebration continued at the Bright Hall with a grand feast. Carrying the imperial scepter and tally of authority of the Zhou dynasty of antiquity, Wu Zhao led the procession. After sacrificing to Heaven and Earth, she honored the three Tang emperors and her father, Wu Shiyue.

The imperial carriage then traveled to Conforming to Heaven Gate, where she offered a general amnesty and declared the be­ ginning of “ Eternal Prosperity,” a new reign name lifted from the inscription on the Precious Diagram. A few days later, Wu Zhao held court and instructed her officials on nine points of proper administration. While histories do not record these instructions, they were likely drawn from her Regulations for Ministers, in­ junctions on the supreme importance of loyalty to the ruler. On the final day of her celebration, she feted her court officials. In the second lunar month of 689, she made her father Grand August One, Loyal and Filial, and her mother Grand Dowager, Loyal and Filial. The site of the Wu family tombs in Wenshui was designated the Cemetery of Manifest Virtue. Ever the filial daugh­ ter, later in the same year Wu Zhao issued an edict proclaiming that henceforth sacrifices and ceremonies conducted to honor past Tang empresses would simultaneously pay reverence to her mother. This was part of her continuing effort to upgrade her ge­ nealogy in order to properly reflect her new imperial stature. Wu Zhao did not, as the imperial princes had feared, use the occasion as a stage to declare the advent of a new dynasty under the dominion of the Wu family. She included her son Li Dan in the ceremonies and honored past emperors of the House of Tang. However every ritual action was calculated to exalt her person and enhance her authority. She realized the fragility of her power, and, rather than making a sudden and radical change, wisely con­ tinued to probe—and expand—the boundaries of her authority. On the winter solstice in 689, from her new Bright Hall com­ plex, Wu Zhao promulgated an edict in which she announced that the state would discard the Tang calendar and begin to fol­ low a new calendar based on that used by the Zhou dynasty of antiquity. The winter solstice marked the end of an old cycle and the beginning of a new, of lengthening days, of coming spring. The calendar was reset so that the winter solstice marked the first day of the first month of the first year of a new era which she called Origin of Records, a name which clearly connotes the fresh beginning of time, of history, as though Wu Zhao was the first ruler, the only ruler, of a dawning new era. The issuance of a new calendar was a means by which a ruler made himself (or

herself) master over time, and molded the ritual and ceremonial patterns of state in his own image. To keep time, the immense Buddhist pagoda in Wu Z hao’s Bright Hall was connected to a cosmic clock designed by the finest Indian astronomers of the day, equipped with a bell and drum, which beat out a ritual cadence supposedly audible to believers, even those 10,000 miles distant, but imperceptible to those who doubted the Buddhist faith. One week before the introduction of this new calendar, Zong Chuke, a younger relative on Wu Zhao’s mother’s side of the fam­ ily, presented her with 12 new characters. Tailored for the calen­ dar, part archaic script and part sheer invention, these new sym­ bols of celestial grandeur—Heaven,- sun, moon, and star—and earthly majesty—ruler and minister—immediately caught Wu Zhao’s fancy. The Chinese “ sun” is the same character as “ day,” and “moon” the same as “month,” thus when she announced the dawning of Origin of Records, these new characters formed the basis of her new calendar. Circulating rapidly and widely through­ out the empire, these unique signets became one of the trademarks of Wu Zhao’s sovereignty. They reminded subjects empire-wide of the female ruler who had reshaped time, and indelibly placed her personal imprint upon Chinese writing. In the years that followed, another half dozen characters were created, often for gala occa­ sions like the inauguration of new reign eras. From 689 until the characters were discontinued in 705, every time an official petitioned the throne and every time a stone carver engraved a eulogy, and every time a literate subject gazed upon an inscribed monument, the ubiquitous new characters echoed her name. From Turfan to the southern port city of Quanzhou, from Dunhuang to the Korean peninsula, these highly recognizable symbols an­ nounced her sovereignty to every quarter. Even today, 1,300 years later, a single glance at a document or a stone stele from her era immediately reveals it to be an item belonging to her reign. Characters fixed for a millennium suddenly took on new forms. More than just ornate emblems for Wu Z hao’s new cal­ endar, they were a complex repertoire of symbols designed to exalt her and help sanction her rule. Among the new characters was her name, Zhao, a majestic image of the sun and moon set over the void. The new character for “ year” was a conglomer­ ate of other existing characters. Intersecting pairs of vertical

Wu Zhao's New Characters Oriainal Character Romanization

Meaning

New Character

© ®

0

ri

sun, day

M

yue

moon, month

a

xing

star

?c

tian

Heaven, sky, day

ft

di

Earth

¥

nian

year

ta

chu

origin, beginning

IE

zheng

first, king (archaic)

«

zai

records

E

chert

minister

£

m

fun

ruler

f

m

zhao

illumination

s

a

shou

receive

a

zheng

verification, proof

s

sheng

sage

B

guo

nation

A

ren

person, subject

M (second var.)

yue

moon, month

o

M .

HL

it £ 't '

-sPL Hi

2©

1000s and horizontal 10,000s evoked her boundless dominion, her agelessness, and her infinite power, providing the sense that her rule would last forever. In Chinese, the term Wansui (Banzai in Japanese) literally means “ 10,000 years,” but is often trans­ lated “ Long live the Emperor!” When the emperor approached, officials would prostrate themselves and say, “ 10,000 years! 10,000 years!” It was a respectful way for a subject to address the ruler, wishing him longevity and a long reign. Other characters like the new “ ruler” were designed to re­ flect an aura of good fortune, to show Heaven’s endorsement of her rule. This peculiar symbol of cumulative auspiciousness was composed of three separate vertical characters, literally depict­ ing Heaven delivering universal felicitations. The topmost

component, “ Heaven,” opened on the middle segment “ great” and the bottommost character “ good fortune.” Presumably, generous Heaven.'above, in response to the sagely and saintly governance of Wu Zhao, naturally blessed the empire with prosperity and good fortune. Taken as a whole, one might un­ derstand the character to mean that Wu Z hao’s rule, timely and immensely auspicious, was ordained by Heaven. A new vision of ruler called for a new type of minister. In a time rife with divisiveness, Wu Zhao sought to craft symbols of loyalty and unity. Between 684 and 690, many imperial kins­ men and officials who had opposed her were eradicated or ex­ iled. The new character for “ official” featured a conglomerate of two existing characters: “ one” on top and “ loyalty” below. The character for “ loyalty” features a heart that is properly centered. A minister then, by definition, was single-mindedly and wholeheartedly loyal to her. Similarly, the new character for “ person” had “ one” on top and “ life” on the bottom. A subject, in short, belonged to her from cradle to grave. Like her new calendar realigned to tally with the Zhou horology of old, some of her new characters resembled, or even imitated, ornate seal characters from the Zhou dynasty. This or­ namental script from the remote past became the currency of court memorials. The public announcement of a new calendar and dissemina­ tion of these new characters late in 689 were not gratuitous po­ litical acts. Wu Zhao’s other reforms also sought affiliation with the classical Zhou era and the Confucian tradition. Her Divine Palace of Myriad Images was an elaborate form of a Zhou Bright Hall. Her reign eras were drawn from classical texts of the Zhou. Names of offices in her court were drawn from Zhou titles. In her New Year’s rites, she carried the imperial regalia of the long-past Zhou.-While superficially these reforms appeared to be an effort to recover the essence of antiquity, to accord with cultural patterns set by former kings, in fact they were a calcu­ lated balancing act, straddling tradition and innovation, antiq­ uity and the present. Sacred towers from distant lore became concrete realities. Her Bright Hall was not a simple rush structure reflecting her humility before Heaven, but a complex of spiraling towers, astronomical observatories, and giant Buddhist statues.

Her elaborate ceremonies, seemingly a tribute to the Zhou, served to magnify her political stature. Time and again, Wu Zhao manipulated the flexibility of traditional ideas to situate herself as a champion of Confucian values. In broader context, these were pivotal measures in a long series o f increasingly daring, ambitious, and public reforms between Gaozong’s death and her accession as Emperor in 690. During this six-year stretch, Wu Zhao meticulously accumulated evidence, a vast symbolic repertoire of auspicious portents, apocrypha, carefully crafted state ceremonies, widely propagated texts, and self-aggrandizing titles, geared to provide her warrant and legitimacy in her un­ precedented ascent to the apex of political power. Wu Zhao sought to anchor her authority in a Confucian tradition that otherwise rejected the very idea of a female sovereign by creating a neoclassical aura, drawing on the idealized political vision of the early Zhou dynasty. Her protracted strategy of preparing to ascend the throne, years in the making, had nearly reached its fruition. Early in 690, to show that her generous patronage extended to each of the Three Teachings, Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, Wu Zhao staged an open meeting of scholars of the Three Teachings at her Bright Hall complex, itself an ideological amalgam. A fa­ mous scholar lectured on the Canon o f Filial Piety, and a joint body of Confucians, Daoists, and Buddhists held a discussion. In the edict of 689 that promulgated the new characters and the calendar, Wu Zhao had requested Confucian ministers to re­ view classical texts and commentaries. New dynasties often did this in an effort to rewrite history in their own image. In response, one Confucian minister exuberantly pointed out, “The chapter called ‘The Success of Wu’ in the Book o f Documents contains the passage, ‘with tassels dangling and hands folded the empire was governed perfectly.’ This is a clear sign that Your Majesty should receive the mandate of Heaven!” Wu Zhao was elated not because of the fortuitous “discovery” of this passage; five years earlier the very same well-known passage had provided the name for her new reign era, Chuigong. Rather, she was delighted because the minister’s comments showed that even members of the Confucian court were looking to justify her accession to Emperor. This was precisely the sort of analysis she was looking for.

Queen ofTerror

Wu Zhao knew she had many enemies. Charisma, well-crafted political rhetoric, and carefully manipulated auspicious omens were not enough to secure the assent o f the court. She comple­ mented these clever persuasive measures to legitimize her politi­ cal authority with a darker side of violent coercion. Because of the precarious nature of her authority, she felt it necessary to use a group of “ cruel officials” to intimidate the imperial family and great ministers. Eleven of the 23 men catalogued in “ Biogra­ phies of Cruel Officials” in the Old Tang History served Wu Zhao. This reign of terror was limited in scope, targeting upper echelon political enemies, imperial relatives, and the high and mighty in court, rarely threatening the wider population of peasants, merchants, and artisans. And, great though it was, she never allowed the power of these “ cruel officials” to en­ croach upon the political decision-making process. Wu Zhao had always understood the advantage of intelli­ gence, of knowing the plots of her enemies and the designs of her rivals, and of being privy to the secrets of palace and court. Countless spies and informants helped keep her abreast o f new tidings, secret meetings, and the ever-changing factions and al­ liances within the court. These men played a pivotal role in Wu Z hao’s reign of terror that began just days after Li Dan was ele­ vated to Emperor in 684. A group of palace guards belonging

to a cavalry unit called the Forest of Plumes gathered to drink. One disgruntled horseman muttered, “With salary and rank in­ creases so paltry, we’d be better off with Li X ian.” The man should have known better. One of the revelers promptly rushed back to the palace to report. Even before the party had broken up, the shocked men were seized and imprisoned. Accused of conspiracy, the loud-mouthed cavalier was beheaded. Fingered as accomplices, the rest were killed by strangulation. In one section of Wu Zhao’s manual of statecraft, Regulations for Ministers, the ideal ruler is described as mysterious, secret, withdrawn, and motionless. She styled herself the silent heartmind of the body politic, a vessel into which secrets and intelli­ gence were poured. Subjects were her eyes and ears, her instruments for gathering intelligence. In order to make this prin­ ciple a reality, Wu Zhao devised several important channels of communication. In 685, she set up a sounding drum and a heartstone in an unguarded audience hall of the court. Anyone, even the most humble fellow, could enter, sound the drum, and receive an audience with an official who reported to Wu Zhao. If they did not wish to converse with an official, people could freely and anonymously enter and, standing before the heartstone, air their grievances. The heartstone, an omniscient red heart silently ab­ sorbing intelligence, represented Wu Zhao, the all-seeing ruler. A hidden official would convey their words to Wu Zhao. The following year, she ordered the casting of a unique bronze box, another device she hoped would improve the lines of communication between the people and the government, en­ abling her to keep her finger on the pulse of the empire. For Wu Zhao these were important instruments to win over the popu­ lace while closely monitoring local aristocracy, regional officials, and court bureaucrats. This box was designed by a man who had taught charioteer­ ing and archery to X u Jingye, the leader o f the Yangzhou rebel­ lion. Miraculously, this man had avoided being labeled an accomplice. His container had four slots: one for men to recom­ mend themselves as officials; one where citizens might openly and anonymously criticize court decisions; one to report the su­ pernatural, strange omens, and secret plots; and one to file ac­ cusations and grievances. Ironically, one of the first secret

missives inserted into the box reported that the vessel’s creator had cast weapons that he supplied to X u Jingye, an allegation which led to the-star-crossed artisan being sliced in half. In this manner, she was at once the caring matriarch, ever concerned about the welfare of her vast populace, generously bestowing rewards upon the loyal, and a terrible omniscient ar­ biter who would visit dread punishments and unspeakable pain upon those the heartstone and box revealed to be enemies. In those times, it was said that Wu Zhao “ knew of all affairs, both good and evil, in the empire.” The box also shows another aspect of Wu Z hao’s political agenda. In an effort to create a corps of personally loyal offi­ cials, and to further pare the influence of great aristocratic court families, she cast a broad net to recruit people of all back­ grounds into official service. N ot only was one of the slots on the box expressly earmarked for self-recommendation, but also, shortly before the box was designed, she issued an edict re­ questing all officials of any rank to recommend one person for bureaucratic appointment. Meteoric ascent up the bureaucratic ranks was tempered by equally precipitous dismissals of men who proved unfit or incompetent. Her invitation to any and all able officials brought in a fresh crop of men eager to please her, men whose position depended not upon prestigious family background, but upon her caprice. For instance, she gave Hou Sezhi, an illiterate peddler of cakes, a high military rank for his effort in implicating several Li princes of conspiracy. Hou then recommended himself as an Imperial Censor. Amused, Wu Zhao asked, “You cannot read—how can I appoint you as Censor?” He answered, “ N or can the sharp-horned xiazkai beast rec­ ognize characters, yet it can distinguish between good and evil and gore the wicked to death.” As a Censor, he became one of her feared “cruel officials,” zealously persecuting her enemies. When she bestowed upon him one of the confiscated mansions of the alleged conspirators, he refused on the grounds that the holdings of a traitor might sully his integrity. After that, she held him in even higher esteem. As never before, Wu Zhao gave rank and authority to her two nephews, Wu Chengsi and Wu Sansi during her regency.

This pair wielded their newfound power with heavy-handed ar­ rogance. When one minister failed to attend court on account of sickness, the pair went to his residence to see if he was really ill. When they arrived, despite the urging of his friends, the man refused to rise and greet them, saying, “ Life and death are de­ termined by Heaven. Can I avoid fate’s decree by bowing and scraping to serve these by-products of nepotism?” N ot surpris­ ingly, word got out. He was exiled and his property and wealth were confiscated. Unfortunately, rather than becoming a suggestion box to aid Wu Zhao in good administration, the bronze vessel became a “ tattling box,” an instrument to secretly accuse her enemies of plotting against the state. Those who wished to lodge secret ac­ cusations were given free post-horse transport, room and board, and, even if they were but a farmer or woodcutter, could receive an audience. If their allegations proved false, there was no penalty. Therefore, secret accusers swarmed from the four quar­ ters of the empire—servants seeking to cut their masters down to size and reckless men bent on settling vendettas with old family enemies—sending ministers and the aristocratic elite into the grip of a burgeoning terror. Of course, this reign of terror opened the gate to preposterous claims and slander. The vicious webs spun by her network of se­ cret accusers ensnared many an innocent victim. And Wu Zhao, in her effort to keep a tight rein on her court, proved far too willing to believe even the most farfetched claims. In 687, a se­ cret memorial fingered Liu Weizhi, a current chief minister and one of her Scholars of the North Gate, the loyal propagandist who had co-authored Regulations for Ministers. The accusation contended that Liu Weizhi had opined that Wu Zhao should re­ turn power to her son in order to set the hearts of the people at ease. With an “ et tu, Brute” expression of hurt fury, she railed, “ I made Liu Weizhi—and now he backstabs m e!” Seeing that the secret memorial had struck this chord, others piled on fur­ ther slander. One claimed Liu Weizhi had taken bribes from a traitorous general on the frontier. Another alleged that he had been in league with the Yangzhou rebels all along. Liu Weizhi was imprisoned. Li Dan, who generally avoided any involve­ ment in the court, interceded to prevent this flagrant injustice,

writing a petition on Liu Weizhi’s behalf. When Liu Weizhi learned of this, he groaned, “ I’m doomed. His plea is my death warrant.” Sure-enough, he was ordered to commit suicide in his own home. Others swept up in her net of accusations were tried at a kan­ garoo court in her Newly Opened Prison, set just inside the Lijing Gate, the Gate of Beautiful Scenery. Showing a vein of gallows humor, people of the time used the homophone “ Final Judg­ ment” for Lijing in the stead of “ Beautiful Scenery.” The prison was a hell on earth where the cruel officials not only gave free rein to their sadism, but even took a perverse delight in their vo­ cation. When those newly taken into custody witnessed this theater of pain, they would willingly confess to anything. Just before Wu Zhao issued new amnesties, her cruel officials would summarily kill those they considered serious threats. Whenever the cruel officials wanted to defame an enemy, they simply sent several of their number forward with charges. She recruited men with a knack for cunning and backbiting, an insatiable capacity for malicious accusation, yet who, para­ doxically, maintained a personal and intense loyalty to her. Wan Guojun fit this mold. Like other officials who had rapidly risen from obscurity under Wu Zhao, he owed his position exclusively to her favor. Cruel and ruthless to the core, he “ devoted his at­ tention to inflicting pain and poisoning people.” In 686, along with Lai Junchen, the most notorious of the cruel officials, Wan Guojun co-authored the M anual o f Entrapment, a work that in­ structed the secret accusers in the arts of ensnaring the innocent, fabricating circumstances of conspiracy, forcing confessions through torture, and orchestrating plots. He understood the sort of crimes Wu Zhao feared most—anything that jeopardized her authority: treason, secret plotting, any whispers of dissent. As one of her network of sadistic officials, he helped create the aura of fear around the prison that reduced the wealthy and powerful to meek beings cowering in unmitigated terror. These sadistic officials engaged in competitions to devise the most devious and ingenious instruments of pain. Tortures used to induce confessions had elaborate names like “ piercing the hundred veins,” “penetrating the base of the throat,” “ dying swine’s melancholy,” or “ begging for the slaughter of my entire

family.” The vocational delight of the wardens is painfully ap­ parent in the twisted poetic aspect in these names. In “ the phoenix suns his wings,” the prisoner was lashed spread-eagle to a rafter, which revolved, presumably slow-roasting him by exposure to the sun. In “ uprooting the stubborn ass’ foal,” a fetter was placed around the prisoner’s back while his neck was pulled forward in a collar. The name of a punishment in which the accused knelt, rack forward, with glazed tiles piled on top was “ offering fruit to the immortals.” Other torments included hanging the prisoner upside down with a stone hung from his neck; permeating the accused’s nose with vinegar; and placing an iron cage around the prisoner’s head with spikes aimed in­ ward, eventually causing one’s brains to seep out. An ornate, artistic veneer thinly veiled this terrible sadism. Once the poorly planned rebellion of the Li princes was quelled in 688, Wu Zhao immediately unleashed these harsh of­ ficials on a ruthless campaign of extermination against the re­ maining imperial kinsmen and their supporters. As a result, the Li family tree which had once enjoyed a wide outspreading net­ work of branches and stems, underwent a radical pruning. The House of Tang was left with only a bare trunk: Wu Zhao’s two sons and a few scattered families in exile in the distant Southland. After Wu Zhao established the Zhou dynasty in 690, she em­ ployed these cruel officials in a different manner. Rather than torturing her enemies within the walls of the Newly Opened Prison, she sent cruel officials afield to extirpate her foes. In 693, someone forwarded a petition claiming that the southern exiles from the ousted House of Tang, banished during the uprisings of 684 and 688, were fomenting rebellion once again. Wan Guojun was sent to investigate. When he arrived in Guangzhou, he summoned all the exiles and forged an imperial edict pro­ claiming that they all had to commit suicide. When they failed to comply, he promptly drove them into a small creek and butchered more than three hundred in a single morning. Upon returning to Luoyang, he falsely reported that not only the re­ calcitrant exiles he had investigated, but all of the imperial kins­ men banished to the Southland, harbored grievances and were plotting rebellion. For his efforts, Wan Guojun was handsomely

rewarded. His murderous campaign was not the rash action of an overzealous underling. Without a cue from Wu Zhao, Wan Guojun, who had-made a career out of interrogating and terror­ izing nobles, would not have had the audacity to herd and slaughter imperial kinsmen. His campaign was an example of centrally.-orchestrated terrorism designed to further prune the Li branches, leaving but a bare, vermiculated trunk represented by Wu Z hao’s sons, Li Dan and Li Xian. She dispatched five more investigators to the Southland, who, having witnessed the rewards that Wan Guojun had gar­ nered for his cruelty, vied with each other to butcher imperial kinsmen, anticipating similar compensation. However, Wu Zhao, upon learning with “ shock” the scope of the ensuing car­ nage, feigned horror at their excesses and ordered the five new investigators killed or banished. She restored the surviving ex­ iles to their original homes with their former status. Her aim of emasculating the Li family accomplished, she wished to dis­ tance herself from the cruel officials. One popular legend recorded in the Taiping guangji reflects the widespread sense of vindication that accompanied the demise of the cruel officials. Emerging from the Censorate late one evening, Wan Guojun reached the southern end of Heaven’s Ford Bridge in Luoyang only to find the road clogged with the ghosts and spirits of his victims who demanded that he kowtow. A green, swollen corpse grabbed his horse’s saddle and taunted him by sticking out its hideous two-foot tongue. The heinous sight of the tormenting ghoul proved too great a fright for Wan Guojun, and he expired on the spot. Eminent members of the court and the House of Tang lived in a state of agitation, never altogether free of terror. Even though Wu Zhao bestowed her surname on her youngest son Li Dan, and initially named him Crown Prince, she kept him sequestered within the walls of the Luoyang palaces, ever concerned that he might become a rallying point for Tang loyalists. Upon discov­ ering that two ministers had secretly visited him in 693, she had both men sliced in half in a market square as a warning to all. In another incident, a palace girl, one o f Wu Z hao’s favorites,

slandered Li Dan’s wife and one of his consorts, claiming that they were practicing sorcery to hex Wu Zhao. The female Emperor unceremoniously had both women murdered and buried at a secret location within the palace walls. Li Dan was so terrified that he dared not broach the topic before Wu Zhao, and behaved as if nothing unusual had transpired. Though she forbade people to visit her immured son, rumors that Li Dan was plotting to rebel continued to circulate, and she sent the brutal leader of the “cruel officials,” Lai Junchen, to in­ vestigate. Unable to bear the torture inflicted upon them by Lai Junchen, most of Li D an’s retainers confessed. However one brave fellow named An Jincang defiantly roared, “ Since you don’t believe my words, I’ll cut out my heart to prove the Heir Apparent is no rebel.” Thereupon, he eviscerated himself, plucking his beating heart from his chest. When Wu Zhao learned of this extraordinary man, she ordered a doctor to save him. After the physician restored his organs and covered him with mulberry bark, the man made a miraculous recovery. Wu Zhao sighed and remarked, “ I have a son yet I couldn’t fathom his heart. This is what caused this unjust injury.” She ordered Lai Junchen to cease the investigation. O f course, one must take this story from the Comprehensive Mirror, which often valorizes the moral integrity of those loyal to the House of Tang, with the proverbial grain of salt. In 692, when Lai Junchen and his cruel underlings went after a group of influential court ministers, one pillar of Confucian rectitude, Tang loyalist Di Renjie, made a stand from his prison cell. It was well known that those who confessed were spared while those who did not were tormented to the death. Asked to confess, Di Renjie retorted, “ Loyal officials who formerly served the House of Tang will gladly suffer execution. For then, rebellion will be for real! ” With this bold, backhanded “ confes­ sion,” his life was spared. When one o f Lai’s bullies sycophantically begged a favor of Di Renjie in prison, his sense of disgust was so overwhelming that he swore an oath to Heaven and Earth, butted a pillar, and lay in the pooling blood. Later, by means of an unknowing lackey, Di Renjie surreptitiously smuggled a petition

of grievance out of the cell in the cotton wadding o f his gown. Receiving the garment, Di Renjie’s son discovered the hidden petition in his’-stalwart father’s hand and conveyed it to Wu Zhao, who, concerned, investigated the matter. When another principled minister, Wei Yuanzhong, was tor­ tured and dragged upside down, he mocked his captor, the illit­ erate Hou Sezhi, joking, “ Oh, my unfortunate life! This is like falling off a donkey and getting my foot caught in the stirrup.” When the dragging continued, Wei yelled, “H ou Sezhi, if you need my head, just cut it off. Why bother forcing me to confess?” Angered at being so outflanked, Lai Junchen wrote a spuri­ ous confession, indicating the willingness of Di Renjie, Wei Yuanzhong, and others to die. Wu Zhao summoned Di Renjie and asked him why he had confessed. Di Renjie answered, “ If I had not confessed, I would have long since died by torture.” He proved to Wu Zhao that Lai had forged his request for death. Wu Zhao then released Di Renjie and the other implicated ministers. Hoping to claim at least one victim, Lai protested. One min­ ister argued, “ Our enlightened ruler has graciously reprieved the condemned from death. Junchen, do not now injure and un­ dermine confidence in our Sovereign’s clemency!” In the end, Wu Zhao chose to spare the man’s life. Indeed, it is often said that the Chinese emperor “ holds the handle of life and death.” Therefore, as circumstance or whim dictated, Wu Zhao alone could determine whether she wished to be harsh or merciful. After these ugly episodes, perhaps feeling more secure in her authority, Wu Zhao began to rein in these savage attack dogs. Sensing the changing climate in Wu Zhao’s court, braver minis­ ters began to step forward and inveigh against the “ cruel offi­ cials.” One man chastised Wu Zhao for not taking life and death seriously, remonstrating, “ A stable, law-abiding country is founded on public memorials and laws, not secret accusa­ tions and coerced confessions.” Another conscientious minister added, “ Yesterday’s clever plans have become today’s straw dogs. There is a difference between methods used by a ruler to secure power and those used to maintain power. Get rid of these treacherous teeth and claws, blunt the keen edge of vileness and slander, block up the source of implication and entrapment,

sweep away all traces of the clique, that the people can be at ease and content: How would that not be joyous?” A Censor then enumerated specific tortures carried out by Lai Junchen and his clique of sadistic officials, such as filling one’s ears with mud, placing a basket over one’s head, wedging bamboo splints under one’s fingernails, suspending one by the hair, and blowing smoke into the ears. For these, Lai had used the euphemism “ prison restraints.” Measures such as starvation, incessant interrogation, and sleep deprivation were also em­ ployed. Emphasizing widespread discontent, he urged Wu Zhao to use benevolence rather than terror and torture to govern. For her part, Wu Zhao had grown weary of her devious band of entrappers and implicaters. In the years immediately before and after the establishment of the Zhou dynasty they had proved useful, and she had tolerated their draconian measures as necessary evils. Wise to the harsh officials’ tactic of turning servants against their masters for a reward, she appointed a Censor to find slanderous fabrications among the myriad secret accusations. He uncovered 850 cases before being exiled him­ self, a victim of his own success. The head of these sadistic officials, influential and nefarious Lai Junchen, lasted until 697. Renowned for his bottomless ap­ petite for money and women, when Lai fancied one’s wife or concubine, he would obtain her by any means at his disposal. If bribery and extortion failed to gain him the object of his desire, he would falsely implicate the husband of conspiracy, with no regard for whether the man was a commoner or court official. Once these men were implicated, he would seize their property, both material and human, as his own. In 697, apparently oblivious to the changing winds in court, Lai overstepped his position, accusing Wu Z hao’s two sons, her daughter the Taiping Princess, and the Wu princes of conspir­ acy. For once, in mutual opposition to Lai Junchen, Wu Zhao’s family and the court were aligned. They quickly filed a counter­ charge, and Lai was bound and jailed, awaiting trial. Initially, citing his record of loyal service, Wu Zhao wished to pardon him and delayed responding to the outpouring of memorials de­ nouncing his evils. Officials urged her to order his execution.

One ominously remonstrated, “Junchen is fierce and treacher­ ous, avaricious and violent. He is the foremost evil our state. If you do not get'fichof him, it will shake the foundations o f the court!” On an outing in the imperial park, her minister Ji Xu counseled, “ Lai Junchen is gathering reckless and dissatisfied el­ ements, slandering and framing good, respectable people. While his garnered bribes and ill-gotten booty are piled like moun­ tains, wronged ghosts clog the roadways. He is the plunderer of the state. How can you pity him?” Lai’s presence had been destructive in foreign relations as well as in the court. Formerly, desiring a concubine of a submitted Western Turk chieftain, Lai framed the man for plotting rebel­ lion. In protest, several thousand non-Chinese warriors scarified their faces and severed their ears outside of Luoyang’s walls. In the eyes of Wu Zhao, who cherished her non-Han subjects, her erstwhile ally, Lai, was rapidly becoming a political liability. Swayed, she ordered the execution of Lai Junchen, much to the jubilation of the people, who gouged out his heart and trampled his carcass into a bloody muck. Seeing the searing in­ tensity of the popular sentiment against Lai, she issued a further statement of condemnation: “ In order to slake the anger of the common people, Lai Junchen’s entire clan shall be eradicated. People celebrated in the roads, clamoring, “Now we can finally sleep peacefully at night!” M any of those accused o f conspiracy and executed by Lai Junchen and his minions were posthu­ mously rehabilitated and their confiscated lands returned to liv­ ing kinsfolk. Strange rumors of the period, recorded in the “Treatise on Five Elements” in the New Tang History, reflect the fear and loathing people of the time felt toward Lai Junchen. In one tale, the well water of Lai Junchen’s family turned blood-red and grievous cries of anguish echoed from deep within. When Lai tried to cover it with boards, some indwelling force threw them off. In another grotesque story, one of Lai’s female concu­ bines birthed a chunk o f flesh weighing about three pounds. When the fleshy m ass was sliced open, it revealed a w rithing pile of red worms, which turned into wasps, stung bystanders, and flew off.

The year 697 marked the last wave of terror during Wu Z hao’s reign. It was discovered that Liu Sili, puffed up by the predictions of a physiognomist, secretly harbored dreams of oc­ cupying the dragon throne and plotted rebellion. She assigned the investigation to her grandnephew, Wu Yizong. Her zealous kinsman’s torture prompted Liu Sili to implicate a clique of sup­ posed rebels in Wu Z hao’s court. This set in motion a bloody inquisition that ended with the eradication of 36 eminent fami­ lies, yet another instance of Wu Zhao curtailing the influence of the powerful, an exercise in which she now had four decades of experience. The violence of men like Lai Junchen and Wan Guojun rid Wu Zhao of many political enemies. Justifiably, Wu Zhao has long been condemned by historians for her callousness and vio­ lence in using these “ teeth and claw s” as her instruments. Once she no longer felt threatened by the Li family and recalcitrant elements in her court, these “ cruel officials” became expendable and were terminated expediently. Long before Wu Zhao discon­ tinued the services of these “ cruel officials,” she and her propa­ gandists worked to complement and counter her dark image as a “ queen of terror” loosing her bloodletting wolves upon her enemies with the shining vision of herself as a compassionate bodhisattva whose benevolent governance might succor the common weal.

Bodhisattva o f Mercy

Chinese Buddhism reached its glorious zenith under Wu Zhao. By her time, Buddhism had existed in China for more than 500 years. Some of the dynasties in northern China, notably the Northern Wei (386-534) of the Toba Turks, had enthusiasti­ cally supported and promulgated Buddhism in the centuries be­ fore the Tang. The widespread popularity and acceptance of Buddhism in China can be further explained, in part, by the ability of the Buddhist faith to fill in many emotional and ideo­ logical absences in Confucianism. Where Confucianism was ethical, social, and of this world, Buddhism was spiritual, indi­ vidual, and otherworldly. In addition, Buddhism had a rich vi­ sual culture consisting of paintings, temples, pagodas, statues, and reliquaries that was absent in Confucianism. Heavenly kings, tomb guardians, fierce tusked and horned figures with frilled manes, protected the tombs of Tang aristocrats and no­ bles. Buddhist elements were now integrated into architecture, art, rites, and language, built into the culture of everyday life. People sought to win merit and secure a happy afterlife for themselves, or their ancestors, by donating money and property to the Buddhist church, or by having votive statues carved. Bud­ dhism thus became a formidable social and ideological force by Wu Z hao’s time, with a tremendous popular base, economic in­ fluence, and vast land holdings.

A p an th eo n o f B u d d h ist deities h ad developed: Sak yam u n i, the divine in carnation o f the B u d d h a; A m ith abh a, the B uddh a o f Infinite L ight; V airocan a, the C o sm ic B u d d h a; A valokitesvara, better kn o w n a s G uan yin , the b o d h isattv a o f m ercy; and M a itre y a, the Future B u d d h a. M a n y differen t B uddhist sects an d sch o o ls ab o u n d ed , C h an , Pure L an d , F low er G arlan d , and M aitrey ism . D iplom atically, Wu Z h a o never w orsh ip ped ju st a sin gle B u d d h ist deity, o r exclusively p atro n ized one sect. C o n tain in g none o f the lon g stan d in g h istorical an d p h ilo­ so p h ical im pedim ents to fem ale rule th at w ere im bedded so d eeply in C hinese trad itio n , B u d d h ism offered Wu Z h a o id eo ­ logical an d p olitical v alid atio n . T he un iversalism o f Buddh ism p rovid ed a com m on cultural grou n d th at helped bring together the m ulti-ethnic in h abitan ts o f her co sm o p o lita n em pire. One B u d d h ist scroll w ritten by Wu Z h a o ’s non-C hinese su bjects on the W estern b o rd erlan d s extolled her in g lo rio u s fashion: The Saint M other Divine Sovereign inspires w onder am ong the N ine C lans and pacifies the Four Regions, through the yellow m ountains and vast oceans, and over seas and deserts, families are close and villages are mixed. . . . Formerly, the Four Peoples were disturbed, the com m on people were agitated. N ow the Sage is com passion ate and thoughtful, bestow ing only that which is beneficial. She nurtures and fosters, leads and m arshals. Before we didn’t even have thin, unlined garm ents; now adays we have thick, many-layered vestments.

In sh ort, their p aean claim ed th at a s a B u d d h ist m onarch , Wu Z h a o h ad bro u gh t peace, w arm th , an d civility to their desolate an d benighted fringe o f the em pire. Wu Z h a o sp o n so red huge tran slatio n p ro jects and com m en ­ taries on B u d d h ist su tras. She erected and refurbished B uddhist tem ples. She staged lively B u d d h ist festivals. U pon becom ing em peror, Wu Z h a o styled herself a s a p ro tecto r o f the B uddhist faith , p ro claim in g, “ Stealing g o o d s fro m a B ud d h ist tem ple is a crim e o f the sam e order as stealing from the im perial h ou seh o ld .” Before Wu Z h a o ’s estab lish m en t o f the Z h o u dynasty, the C o u rt o f State C erem on ials, an office th at d ealt with foreigners an d d ip lo m atic issues, w as in ch arge o f all affa irs concerning

Longmen Buddhist Caves, Fengxian Temple

B u d d h ist m on ks and nuns. In 6 9 4 , Wu Z h a o shifted this re­ sp on sibility to a branch o f the M in istry o f R ites, an office th at alread y ov ersaw cerem onial m atters for C on fu cian ism and D ao ism . In doing so , she m ad e official w h at had long been the case in C hin a: B ud d h ism w as no longer a foreign faith. Wu Z h a o en cou raged the con stru ction o f B ud d h ist tem ples an d carvin gs o f B ud d h ist statues. T em ples filled L u o y an g and C h an g ’an. L ate in her reign, Wu Z h a o rebuilt the five-story Big G o o se P a g o d a, origin ally con structed by G a o zo n g in 6 5 2 , on a m uch gran der scale, m ak in g it ten stories tall. It still stan d s to ­ d ay in m odern-day X i’an (C h an g ’an), 2 1 6 feet tall w ith seven stories. In the L ongm en B u d d h ist gro tto es located ju st sou th o f L u o y an g , Wu Z h a o ad d ed to the centuries o f B u d d h ist sc u lp ­ ture cut into the cliffs th at rise up from the Yi River. In Ten T h o u san d B u d d h as G ro tto , still extan t in scription s dem o n strate th at B u d d h ist m on k s h ad shrines carved and d edicated on be­ h alf o f the C elestial Sovereign s an d their children.

At Fengxian Temple in Longmen, an inscription tells us that Wu Zhao in the 670s, with 20,000 strings of her own cosmetics money, helped fund the carving of this elaborate temple. Fiftyfoot Vairocana, the universal deity of Flower Garland Buddhism, sits surveying the Yi River Valley from a lofty vantage. Many have speculated whether this image of Vairocana might have been modeled on Wu Z hao’s own visage. Fengxian Temple’s Vairocana possesses a beautiful face, perfectly composed and serene, neither distinctly male nor female. It is a face of power. Under her generous patronage, famous Buddhist temples like the Great Cloud Temple, Eastern Wei Temple, and Great Fuxian Temple were founded. In many cases, branch temples of these major Buddhist centers were established all over the em­ pire. Far to the west, along the Silk Road, one can still find well-preserved wall paintings and Buddhist statuary ensembles in cave grottoes at Dunhuang. As at Longmen, here she added statuary to a well-established sacred site. In 695, in one cave at Dunhuang she commissioned the construction of the Great North Buddha, which is more than 100 feet tall. The presence of Buddhist statuary so far from Wu Zhao’s political center, cre­ ated upon her command, manifests the extent of her empire and the reach of her power. In the mountains west of Chang’an, Famen Temple housed a sacred Buddhist relic, the fingerbone of the Buddha. When Gaozong first was stricken by illness, Wu Zhao, believing that the Buddha’s bone possessed miraculous curative powers that might prove salutary, acted as both hostess and sponsor of the grand ceremony of relic veneration which was held between 659 and 661. A procession carried the fingerbone, which re­ portedly emitted a radiant aura, from the mountain temple to Chang’an. The road was thronged by ardent Buddhist faithful, both lay and clergy, wealthy nobles and humble commonfolk, all eager to have a glance at the relic. Later the relic was brought to Luoyang. To hold and display the Buddha’s fingerbone, and a portion of the Buddha’s skull which had been brought back from India by a Tang envoy, she designed an ornate “Nine Great Treasures Case,” which she helped fund by personally

donating her bedsheets, curtains, and one thousand bolts of silk. This lavish patronage won her the support o f the Buddhist establishment, wjho-realized that they had found a charismatic imperial sponsor to promote their faith. In 671, to honor her deceased parents, Wu Zhao converted her devout mother’s residence in Chang’an into Taiyuan Temple, a Buddhist temple named after the Wu family’s ancestral home­ land. A sister temple was established in Luoyang. When a stone bowl filled with 10,000 grains of Buddhist relics, thought to be tooth or bone fragments of the Buddha, was discovered in the Guangzhai quarter of Chang’an in 677, a Buddhist Guangzhai temple was erected. Later, to mark this locale as sacred, Wu Zhao ordered the erection of a Seven Treasures Tower, which renowned Central Asian Buddhist artist Weichi Yi decorated with an elaborate painted image of 11-headed, thousand-armed Guanyin. Compassionate Guanyin’s extra heads could hear the voices of human suffering, and her thousand arms allowed her to better succor mankind. Implicitly, Wu Zhao, as ruler and sponsor, likewise extended her endless compassion to all the people o f the empire. Buddhist monks from Central Asia and oasis states along the Silk Road, fluent in both Chinese and Sanskrit, helped translate sutras and commentaries. Between 695 and 699, Bodhiruci, from South India, and the Central Asian monks Siksananda and Fazang, among others, translated a new, longer version of the Flower Garland Sutra into Chinese. Wu Zhao welcomed back the Buddhist wanderer Yijing from his 24-year pilgrimage to In­ dia, and he joined them in these efforts to compile a vast coda o f Buddhist wisdom. These experts also compiled a SanskritChinese dictionary to assist with future translations. As many of these revised texts helped sanction and legitimize her sover­ eignty, Wu Zhao made translating them a high priority of state. Fazang was a Buddhist monk whose family came from Sogdia beyond the Pamir Mountains in modern-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. While still a teenager, as a sign of his devotion to the Buddha, he burned off a finger to pay homage to the famous relic from Famen Temple. An independent thinker, Fazang did far more than merely collate ideological propaganda to sanction

her rule: He became her teacher, educating her on the profound principles of Buddhism. These two enjoyed a longstanding friendship that lasted for better than three decades. Fazang was a brilliant orator, lecturer, ideologue, rhetorician, and translator, all skills he applied toward enhancing Wu Z hao’s reputation as a Buddhist sovereign. He is considered a great synthesizer of Buddhist teachings and a master of the Flower Garland school. He expounded on the Flower Garland Sutra more than 30 times in Wu Z hao’s court. In the late 690s, as he was translating the Flower Garland Sutra, the records re­ port that a hundred-petaled lotus blossomed in front of the translation hall. After one lecture in 696, during which light re­ portedly issued from his mouth, Wu Zhao bestowed upon him the honorary title Foremost Eminence. In 697, Wu Zhao requested that Fazang use Buddhist magic to help defeat the Khitan, the nomadic enemy of the northeast­ ern steppe whose sporadic border incursions had grown into a full-scale invasion. Fazang performed a ritual cleansing, changed clothes, set an image of an 11-faced Guanyin on a ritual platform, and worked his magic. Heavenly drums resounded and Guanyin, the bodhisattva of mercy, appeared on high, commanding a vast army of divine troops who had materialized to combat the raiders. This spectacle plunged the Khitan into utter panic. When she learned of the victory, Wu Zhao triumphantly pro­ claimed, “ This is the blessed aegis of Buddha force,” and, to recognize Fazang’s miraculous achievement, changed the name of the reign era to Divine Merit. As a propagandist, Fazang wrote a commentary on the Flower Garland Sutra between 690 and 693 which helped pro­ vide legitimacy for Wu Zhao’s claim to be a universal Buddhist monarch. He remarked, “ The Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra provided the prophecy that she would guide the Great Zhou by turning the Golden Wheel; the River Diagram gave written confirmation that she would govern it by beating with mallets on the Precious Drum.” The Golden Wheel was a sym­ bol o f Buddhist sovereignty. The Precious Drum was part of her Bright Hall complex in Luoyang, a spiritual metronome which kept a ritual cadence for the empire. Later in the same text, Fazang further extolled Wu Zhao: “ Saintly and divine, she

makes the Six Supernatural Penetrations act without stopping; infinitely good and infinitely beautiful, she displays the Ten Goodnesses beyomd~all limits.” A central principle contained in Flower Garland Buddhism is the universality and the interconnectedness of all things. This universality applied both to the boundless extent of the Buddha’s compassion and, implicitly, to the infinite reach of the ruler’s au­ thority. To illustrate this principle, Fazang arranged ten mirrors, eight in an octagon, one above and one below, with a bronze statue of the Buddha set in the middle. When he lit a torch to il­ lumine the centerpiece, an endless web of reflected light criss­ crossed, making apparent the meaning of the inexhaustible interconnectedness of the universe and hence the infinite power of the Buddha. A second example of this interconnectedness was the jeweled net of Indra, in which the image of each individual jewel was reflected in all the infinite other jewels, while simulta­ neously all of the infinite jewels within the net appeared brightly and clearly within a single jewel. In these illustrations of princi­ ples from the Flower Garland Sutra, Wu Zhao saw a vision of absolute power. Understandably, Fazang’s creative presentation and his flair for theater held great intellectual, political, and philosophical appeal for Wu Zhao. Like the Buddha in the cen­ ter of the mirrors, she could be the point where everything con­ verges and the source from which all issues forth. When the ancient Shenxiu, who became known as one of the patriarchs of Chan (better known as Zen), came to her court in 700, Wu Zhao dropped to her knees in obeisance and ordered that a Buddhist temple be built in his honor. The Chan master’s popularity was so great that Buddhist monks and layfolk alike swarmed by the thousands to see him and pay homage. On a sep­ arate occasion, Wu Zhao asked another Chan master, Zhishen, if venerable monks like himself had desires. He affirmed, then added, “ That which is born has desire. That which is not born has no desire.” At these profound words, Wu Zhao felt aw ak­ ened and bestowed upon him the sacred robe of Bodhidharma, the legendary Chan founder whose focus and discipline were so great that he once stared at a wall for seven years until his legs and arms atrophied and fell off.

Foremost among Wu Zhao’s Buddhist supporters was Xue Huaiyi. Confucian histories demean him, portraying him as a mere street hawker whom she appointed as Abbot of White Horse Monastery solely in order that, as her lover and favorite, he could freely move in and out of the inner quarters in the guise of a Buddhist clergyman. In White Horse Monastery Huaiyi gathered a group of law­ less young troublemakers and had them take the tonsure, thereby becoming Buddhist novices. With an entourage of more than a dozen of these rakish clergy in tow, he commandeered horses from the Imperial Stables, moving freely in and out of the palace. Xue Huaiyi rode roughshod over any who got in front of his retinue, clubbing them aside, leaving people bloody and beaten in the wake. When a Censor criticized Huaiyi’s con­ duct and demanded a trial, the arrogant monk ordered his sub­ ordinates to beat the man to the verge of death. In 686, Wu Zhao bestowed upon Huaiyi a purple robe— purple being an imperial color— thereby beginning an East Asian tradition of rulers gifting such garments to influential Buddhist monks. N ot only did the gift confer great honor and prestige upon Huaiyi, but wearing this garment allowed him to take part in court discussions on matters of state, which further infuriated the ministers. Little wonder that Confucians took great delight in the occasion when one staunch chief minister, Su Liangsi, finally confronted Huaiyi. Infuriated with the monk’s insolence, the minister ordered his attendants to slap Huaiyi’s face 20 or 30 times. Huaiyi had no recourse but to run to his protectress, Wu Zhao, who, much to his chagrin, scolded him, telling him to avoid the court. Perhaps to prevent further embarrassing incidents in Luoyang, Wu Zhao appointed the spirited Su Liangsi Regent of Chang’an. In fact, Xue Huaiyi was far more than a boorish sexual fa­ vorite. He proved a radical if unorthodox, brilliant if volatile, Buddhist visionary who played a vital role in exalting his mis­ tress. A skilled architect, he designed the Bright Hall complex that contained a giant Buddha and an astronomical observatory that served as a Buddhist metronome, an earthly model of a Buddhist paradise. He led a radical Buddhist sect centered on

the future Buddha Maitreya. This sect rose in the mid-680s when he emerged as a favorite and fell abruptly upon his death in the 695. FacecTwith imminent apocalypse, Maitreya was a messiah who punished unbelievers, but saved a limited number of the faithful in his Tusita Heaven. In his role as a Maitreyist, to silence and suppress rival Daoist clergy, Xue Huaiyi forcibly tonsured thousands of Daoists, beating them and forcing them to take Buddhist vows. Wu Zhao did not dislike Daoism, per se, but given the Li family’s claimed descent from D aoist sage Laozi, Daoism had long been used to validate the legitimacy of her in-laws of the House of Tang. Therefore, as Daoism was incompatible with her imperial aspirations, she abandoned it in favor of Buddhism and allowed underlings to persecute Daoists during her regency. Indeed, in the simplest and most utilitarian terms, one can look at Wu Zhao’s elevation of state Buddhism as a result of the process of elimination: Daoism was tied to the origins of the House of Tang, and the patriarchal Confucian establishment found the very idea of a female ruler repugnant in the extreme. This left Buddhism as her primary source of sanction and legitimacy. During Wu Z hao’s reign Buddhism, far from being other­ worldly, was closely intertwined with imperial politics. Its mandalas and sculptural ensembles represented a many-layered hierarchy that was focused upon a single figure, mirroring the imperial bureaucracy and the emperor. Like many rulers before her, as emperor and sponsoring patron, Wu Zhao sought to link herself with the focal Buddha, the central figure of the ensemble. To further reinforce her secular legitimacy as a ruler with the re­ ligious authority of Buddhist deities, she drew on a tradition of Buddhist kingship long known in both in India and Central Asia: the idea of the Cakravartin, a magnanimous conqueror who unified a disparate empire under Buddhist law. Wu Zhao needed textual reinforcement to corroborate her image as Cakravartin. Buddhist sources written during her re­ gency and rule depict her as a magnanimous sovereign whose benevolent reign was preordained. Within the palace walls, in the Imperial Chapel, a band of monks designed prophetic sutras

to buttress her claim to sovereignty. The singlemost important Buddhist text that helped legitimize her rule was the Commen­ tary on the Great Cloud Sutra, compiled in 690 by a talented and diverse group of ten Buddhist monks, under Huaiyi’s supervision. Though cognizant of his status as a favorite, more orthodox Buddhists were willing to work in tandem with Xue Huaiyi to propagate the Buddhist faith. In the original Great Cloud Sutra, which dates from roughly 200 years before Wu Zhao’s time, the Buddha tells the Celestial M aiden of Purity and Light that she “ will reign over the terri­ tory of a country with the body of a woman and obtain a quar­ ter of the places governed by a Cakravartin.” The Buddha goes on to say that she will “ destroy and subdue the external religions and the perverse and heretical visions” and that, in reality, she would be “ a bodhisattva who will show and receive a female body in order to convert beings.” To both validate and augur Wu Zhao’s rise to emperor, the framers of the Commentary made it clear that the Celestial Maiden of Purity and Light was an avatar of Wu Zhao. Representing years of careful planning and prepara­ tion, the Commentary meticulously cataloged a series of prophe­ cies which presaged Wu Zhao’s emergence as an earthly sovereign, while identifying her as both a bodhisattva and the Cakravartin. Given the advantage of hindsight, the commentators wove apocrypha, recent events, and auspicious omens together into a cohesive narrative which made Wu Z hao’s ascent appear in­ evitable. They explained in their Commentary that many events in the past decades were not serendipitous occurrences, but har­ bingers of Wu Z hao’s ascent. The discovery of the Buddhist relics in the Guangzhai quarter in 677; the emergence of Mount Felicity in 686; the construction of the Bright Hall; the augural stone discovered in the Luo River in 688— all were carefully crafted as fulfillments of omens that served to foretell that Wu Zhao was none other than the bodhisattva and Cakravartin prophesied in the original Great Cloud Sutra. Written four or five years after Xue Huaiyi and his underlings pummeled hun­ dreds of Daoists into submission, the Commentary also retro­ spectively prophesied “ White H orse,” meaning Xue Huaiyi, the Abbot of White Horse Monastery, converting Daoists to Bud­ dhism. In this manner Xue Huaiyi’s ideological bullying became

the fulfillment of the prophecy in the original Great Cloud Su­ tra which preordained that the Celestial Maiden would descend as a bodhisattvafand queen of the human realm to “ destroy and subdue the external religions.” As soon as the Commentary was completed, Wu Zhao or­ dered this masterpiece of political propaganda circulated empirewide. The text was promulgated in timely fashion, just over a month before she made the decisive move to inaugurate her Zhou dynasty. The claims therein, and the extensive evidence mustered to support those claims, lent a persuasive sense of inevitability to Wu Zhao’s ascent. A month after the establishment of the Zhou, Wu Zhao ordered both capitals and all of the 350 prefectures in the empire to set up Great Cloud Temples. Great Cloud Temples have been found all over China, as far west as Kashgar, nearly 2,000 miles from Luoyang. This gives some indication of both the reach of Wu Zhao’s authority and of the Buddhist faith. In 693, a team of 32 monks, including Huaiyi in a supervi­ sory role and some of these same propagandists who had framed the Commentary, presented Wu Zhao a carefully doctored ver­ sion of the Precious Rain Sutra. Through a prophetic conversa­ tion between the Buddha and a Devaputra, a celestial being, this text foretold Wu Zhao’s ascent to Emperor. Not coincidentally, the characters for Devaputra were the same as those for “Son of Heaven,” the Emperor. As the Devaputra rode on a five-colored cloud, the Buddha praised his luminosity, saying that it was due to the Devaputra’s honoring of countless Buddhas with ornaments, clothing, food, and drink. When Buddhist law is on the brink of extinction, the Buddha told the glowing Devaputra, he would be reincarnated as a female sovereign in Mahacina, Great China. The doctored Precious Rain Sutra also identified Wu Zhao as a bodhisattva: “Since in reality you will be a bodhisattva, you will manifest a female body and you will be the sovereign head.” Like the Commentary, it was a vital piece of Buddhist propaganda that provided prophetic validation for Wu Zhao’s sovereignty. In 692, Wu Zhao formally elevated Buddhism above Daoism. Daoism was suppressed, and many Daoists were voluntarily or forcibly converted to Buddhism. Symptomatic of this ideological shift, the former Daoist head of the Great Hongdao Monastery,

Du Yi, wrote a three-chapter, anti-Daoist treatise and converted to Buddhism. That year, emissaries from five regions of India visited Wu Z hao’s court and paid tribute. Shortly thereafter, she imposed a prohibition on slaughtering animals and against the netting of fish and shrimp. This measure helped define her as a Buddhist sovereign who forbade her subjects to eat the flesh of living creatures or harm living things. Confucian histories point out that in times of drought, flood, and privation, these prohibitions caused widespread starvation among the populace. However, there are strong indications that these measures were not strictly enforced. Shortly after the rule was enacted, an official laid a banquet to celebrate the birth of a new son and invited many of his colleagues. For this felicitous occasion, he had a lamb slaughtered and served meat. One envi­ ous colleague concealed a lamb chop in his billowing sleeve and promptly brought it before Wu Zhao as evidence that the offi­ cial had disobeyed her order. She summoned the new father be­ fore the assembled court and said, “ I have heard that my minister has a new son. I am delighted to hear this.” Bowing, he thanked her. She followed up, quickly getting to the point: “ So where did you get the m eat?” Quaking, the man kowtowed repeatedly, thumping his head on the floor and begging her forgiveness. “ When I forbade the slaughter of animals,” she remarked, “ it did not extend to auspicious occasions. Nonetheless, hence­ forth when you invite guests you should be more selective.” The tattler was utterly humiliated. In 696, Yao Shou, a pro-Buddhist minister, convinced Wu Zhao to reject a lion sent as tribute from Arabia, arguing that its fierce, carnivorous nature made its presence inconsistent with Buddhist prohibitions. In Buddhist ceremony, Wu Zhao found an array of grand rites, titles, and symbols to help support her sovereignty. In 692, on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, she held a Feast of All Souls outside the south gate of Luoyang in order to feed tormented hungry ghosts and deliver them to the Buddhist

paradise. In the ninth month of 693, Wu Zhao added the prefix “ Golden Wheel” to her already grand imperial title. The golden wheel was a symbol of the Cakravartin, a universal wheelturning monarch. Thus, she fulfilled another prophecy from the Commentary, in this case, at least after the text was written. She had the seven treasures of the Buddhist Cakravartin made: a golden wheel, a white elephant, a woman, a horse, a pearl, a ruler’s guardian warrior, and a ruler’s hidden minister, and dis­ played them prominently as visible symbols of her authority in the audience hall of her court. The grandest o f the Buddhist rites, the Pangavarsika, was held in late 694, as ^C^u Z hao’s ambition to style herself as a Cakravartin reached its zenith. It was a true spectacle, a m as­ sive communal vegetarian feast to announce present prosperity and future abundance. In Chinese, the characters for Pan?avarsika mean “ festival without barriers,” indicating that there were no limits on charity, no divisions between social classes, no boundary to the reverence of believers toward the Buddha, and no borders to the far-reaching empire of the magnanimous sponsoring ruler. H ost of hosts, Emperor of Emperors, in over­ seeing the festal proceedings Wu Zhao ritually opened her arms to embrace her people. Enjoying the loose, convivial atmosphere where ordinary prohibitions and distinctions were waived, the freewheeling festival crowd was bonded by a sense of harmo­ nious unity. Under the aegis of the Buddha and Wu Zhao, peas­ ants and nobles, Buddhist clergy and laymen, mingled to enjoy copious food and colorful pageantry. When one controls all borders and all doors, one may, in a grand symbolic gesture of magnanimity, open them all. The feast is related to the legendary Indian ruler, Asoka, who, after a bloody conquest of southern India, sorely desired to reshape his legacy so that posterity would know him not for an endless litany of death and killing, but for compassion and mercy. To this end, Asoka styled himself a Cakravartin and made Buddhism the state religion. He held a Pangavarsika, of­ fering to the Buddha both a hoard of treasure and his bodily self. In this charitable gesture of renunciation he symbolically shed his worldly possessions and became a living bodhisattva, a

compassionate being returned from the brink of nirvana to help others reach salvation. Yet his earthly sovereignty not only re­ mained intact but was magnified. Like Asoka of nearly a millen­ nium before, Wu Zhao touted herself as both bodhisattva and Cakravartin, as the object of sacred and secular devotion alike. On the first day of the new lunar year, she inaugurated the Verification o f Sagehood era, adding “ Compassionate Bod­ hisattva” to her title. On the fifteenth, the date of the Chinese Buddhist Lantern festival, she held the Pancjavarsika before her Bright Hall complex. During the Lantern Festival, the gates to the Palatine City remained open all night. Beneath thousands of torches on the streets throngs of commonfolk congregated where usually only the great and powerful trod. Unlike Pangavarsika of the past, where ruler and subjects alike gave charitable donations to the Buddhist church, during Wu Z hao’s festival, she personally distributed money directly to the people. As she and Buddhist abbot Xue Huaiyi dispersed ten cartloads of money, people ran riot, stampeding and tram­ pling each other as they vied to garner the bronze coins raining down from above. To hone the ardor of the Buddhist faithful, Wu Zhao staged a miracle. First, a deep hole was excavated. Around this pit, huge swathes of colored silks were fashioned into a makeshift palace, essentially a huge carnival tent where the audience could congregate. From the depths of the pit, bronze Buddhas rose up. The spectacle was engineered with such skill that all those present believed the statues had materialized from the ground themselves. As people emerged from the city walls the following morn­ ing, they beheld a second spectacle. Suspended from Heaven’s Ford Bridge, like an enormous sail, was a giant silken sheet upon which an image of the Buddha was imprinted. The sheet formed the backdrop of a grand vegetarian feast on the far bank of the Luo River. The image was rendered in ox blood by Wu Z hao’s monk-lover, Huaiyi, though a strange rumor spread that he had sliced open his knee and used “ paint” drawn from his own body. Given Wu Zhao’s prohibition on slaughter, ox blood was an odd choice of materials. According to the Comprehensive

Mirror, which provides the most thorough account of the Pangavarsika, Huaiyi’s behavior had grown progressively more peculiar. He had recently kept to White Horse Temple, where he tonsured numerous rugged men as Buddhist monks. When a Censor suspected a plot was afoot, Wu Zhao arranged a meet­ ing between the two. Upon arriving, Huaiyi dismounted, lay on a bench, and exposed himself to the Censor. When the investiga­ tion was about to commence, he promptly remounted and sped off. Wu Zhao decided he was harmless, chocking up his actions to his eccentric character, but banished his band of macho monks to distant prefectures. According to Confucian histories, on the night of the feast at Heaven’s Ford Bridge, Huaiyi, in a seething rage over Wu Z hao’s new lover, set fire to his own architectural masterwork, the rit­ ual hall within the Bright Hall complex that housed the giant lacquer Buddha, the towering five-story pagoda that overshad­ owed all of Luoyang. The flames spread rapidly, engulfing the entire Bright Hall complex. As the inferno consumed the lofty ritual halls, all of Luoyang was illuminated as though it was daytime. By dawn, the buildings had burned to ashes. Outside the city walls, the violent wind that had fanned the flames ripped to shreds the image of the Buddha which hung from Heaven’s Ford Bridge. Whether arson or accident, the true cause of the fire remains a mystery. Initially, Wu Zhao tried to silence the court, c l a im in g that the fire had been set accidentally by a worker burning a hemp idol. It was a vain effort. The spectacular fire, a momen­ tous symbolic event, could not be covered up or explained away in such a pedestrian manner. As when M ount Felicity jutted out of the earth in 686, a fierce debate between the Confucians and the Buddhists ensued over how to interpret this sign. Realizing that the debate could not be stifled, she invited honest criticism. Court ministers argued that the fire reflected Heaven’s censure and that Wu Zhao must respond appropriately by suspending court and canceling the celebration. Pro-Buddhist minister Yao Shou countered, “The fire was wrought by human hand, not by Heaven. Besides, the Bright Hall complex is an administrative center, not an ancestral temple.”

He continued, “ Furthermore, your humble subject has read in the Sutra on the Reincarnation ofM aitreya that when Maitreya became a Buddha, the Tower of Seven Treasures disintegrated and fell to pieces.” In other words, the destruction of her Bright Hall complex, rather than ill-omened event, might be under­ stood to symbolize her ascent as a living bodhisattva. Shortly thereafter, according to the Comprehensive Mirror, at Wu Zhao’s behest a group of rugged men led by one o f her grandnephews beat Huaiyi to death beneath a tree in the Inner Palace. In another account that appears in the New Tang History, Wu Zhao ordered her daughter, the Taiping Princess, to select some stout women, who ambushed and bound Huaiyi in the Inner Palace, where others bludgeoned the monk to death. In Huaiyi’s biography in the Old Tang History, the monk met an ig­ nominious end when the Taiping Princess’ wetnurse commanded the group of rugged men to bind and strangle him. When his body was unceremoniously flung onto a manure cart and returned to White Horse Monastery, his disciples, following the folksy wisdom of the Chinese proverb “when the tree falls, the monkeys and macaques scatter,” rapidly fled to all quarters of the empire. Huaiyi’s guilt in the conflagration is dubious. After the fire, Wu Zhao promptly appointed him Commissioner of Works, charged with the construction of a new Bright Hall complex, an action that would seem to indicate that she did not suspect him of burning down the Bright Hall. N or was there any objection from the court. The claims that Wu Zhao ordered Xue Huaiyi’s death ring hollow. Within the new complex, following the same sequence as the lunar years of today, he planned to build a great clock with jacks of the 12 creatures of the Chinese zodiac—the rat, the ox, the tiger, the hare, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the sheep, the monkey, the rooster, the dog, and the pig— each marking a two-hour watch of the day. At the time of his mur­ der, the new Bright Hall complex was still unfinished. It was dismantled and his vision abandoned. For a decade, he had worked diligently as the chief architect of many o f the Buddhist symbols and texts that were geared to cast Wu Zhao as a grand Buddhist monarch. The Confucian court viewed him as a bitter

enemy. It seems likely that both his murder and the subsequent cover-up were a Confucian conspiracy. In any eventy-Wu Zhao was shaken by the dramatic blaze that had consumed her Bright Hall and the vehement response of the court. Early in 695, she removed “Merciful Bodhisattva Transcending Antiquity” from her title. Still Wu Zhao sought ideological sanction in Buddhist sym­ bols. After years of planning, the Heavenly Pivot was completed in the spring of 695. This spectacular centerpiece of her Age of Internationalism was a hundred-foot pillar of bronze set on an iron mountain, surrounded by mysterious guardian beasts and topped by a scintillating fire pearl set on a cloud canopy and held aloft by a quartet of dragons. Designed by an Indian archi­ tect in the image of an octangular pillar of Buddhist sovereign Asoka and built under the supervision of Korean foremen, it was funded by Persian and Central Asian leaders. This monu­ ment was the maypole of her multiethnic empire, a celestial axis that celebrated at once the contributions of Wu Z hao’s myriad non-Chinese constituents and her welcoming embrace of sub­ jects from every margin of the empire. The names of foreign generals and chieftains who had performed meritorious service for her Zhou dynasty were graven on this great pillar. Confu­ cian officials were outraged, expostulating that the erection of the monument not only was tremendously labor intensive, but that it required an absurd volume of resources: 375 tons of bronze and 2,500 tons of iron. The Heavenly Pivot was set in a public, open arena outside the southern gate o f the Imperial City, next to Heaven’s Ford Bridge at the trifurcation o f the Luo River, where all entering Luoyang could witness its splendor. The characters for Heavenly Pivot are the same as those for Dubhe, the brightest star in the Big Dipper, thus suggesting that its crowning ornament, the fire pearl, likewise served as a guid­ ing cynosure upon which all, whether Chinese or “ barbarian,” might fix their compass. Gazing on the scintillating fire pearl which illuminated the surrounding lands, a Tang minister and poet of Wu Z hao’s era, Li Qiao, rhapsodized:

Dew drips from the canopy of the immortals As the lofty pillar upholds the firmament. Above it rise cumulus mountains of cloud And the refulgent pearl hangs in the sky like a great sun.

Cui Shu, another Tang poet, wrote, “ Coining by night, two full moons; at dawn still shines a solitary star.” Like Wu Zhao herself, whose chosen name contained the female moon and the male sun, the fire pearl fused both celestial orbs in one scintillating body. Folk legends tell of a prophetic children’s chant that circu­ lated a few years after Wu Zhao’s death: “ A single strand of hemp can save the Heavenly Pivot— or cut it down.” In 717, under Tang Xuanzong, this monument to Buddhist pacifism was cut down and melted to make weapons. During her final years in Luoyang, Wu Z hao’s sponsorship of Buddhism was more measured. In her late seventies, she in­ creasingly sought recipes for longevity and immortality, and looked to Daoism. In 698, she issued an edict making Daoism and Buddhism equal, asserting that “ Daoism and Buddhism are both rooted in goodness and non-action. In the end they are a single faith.” Another edict strikes a similar chord: “ Since Laozi and Sakyamuni come from common origins, Daoism and Bud­ dhism shall be weighted equally.” She had also fallen under the sway of strong Confucian chief minister, Di Renjie, best known to many as “Judge Dee,” the heroic sleuth and magistrate in Robert van Gulik’s detective nov­ els. On Wu Z hao’s protracted tour of Mount Song in 700, a for­ eign Buddhist monk presented himself before the imperial carriage and invited Wu Zhao to divert her course to see the en­ shrinement of some burned sarira, bits of teeth and bone, re­ portedly belonging to the Buddha. Wu Zhao assented. Di Renjie, however, threw himself in the dust before her horse and implored her not to go. “ The Buddha is a barbarian god. Such sidetracking does not befit the ruler of the empire. This foreign monk deceives and deludes. He desires to invite the imperial chariot solely to mislead and confuse the masses near and far.” Hearing the earnest entreaties of the old, respected minister lying prostrate in the dust, Wu Zhao cancelled the side trip. Later, after performing

Daoist rites on M ount Song in 700, Wu Zhao discarded the “ Golden Wheel” title that had marked her as a Cakravartin. In the autumn o f 700, desiring to construct a massive Bud­ dhist statue, something she had wished since the towering lac­ quer Buddha in her first Bright Hall complex had burned, she wished to levy all the Buddhist monasteries and convents to raise the necessary funds. To dissuade her, for he saw the prospective statue as a tremendous waste of labor and re­ sources, Di Renjie protested, “ Corvee laborers are not con­ scripted from ghosts, but recruited from among men. Resources do not fall from Heaven, they are extracted from the earth. If you do not seek to relieve the woes of the common people, what are you seeking? If the agricultural seasons are lost, the foundation of the state is destroyed.” He argued further that Buddhist temples were ubiquitous, springing up in every alley and marketplace; that puffed-up Buddhist clergy believed that their word carried more weight than an imperial edict; and that through contributions and charity the Buddhist church raised more revenues than the state. Furthermore he contended that while in good times Buddhists enjoyed Wu Zhao’s patronage, in hard times they were nowhere to be found. Moved by his com­ pelling argument, she shelved the project. Di Renjie’s conserva­ tive, inward-turning attitudes, which were directed against Buddhism and the pervasive foreign influences that had made the early Tang so colorful and cosmopolitan, anticipated views in the late Tang dynasty when Buddhism was persecuted and non-Chinese people were marginalized. Wu Zhao also ended her vegetarian prohibitions. In his per­ suasive memorial, Cui Rong argued, “The cutting up and boil­ ing of sacrificial victims, the arts of archery and hunting—these are practices recorded in the canonical works of the sages and cannot be dispensed with. Moreover, eating fish in the South and meat in the North is a staple of every man’s diet—they cannot do without them for a single day!” He contended that just as planting and harvesting are part of a greater rhythm of Heaven and Earth, so too animals bearing their young in spring and men slaughtering them in the autumn are complementary aspects of a larger cycle of nature. Convinced, Wu Zhao lifted her eight-year ban on hunting, catching fish, and slaughtering livestock in 700.

Still, she did not abandon Buddhism in her final years. In 701, responding to rumors that the Buddha had left a footprint in Chengzhou, about a 150 miles west of Chang’an, Wu Zhao inaugurated a new reign era called the Great Footprint. In the Chaoye jianzai, an unofficial collection of tales from the early Tang, a variation of this story appears intended to poke fun at Wu Zhao. In this version, the five-foot long impression of the Buddha’s foot is a hoax wrought by 300 prisoners hoping to prompt Wu Zhao to issue an amnesty. They claimed that the imprint had been left by a 30-foot, golden-faced god who had told them not to worry because, as they had been wrongly ac­ cused, the Emperor, with her boundless wisdom and clemency, would set them free. In 704, Wu Zhao once again ordered the construction of a giant Buddha, this time outside Luoyang on the slopes above White Horse Monastery. Though most funding was to be raised from a special levy on Buddhist clergy, when ministers learned that corvee laborers would be conscripted from among the peasantry, they protested the human and material costs once again. One man objected, “Your minister believes that currently the paramount concern of state must be solidifying the borders; next comes filling the granaries to nourish the common people. From a Buddhist perspective, too, rescuing the people from suf­ fering and distress is a great priority.” For Wu Zhao, who had styled herself a bodhisattva, one who led others from hardship to salvation, the minister’s final pointed reminder struck a chord. Swayed, she once again abandoned the project. A great champion of the Buddhist faith, Wu Zhao skillfully counterbalanced her dark aspect as Queen of Terror with her benevolent image as a compassionate and merciful Saintly Mother. The Buddhist clergy worked in tandem with the female emperor to create and propagate this image.

Emperor o f the Zhou Dynasty The ninth day of the ninth lunar month was a holiday when the elderly, feeling their youthful vigor restored by the crisp autum­ nal air, climbed mountains and sought longevity. It was a day when the male yang essence, having crested, gave way to rising female yin. It was on this day in 690 that sixty-six-year-old Wu Zhao ascended the throne to become China’s first and only fe­ male emperor. Decades in the making, her unprecedented rise was finally realized. Deliberately, she had eliminated enemies, built up the standing of her Wu clan, and staged a series of rites to acclimate the court and populace to her presence, while m ag­ nifying her political stature. Now, atop Conforming to Heaven Gate, she formally abolished the Tang and inaugurated the Zhou dynasty. Six days earlier, Fu Youyi, a man of lowly origins, led 900 people to the gates of Luoyang to petition Wu Zhao to change the dynastic name to Zhou, and the imperial surname to her clan’s Wu. In the traditional Chinese political consciousness, there is a deep-seated political notion that “ there can not be two suns in Heaven, nor can there be two kings on the Earth.” Confusion over the identity of the Emperor is believed to unset­ tle the minds and hearts of the populace, engendering divisive­ ness and turmoil. During Wu Z hao’s regency though her son Li Dan was nominal emperor, she had issued edicts and clearly

been the voice of political authority. Fu Youyi was simply call­ ing for her actual title to conform to the political reality. She promoted the man but declined the honor with ceremonial re­ luctance, as though she were still unworthy of receiving the M andate of Heaven. Although she had staged the entire event, Wu Zhao remained patient, knowing she must not appear too eager for power. The following day, a burgeoning throng of 12,000 gathered to petition her once again to assume the throne. Still Wu Zhao declined. Momentum grew. Four days before she assumed the throne, the massive popular outpouring which included the tat­ tered remnants of the imperial Li family, common people from near and far, foreign chieftains, Buddhist monks and Daoists, reached 60,000 in number. All flocked to Luoyang to clamor for Wu Zhao to establish a new dynasty. This broad-based so­ cial, ethnic, and ideological coalition demonstrated that she en­ joyed the support of the many wide-ranging constituencies in her diverse empire. Emperor Li Dan publicly petitioned to re­ quest his mother’s Wu surname, a gesture calculated to show that her accession was not usurpation but the result of his vol­ untary abdication to a more worthy ruler. Wu Zhao was so de­ lighted by the overwhelming show of popular support that she exulted, “ How splendid! This is indeed Heaven bestowed!” From this proud exclamation came the name of the first era of her reign as Emperor, Heaven Bestowed. In a classic instance of omen manipulation, court officials who favored her reported that a phoenix, a portent of imperial female authority, had been sighted flying from her Bright Hall to a nearby palace to roost in a pauwlonia tree. The august fowl stayed for a while before soaring to the southeast. Afterward, a flock o f tens of thousands of vermilion sparrows gathered to roost where the phoenix had alighted. Just as the throngs had come together and petitioned to urge Wu Zhao to accede to the throne, so the vermilion sparrows congregated around the avian sovereign. Propagation of the story of the phoenix’s fortuitous appearance lent a sense of inevitability to her ascent. The phoenix became a staple motif adorning Wu Zhao’s court. She designated one o f the main administrative offices as Phoenix Pavilion. Tiles from the site of her accession feature a soaring phoenix, holding

an auspicious spirit fungus in its beak, the character for good luck set above its back. Another tile dating from her reign, now in the Luoyang Museum, depicts not the familiar imperial motif of “ two dragons sporting with a pearl,” but “ two phoenixes playing with a pearl.” In her court music, dancers clad in phoenix crests performed “The Phoenix Leads Her Chicks,” evoking Wu Zhao’s maternal sway over the populace, a mother bird to whom fledgling chicks flocked for warmth and protection. During a po­ etry competition which she sponsored, one scholar, eager to please, summoned the image of the magnificent phoenix set atop her Bright Hall: “ through the dispersing fog, congregated offi­ cials gazed up at the ascendant phoenix.” After the third plea that she assume the throne, Wu Zhao waited several more days before overcoming her stylized reticence and agreeing at last to become Emperor. In Chinese tradition, best exemplified by Liu Bei’s “ three trips to the thatch hut” to win over sage adviser Zhuge Liang with his sincerity in the fa­ mous story Romance o f the Three Kingdoms, three such re­ peated candid appeals might persuade one of the petitioner’s earnest intentions. Only after the third plea might the petitioned party gracefully assume the new office without appearing too covetous of power and rank. So it was that on that fateful mid-autumn day in 690, Wu Zhao inaugurated her new dynasty, the Zhou, and assumed the title Sage and Divine August Emperor. The dynastic epithet Zhou was drawn from the celebrated Zhou dynasty of distant antiquity, intentionally hearkening back to the halcyon days of King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou, sage rulers long honored for their morality, virtue, and perfect administration. While other previous rulers spoke with starry-eyed reverence of the Zhou dynasty o f old, Wu Zhao actively inaugurated a new Zhou dynasty. And while others wistfully lauded the Golden Age, she used offices from the Rites o f Zhou and new charac­ ters drawn from ornate Zhou script. She re-aligned time to fol­ low the original Zhou calendar and donned ceremonial caps and vestments drawn from ancient Zhou ritual codes. To further obviate her ties to the Zhou of antiquity, Wu Zhao created a new genealogy, claiming descent from the youngest son of King Ping (r. 770-719 B.C.), the first ruler of the Eastern Zhou

dynasty (771-221 B.C.), who moved the capital from Chang’an eastward to Luoyang. The prodigal child she established as the Wu clan’s first ancestor had been born with a “ Wu” character on his hand, and thus was granted a new surname to match his miraculous birthmark. Despite his Wu surname, this young prince— and Wu Zhao—retained ties of kinship to the illustri­ ous dynastic founders and great culture heroes King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou. Thus her kinship line became even more venerable and lofty than that of the House of Tang, which traced its descent back to the Daoist sage Laozi in the sixth cen­ tury B.C. When she ascended the throne in 690, rhetorician Chen Z i’ang floridly praised her newfound ancestors: “I have heard that in antiquity the way of the Zhou was glorious and the clamor of praise was great, that its brilliance was equal to that of Heaven and Earth, and majestically illumined the clan ancestors.” She also honored the Duke of Zhou as the Prince of Meritorious Virtue and Zhou sage Confucius as Duke of the Reverent Way. These connections to the vaunted Zhou dynasty of old marked her as a champion of tradition, which not only served to create a neoclassical aura and afforded her great polit­ ical currency, but made it difficult for enemies to brand her as an iconoclast or an opponent of Confucianism. Befitting her new imperial status, Wu Zhao established, at long last, seven imperial temples in Luoyang for her Wu clan forebears. Both her glorious ancestors heralding from the earlier Zhou era, and more recent Wu ancestors, male and female, were exalted with titles suited to their new status. In keeping with his daughter’s new imperial station, Wu Shiyue became Grand An­ cestor, Filial and Enlightened Emperor, and Madame Yang be­ came Filial and Enlightened Empress. Meanwhile, the ancestral temples of the House of Tang were downgraded in number from seven to five. She forbade the Li family to honor distant ancestors, restricting homage to the first three Tang emperors— Gaozu, Taizong, and Gaozong. Traditionally, kinfolk of the empress were not allowed to hold princely titles. But Wu Zhao was no longer a mere em­ press. Thus, the living Wus, beginning with her nephews Wu Chengsi and Wu Sansi, were honored as princes and given no­ ble titles. Empire-wide, all of the Wu clan were excused from

paying taxes. Several days after establishing her new dynasty, Wu Zhao demoted her son, Li Dan, to Imperial Heir and be­ stowed her natal family’s Wu surname upon him. Her grand­ sons by the deceased Li Hsien also became Wus, and were kept under close surveillance within the palace walls. With countless brothers, cousins, uncles, and other House o f Tang kinsmen al­ ready exterminated, Li Dan was on tenterhooks lest at this piv­ otal juncture he anger his dread mother. His ambiguous title of Imperial Heir, rather than Crown Prince, suggested that his po­ sition as Wu Zhao’s successor was precarious. At the advent of her Zhou dynasty, the state altars were transferred from Chang’an to Luoyang, the hallowed ground of the Eastern Zhou and Eastern Han capitals of old, the heart­ land of a naturally bountiful region the ancients had called the “ Center of Heaven.” To excel Chang’an, the Tang political heart where many Tang loyalists remained, Wu Zhao built her Divine Capital into a grand city. As Grand Dowager, she con­ structed the spectacular Bright Hall complex. Once she inaugu­ rated the Zhou, Wu Zhao encircled Luoyang with staunch new city walls. To populate Luoyang, she moved thousands of fami­ lies from greater Chang’an. A merchant’s daughter, Wu Zhao had a natural proclivity to­ ward commerce. As ruler, she displayed none of the traditional Confucian anti-entrepreneurial bias. Situated as it was near to the northern end of the Grand Canal—the artery linking north and south China—Luoyang had long been a hub of trade. Lu­ oyang had three markets to Chang’an’s two. In the South M ar­ ket alone there were 3,000 shops representing 120 different occupations, arranged by lane— apothecaries, goldsmiths, silver­ smiths, moneylenders, grocers, fishmongers, tea merchants, in­ cense vendors, butchers, cosmetics peddlers, and haberdashers selling Central Asian hats and garments, to name a few. The city’s bridges and canals were restructured to facilitate commerce. Many new customs stations were set up. Between 701 and 705, a new dock was built in Luoyang’s North Market, connecting it by canal to the Luo River. Famous calligraphers inscribed ornate pillars encircling the New Pool, a lake inside the city. Willows lined these waterborne avenues of commerce.

In one history, it was written that under Wu Zhao, “sculls and boats of the empire all congregated, so that more than 10,000 vessels filled the canals of Luoyang.” O f course, enterprise spread well beyond the city walls. Late in her reign, one of Wu Z hao’s ministers commented, “ on the Huai River and in the seas, day and night, there is a constant flow of commerce.” Beyond her Divine Capital’s walls, she established nine pre­ fectures as imperial domains and set up garrisons. In her later years, she built a series of lavish vacation palaces in the vicinity of M ount Song to the south. To the north, she established her ancestral home of Bingzhou as the Northern Capital. Wu Z hao’s cosmopolitan capital reflected her inclusive ap­ proach to governing the multi-ethnic and diverse empire of her day. Her tolerant governance held great appeal for non-Chinese peoples on the periphery of the empire. During the first four years of her Zhou dynasty, more than one million non-Chinese people submitted to her rule and were resettled within her bor­ ders, Turks to the northwest, Tibetans to the west, and 200,000 households of M an people in the southwest. Wu Zhao consid­ ered non-Chinese peoples within these territories as subjects un­ der her aegis. Ceremonial interaction with these border states was important. She expected other states to acknowledge their lesser status and send tribute, and in return she would invest kings with Chinese titles and bureaucratic offices, thereby con­ ferring legitimacy upon the rulers. By and large, these states ac­ knowledged her rule. In 692, the Five Indias—North, South, East, West, and Central— sent a tributary mission to honor Wu Zhao. In 693, when the South Korean kingdom of Silla in­ stalled a new king, Wu Zhao sent an emissary to invest him with Chinese titles. In 696, she did the same for a Sogdian ruler in the western borderlands. Harmonizing relations between the minorities and Chinese who co-existed within her vast empire was no small feat. She was assisted in her efforts by ethnically sensitive and savvy nonChinese diplomats like Quan Xiancheng, an expatriate of the vanquished state o f Koguryo in modern-day North Korea. Just after the Zhou was founded, Wu Zhao held an archery contest to showcase the empire’s finest marksmen, offering a prize of

gold and silver. Quan Xiancheng was among those selected and was chosen to shoot first. He declined, arguing, “ O f the five archers Your Majesty has ordered to shoot none are Han Chi­ nese officers. Your subject fears that hereafter barbarians of all quarters will have no regard for the prowess of Chinese m ilit a ry officers. I humbly request that this competition be suspended.” Wu Zhao felt his suggestion to be a prudent one, and immedi­ ately ended the competition. Indeed, Turks, Koreans, Sogdians, and other minorities controlled huge armies and garrisons around the periphery of her empire. The relationship between military prowess and ethnicity was already a highly sensitive is­ sue. A public display by the five brilliant non-Han marksmen would make manifest the military weakness of the Han Chinese center. In order to administer such a vast and diverse empire, the center could not appear too civil or too soft. Having served as a general in the Tang military for 20 years, Quan Xiancheng was keenly aware of this situation and its potential volatility. During dynastic transitions, ambitious generals are wont to re­ volt. Loyal to Wu Zhao, he tactfully defused the situation. This is not to say that in military policy and foreign relations she was soft or weak. Far from it, Wu Zhao, whose very sur­ name meant “ martial,” placed a high premium upon the arts of war. She balanced a policy of embracing those who willingly submitted to her with punitive campaigns against those who showed themselves to be recalcitrant. Wu Zhao attached great importance to recruiting capable generals, unlike some rulers of later dynasties, who denigrated the martial arts and prized civil courtly culture. She displayed an uncanny knack for choosing skilled military officers. In 692, General Wang Xiaojie defeated the Tibetans and reclaimed the Four Garrisons, rich oasis states along the Silk Road in western China. The reclamation of the Four Garrisons dramatically strengthened her nascent Zhou dy­ nasty’s control over Silk Road commerce, increasing the prestige of this female Chinese emperor among Central Asian peoples. “ Good Generals,” an essay in her Regulations for Ministers, emphasized the importance of the military. She notes therein that the military mirrors the state, with the general’s role paral­ leling that of the ruler and the officers that of the ministers. Cit­ ing Sunzi’s Art o f War and other military texts, the essay

instructs generals to cultivate a fraternal and familial spirit among his troops, instilling in them a loyalty so profound that the soldiers would willingly go through a hail of stones and ar­ rows for him. With multiple campaigns against the Korean peninsula, the Tibetan incursions, and her problems with the Tujue Turks and the Khitan, such good leadership among her generals was an essential ingredient to Wu Z hao’s government. In 702, to standardize the skills required of military officers, she created the “ military examination,” which tested men in seven areas: archery on foot, target-shooting archery, mounted archery, mounted lance play, physical strength, leadership, and deportment. In 703 she issued an edict that military officials in each prefecture were to instruct the common people in the mar­ tial arts. M any of her talented generals were non-Chinese, men like Quan Xiancheng or Western Turkish chieftain Hu Seluo, a loyal general under Wu Zhao who joined the masses noisily calling for her accession in 690. To show her gratitude, she bestowed upon him the honorific and self-explanatory title “ Khan who Serves the Ruler with Utmost Loyalty.” Along the spirit path at Qianling, the tomb where Wu Zhao and Gaozong are jointly buried, stand the stone figures of 61 foreign generals and emis­ saries, eternally honoring the two rulers. A serious crisis developed in 696, when Wu Zhao’s empire was threatened on three fronts: by the Tibetans to the west, the Khitan to the northeast and, most ominously, the Turks to the north and northwest. In the spring, general Wang Xiaojie was defeated by the Tibetans. To forestall Tibetan aggression, she followed the wise counsel of Guo Yuanzhen, an emissary who had visited the Tibetans and had a clear understanding of their circumstance. He urged Wu Zhao to negotiate for peace and to offer titles and marriage alliances, while subtly sowing discord between the powerful chief minister and the young ruler. This approach proved successful, and within three years the Tibetans no longer posed a legitimate threat to her borders. In the northeastern borderlands, formerly submitted Khitan subjects, under the leadership of two rebel generals, Sun Wanrong and Li Jinzhong, revolted against the Zhou. Li Jinzhong declared himself Peerless Khan. Believing that one’s appellation

possessed a powerful magic, Wu Zhao cursed them for their treachery by fixing inauspicious names upon them. Wanrong, which means isi0 ;0 0 0 glories,” was altered to Wanchan, “ 10,000 beheadings,” while Jinzhong, which meant “ utterly loyal” became Jinmie, “ utterly obliterated.” She then broad­ ened the draft to conscript new soldiers and sent a massive force led by 28 generals to crush the rebels. But in their home territory the Khitan were strong. With little difficulty, they beat back her punitive force and pressed southward. Wu Zhao then employed a time-honored Chinese diplomatic strategy, "using the barbarians to control the barbarians,” a tack that all too often proved disastrous. When the fierce Turkish Khan, Mochuo, nominally submitted to Wu Zhao’s court in 695, she made him a general and bestowed upon him a noble title. He volunteered to fight the Khitan for her Zhou, but behaved more like a mercenary than a vassal. As payment for his services, Mochuo demanded a Chinese prince for his daughter, and the return of previously submitted Turkish territories and peoples. Once his demands were set forth, Mochuo delivered on his promise. After the unexpected death of the Peerless Khan Li Jinzhong, Mochuo routed the Khitan forces. Sun Wanrong es­ caped, but the following year while he plundered a Chinese pre­ fecture, Mochuo suddenly struck at the Khitan heartland. To win merit with a new master, some of Sun Wanrong’s under­ lings betrayed him, cutting off his head and presenting it to M ochuo. Rather expeditiously, Wu Zhao had thus dealt with two of the three threats to her Zhou empire. Wu Zhao now chose to follow a policy of appeasement. To prevent the acquisitive Mochuo from encroaching too far upon the agricultural heartland, she met his increasingly exorbitant demands, returning to his growing dominion the Turkish terri­ tories. At this point, Mochuo was clearly an independent ruler rather than a vassal. To further placate this dangerous and cun­ ning adversary, she heaped upon him titles, honors, and gifts, including 70,000 bushels of seed grain, 3,000 agricultural im­ plements and more than 20 tons of iron. However, Mochuo was not content with remaining in the borderlands. Gifts of grain and farming implements only honed his desire to occupy the rich agricultural heartland.

During M ochuo’s repeated encroachments in 697 and 698, the proud Turkish Khan loudly demanded a princely partner for his daughter. Despite the protestations of ministers who main­ tained that “ from antiquity, never has a Chinese prince married a barbarian’s daughter,” she finally gave in to his demand and sent her grandnephew Wu Yanxiu to receive his Turkish bride. M ochuo detained the youth, contemptuously complaining that not only did Wu Zhao present him shoddy material goods— poor seeds and low-grade silk—she also gave him inferior hu­ man products, an imitation prince belonging to the Wu family, instead of a true prince from the House of Tang. The clever Khan proclaimed, “ I desired that my daughter marry a prince of the imperial Li clan, not a lowly son of the Wu family! How can this Wu boy be counted as the son of the Son of Heaven? Generations of us Turks have received the kindness of the Li family, so now that I hear the sons of Li have been nearly eradi­ cated, that only two remain, I shall marshal my troops and rein­ stall them on the throne!” Knowing succession to be a divisive issue, he framed his border incursions in terms of righteous out­ rage, styling himself an ally of the House of Tang. Wu Zhao could not ignore his brazen and insulting challenge to her legitimacy. She altered his name from Mochuo to the ridiculous and unlucky appellation Chanchuo, “ Beheaded Sucker,” and sent forth a puissant force under hoary-headed stalwart Di Renjie and her son, Li Xian, in 698. While they won no decisive battle against the Turks, they managed to drive Mochuo back into the steppe. Wu Zhao was generous in bestowing rewards, but toward those who betrayed the Zhou she was utterly merciless. Her emis­ sary Yan Zhiwei behaved in a servile fashion before Mochuo, kissing his boot. Initially, Mochuo made this lickspittle the ruler of the southern region of his Khanate, but cast him aside in rather short order. When Wu Zhao’s armies seized the unfortu­ nate Yan Zhiwei in late 698, she ordered him bound and spread-eagled at Heaven’s Ford Bridge, then led the court minis­ ters to riddle him with arrows so that all might behold and par­ take in the execution of a traitor. Thereafter, his flesh was cut away from his bones, and the bones were ground into powder.

Three generations of his family were massacred. Thus she sent a strong message to those contemplating disloyalty. The Turkish Khan continued to raid the borders of the Chi­ nese empire well beyond Wu Z hao’s reign. In 703, Wu Zhao sent two Li princes as bridegrooms for M ochuo’s daughters. Nonetheless, after being driven back into the steppes by Wu Z hao’s forces in 698, M ochuo never again posed so imminent a threat. When Wu Zhao sent the princes of the House of Tang, Mochuo released former bridegroom-to-be Wu Yanxiu. This dashing fellow became a celebrity in court, singing Turkic songs and enchanting Li X ian’s daughter, the Anle Princess, with his whirling Turkish dances. In 708, shortly after the death of the Anle Princess’ first husband, they were married. Even late in Wu Z hao’s reign, tributary missions came from all over Asia. A Japanese embassy, laden with precious trea­ sures, arrived in 702. The following year, Tibetans seeking a marriage alliance presented to her 1,000 horses and 60 pounds of gold. The borders of her huge empire extended, in her words, “ East as far as the Korean peninsula, south to the nation of Zhenia [roughly to modern Laos], west to Persia [modern-day Iran], and north to the lands of the Khitan, the Mohe and the Turks. These may be called territories of submitted non-Chinese peoples.” Among her new characters, “ nation” showed eight regions enclosed within the borders of China, an expansionist image befitting her vast empire of many peoples. As charismatic and intelligent as Wu Zhao was, she could not engineer the Tang-to-Zhou dynastic transition on her own. Only with the assistance of an array of propagandists, rhetoricians, ideologues, and strongarms of different persuasions, all work­ ing, sometimes at cross purposes, to help her gain political legit­ imacy, was she able to secure the dragon throne. Some gained her attention through merit, while others rose quickly through nepotism or favor. Chinese ministers expounded on the virtues o f Confucian statecraft, while Indian architects built ornate monuments and Central Asian monks evoked visions of won­ drous Buddhist paradises. With a deft aesthetic touch, literary and poetic minds decorated her court with flowery words and

elegant rhetoric, even as violent bullies intimidated her oppo­ nents, reducing once brave men to timorous creatures. As emi­ nent men of noble families struggled to maintain their status, risk-taking ne’er-do-wells rose from obscurity. She promoted men like Fu Youyi, who had initially led 900 people to petition her to establish the new dynasty. To recognize his role in her accession, Wu Zhao bestowed upon him the im­ perial surname Wu. Within a calendar year, Fu Youyi rapidly ascended to become a chief minister. The fall of Fu Youyi was truly precipitous. His head swelled by his sudden ascent to emi­ nence, he foolishly told a close friend of a dream wherein he had entered the Clear Dew Palace of the immortals. This was reported and taken as an indication that he harbored imperial ambitions. The unstable first years of a new dynasty is a bad time for a chief minister to boast of such a dream. He strangled himself in prison. In 697, a man presented a memorial that claimed, “ Your humble subject dreamed that Your M ajesty lived to be eight hundred years old.” After a promotion, he approached Wu Zhao to report another dream: “ Your humble subject dreamed that Your M ajesty’s hair turned from white to black and that your teeth grew again.” Later, after a second promotion, the dreamer claimed, “ I have heard that M ount Song reverberates with echoes of ‘Ten Thousand Years,’” and was gifted with a silken purse usually reserved for high officials. At that time, to assist in campaigns against the Khitan, officials were asked to contribute a team of horses to the state. Rather than present his own fine horses, this fellow sent an inferior team purchased cheaply at a local market. When Wu Zhao learned of his petti­ ness, she returned his horses and dismissed him from service, sending him back to his native village in disgrace. Such men rapidly ascended to eminence, but as soon as they showed them­ selves to be self-serving, whether through ambition or greed, they were quickly discarded. Wu Zhao attached great credence to sorcery and the super­ natural. This credibility left her susceptible to the wiles of glibtongued charlatans, and enabled a colorful array of fraudulent mystics and miracle-workers to gain influence. She took as a

retainer a venerable Buddhist monk who claimed to be 500 years old, and to have already known her lover Xue Huaiyi for 200 years. She believed the prophecies of a Buddhist nun who called herself Pure Radiance and installed her at Unicorn’s H oof Temple in Luoyang. During the day, playing the role of an as­ cetic, Pure Radiance would consume only a single grain of rice and one hemp seed. By night, along with her band of unre­ strained disciples, she would slaughter animals and, to the ac­ companiment of sultry erotic songs, she would savor lavish meat dishes. The Comprehensive Mirror contended that the or­ gies held in Unicorn’s H oof Temple were “ debauched and las­ civious beyond all limits.” When the Bright Hall complex burned down, Pure Radiance went before Wu Zhao to express her deep sympathy. In a fury, the Emperor railed, “ You have frequently claimed that you know the future. How is it that you didn’t foresee the burning of the Bright H all?” Pure Radiance was sent away in disgrace and her disciples, even the venerable monk, were scattered. But when Wu Zhao learned that her Buddhist temple had been transformed into a theater of sala­ ciousness rivaling any den of ill repute in Luoyang, she con­ cealed her rage and invited Pure Radiance and her disciples to return. Then, unceremoniously, they were rounded up and made palace slaves. Among the company of this band, Wei Shifang, a Daoist wiz­ ard who claimed to be more than 400 years old, had won Wu Zhao’s trust. In 694, she appointed him a chief minister. Appar­ ently this Daoist was too sublime to piddle in the pedestrian realm of earthly politics, for after serving in office for a single month he retired to wander among the immortals and spirits in the mist-shrouded peaks of M ount Song. Later, she sent him down to the southern extremities of the empire to gather ingre­ dients to decoct an elixir of immortality. On his way back, learning that the deceit of his former cohorts had been exposed, he strangled himself rather than face Wu Zhao. One of the more peculiar retainers she recruited was an ec­ centric wildman from the northeastern forests known as M aster Ding, recommended to her by the Taiping Princess. Brought be­ fore Wu Zhao, he drained 30 pints of liquor in a single draught.

Then with a spoon he polished off more than a gallon of bean sauce in a trice. Impressed by his capacious appetite, Wu Zhao wanted to make him an official. M aster Ding declined, choos­ ing to take the tonsure and become a Buddhist monk. Early in her political career, wary of the example of Empress Lii, Wu Zhao was circumspect in giving authority to her kins­ men. However, in the effort to establish her new dynasty, many of her staunchest backers were family members. Among these kin was her maternal nephew Zong Chuke, who presented her with the new characters in 689. She entrusted Zong Chuke with the compilation of an 18-chapter annals of her regency from 684 to 690. Both Zong Chuke and his brother, Zong Jinqing, gained high office and great riches, but were demoted for taking bribes shortly after the advent of the Zhou, only to re-emerge later in her reign. In 699, when the Taiping Princess beheld the lavish mansions of the Zong brothers furnished with their hoard of ill-gotten wealth, she remarked with amazement, “ Gazing upon these splendid estates, I truly feel that I have lived in vain!” To support his aunt’s sovereignty, Wu Chengsi worked dili­ gently to eradicate the Li kinsmen and all those loyal to them and permanently replace them with the Wu clan. A prime can­ didate to succeed Wu Zhao, he had the most to gain from her ascendancy. He also helped devise a clan genealogy fit for an imperial family. On several occasions, he petitioned that she es­ tablish seven imperial temples for the Wu family and make the male Wus princes. He wrote the “ Sage M other” inscription for the Precious Diagram purportedly discovered in 688 in the Luo River. In 691, once Wu Zhao established the Zhou, Wu Chengsi was charged with supervising the editing of the national histo­ ries, a duty she would only grant to a political insider. Wu Chengsi also worked in tandem with the Buddhist clergy. In the ninth month of 693, he led 5,000 people to petition Wu Zhao to add the Buddhist prefix “ Golden Wheel” to her title. In the fifth month of 694, he led a throng of 26,000 requesting that she append “ Transcending Antiquity” to her ever-grander title. Ultimately, however, Wu Chengsi lacked the subtlety and in­ genuity o f his aunt. His lofty ambitions were thwarted by his

slavish nature and voracious lechery. Before Wu Z hao’s male favorites, Huaiyi and the Zhang brothers, he danced attendance like a lackey. Late%-after he seized one minister’s lovely and tal­ ented concubine, when the minister sent the girl a poem that in­ cited her to commit suicide, Wu Chengsi flew into a rage and executed the man and his entire family. Thus, he displayed to his aunt, to the court, and to the empire at large that he lacked the temperament, discipline, and charisma to be a ruler. On four different occasions, Wu Zhao made him a chief minister, but each time shortly dismissed him when he proved unworthy o f the position. O f course, not every office in Wu Zhao’s court was filled by a charlatan, a sycophant, or a Wu clan member. Long before she established the Zhou, Wu Zhao had gained a reputation for having an open system of government that invited men of talent, regardless of background, to join her bureaucratic ranks. On examinations, she ordered that names be covered so that exam­ iners would not be influenced by the pedigree or reputation of candidates. She began personally inviting successful examination candidates into the palace to test them on the classics. Both of these practices were continued by emperors of later eras. Following the inauguration of her new dynasty in 690, Wu Zhao commissioned Censors to seek talented men from every quarter. When they returned with these prospects, she appointed them without even questioning whether the new recruits were dim witted or competent. As a result, there was such a plethora of officials in Luoyang that positions were doubly or trebly staffed. Mocking the superabundance of officials, one of the wags in the court remarked, “ Low-ranking remonstrance offi­ cials are pouring into town by the cartload. They’re w e i g h in g them on the grain scales to figure out where to put them.” An­ other added, “ All presented courtesy of the paste-brained Cen­ sors and the blind Sage and Divine Emperor.” One self-righteous Censor bristled and demanded that the ir­ reverent critics be caned before the court. With characteristic circumspection and humor, Wu Zhao merely laughed, observ­ ing? “As long as I don’t appoint too many new Censors, what do you have to worry about? The offense shall be forgiven.”

There even exist records of Wu Zhao testing a four-year-old child from her native Bingzhou on a primer of Confucian prin­ ciple titled the Thousand Character Classic, to see if the child could write the entire text from memory. Wu Zhao also held an audience with a nine-year-old girl who recited poetry with great fluidity and elegance. She did not, so far as the records tell us, give either of these children official positions. Nonetheless, these stories reflect a ruler willing to meet, talk to, and interact with the various constituents of the empire she ruled, even young children. Though often inclined to luxury and grand ceremony, Wu Zhao was genuinely concerned with the well being of the com­ mon people. Once, when Wu Zhao asked her chief minister Lu Yuanfang about the state of affairs in the country, he replied, “ As chief minister, I would be remiss if I failed to report promptly on a grave matter of state. But as to the trifling con­ cerns of the commonfolk—these are not worth vexing Your M ajesty’s sagely virtue.” Disgusted with his arrogance, she promptly dismissed him. The final essay of Regulations for Ministers, “ Benefit the People,” focused on the critical import of succoring agriculture. This central idea is one deeply grounded in traditional Chinese politics: As long as the bellies of the hard-working peasant masses are filled, the foundation of the state will remain strong and the ruler will be able to transform the nation. Another text compiled during her reign, Essential Occupation o f the G ood M asses, similarly touted the great significance of agriculture. To help sustain the extensive armies amassed in border re­ gions, Wu Zhao also promoted state-owned military farms. In this manner, the armies would not consume as much of the grain planted and harvested by the peasantry. She also kept re­ lief granaries full in order to feed people during times of scarcity. In 704, one of her ministers remarked with satisfaction that “ the storehouses in Luoyang are filled to capacity with the accumulation of years of grain.” O f the several hundred storage pits contained within Hanjia Granary—the state storehouses that constituted a veritable walled city replete with administra­ tive offices and outbuildings—one cavernous bowl, 40 feet across and 40 feet deep, can still be found in a northeast suburb

of modern-day Luoyang. This single pit, excavated in the early 1970s, contained the ashen and decomposed remains of 275 tons of millet. Inscribed bricks with names of several eras from Wu Zhao’s reign indicate that this vast reserve was likely accu­ mulated during her rule. During her regency and reign, Wu Zhao undertook many projects to expand and improve China’s irrigation systems. New dams and embankments were set up along rivers in Sichuan. Ir­ rigation channels were opened to help bring water to the dry, rugged regions of Shaanxi, west of Chang’an, and to improve the richer agricultural lands in modern-day Jiangsu and Hunan. Projects were even undertaken in a distant southern prefecture near modern Guilin, where a lock was put in to bifurcate a river and bring water to outlying regions. Though Confucian histori­ ans have criticized Wu Zhao for her extravagance, she actually often diminished corvee duties and reduced taxes. While she was often harsh in managing the elite and powerful, she helped the common people by fostering agriculture and continuing to build up the infrastructure of the empire. Well aware that flowery rhetoricians and ingratiating yes-men were not always the most capable administrators, Wu Zhao cherished ministers who had the backbone to remonstrate, ap­ pointing men of strong timbre like Di Renjie to both civil and military offices. Though Di Renjie had a conservative, inwardturning bent that contrasted with the Wu Zhao’s vision of an expansive empire, and loudly professed his loyalty to the House of Tang, she unexpectedly found in him a supportive friend. Amidst the bevy of obsequious ministers in her court, she ad­ mired his strict adherence to principle. His constancy and recti­ tude marked him as one who would not countenance sycophancy, nepotism, or maladministration. Repeatedly, he locked horns with the cruel officials and Wu Zhao’s nephews— and survived. A model of Confucian consistency, Di Renjie held the strong conviction that it was the duty of a ruler to cultivate the popu­ lace through civil persuasion, magnanimity and benevolence, but never through coercion. Thus, when the revolt of Tang princes was quashed in 688, Di Renjie ordered the fetters re­ moved from the defeated rank-and-file soldiers, opining,

“These men are not evil. They are merely misguided.” Arguing that violence merely served to beget further violence, he urged Wu Zhao to display mercy, and warned that if she did not “ in­ stead of one rebel there will be a hundred.” Sensitive to the plight of the peasant, time and again, Di Renjie exhorted Wu Zhao not to use the common people’s labor on extravagant sum­ mer palaces and Buddhist statues. Critical of military expansion, he warned against conscripting Chinese peasants to fight wars on the arid, infertile fringes of the empire lest planting, tending the fields, and harvesting—the vital seasonal agrarian rhythm of the commonfolk— be thrown out of kilter, forcing them to “ abandon the fundamental.” In this age of constant dismissals and promotions, of bureau­ cratic flux, Di Renjie served as chief minister for nearly five years. Both he and Wu Zhao were natives of the same region and belonged to the same generation. As Di Renjie rose to emi­ nence, mutual trust, admiration, and tenderness grew between sovereign and minister. Wu Zhao personally saw him off to the city gates when he led the military campaign in 698 against M ochuo, and even ordered her son, Li Dan, to lead his horse. Recognizing the strength of his moral persuasion, she came to affectionately call him the “Nation’s Elder.” Distraught after his death, Wu Zhao looked around the court and sighed, “ My court is empty! Too soon, Heaven has snatched away my N a ­ tion’s Elder!” Perhaps the most curious member of her vast corps of advis­ ers was Shangguan Wan’er, the granddaughter of an “ old guard” chief minister that Wu Zhao had purged in the 660s. Growing up a palace servant in the women’s apartments, Shangguan Wan’er once committed a grave offense toward her imperial mistress. The histories do not record the nature of this crime, but note that rather than having the girl executed, Wu Zhao chose to tattoo her face with a criminal’s brand. Shang­ guan Wan’er ultimately developed into an immensely talented, quick-witted woman and a literate poet and essayist who came to win the confidence of her mistress. From 698 on, Wu Zhao consulted with her on affairs of state and allowed her to discuss and determine certain vital administrative issues. As an extrabureaucratic official of sorts, Shangguan Wan’er became a

ghost writer of edicts for her weary mistress and, like the Schol­ ars of the North Gate, enjoyed far greater influence than all but a few ministers in -the court. When Li Xian regained the throne in 705, Shangguan Wan’er became a high-ranking concubine in his Inner Palace, a Lady of Bright Countenance; she continued to play an important political advisory role and was a major ac­ tor in the tumultuous period of political intrigue that followed Wu Zhao’s deposal and death. Wu Zhao also honored other women for meritorious service. For “ loyalty amidst a hail of arrow s,” a peasant woman who led local resistance against the Turks was honored as District Mistress of Xunzhong County. To show her appreciation for the courage of a magistrate’s wife who had also organized townsfolk to repel the invading Turks, Wu Zhao invested the doughty matron as Lady of Sincerity and Principle. The Confucian histories take delight in pointing out the many sycophants, favorites, and Wu kinsmen that populated Wu Zhao’s court. However, while some favorites gained lofty positions, few actually possessed any real decision-making power or influence. Though she generously rewarded those who had helped her rise to emperor, Wu Zhao did not hesitate to punish and demote those who proved uncooperative, corrupt, or exces­ sively ambitious. Whether eminent or humble, obsequious or upright, she demanded the utmost loyalty of her officials. She took the principles of single-minded loyalty, unbending in­ tegrity, selfless duty, and prudent judgment seriously, delegating authority to ministers who possessed these traits, while swiftly discarding those who did not. The Zhou court was lively and festive. Possessing inimitable panache and a flamboyant aesthetic, Wu Zhao knew how to throw a party. As hostess, with tremendous fanfare and drama, she created stunning ritual structures and performed sensa­ tional rites. Her colorful reign featured a constant stream of gala ceremonies, thanksgiving feasts, and spectacular New Year’s celebrations. Wu Zhao directly linked her physical self to some of these ceremonies. In the autumn of 692, because some teeth she had lost had reportedly regrown, she called for a huge festival and

changed the name of her reign to Protracted Longevity. To syn­ chronize the state ceremonial calendar with her regenerated teeth, and thereby symbolically announce to the empire that she was still an energetic and vital sovereign, Wu Zhao changed the sacrifice to the earth god, formerly corresponding with spring planting, to the final month of autumn. Deeply preoccupied with her own mortality, she strove to project an image of vital­ ity, timelessness, and agelessness. In 699, she claimed that her eyebrows had regrown in the inverted V-shape of the Chinese “eight,” prompting the court to offer her congratulations. Like many Tang women, she was expert at applying powders, rouges, creams, ointments, mascara, and oils to disguise the ravages of time. Even as she approached seventy, her skill in ap­ plying cosmetics and adornments was such that even her own assistants did not feel her to be decrepit. Dance and music played an important role in Wu Zhao’s Di­ vine Capital. Her court glittered with dazzling costumed dancers and resounded with aural splendor. On the lunar New Year in 693, in an elaborate ceremony held at her Bright Hall complex, the Divine Palace of Myriad Images, 900 dancers performed “ Song of the Divine Palace,” music of her own composition. Her “Anthem of the Sage’s Longevity” featured a colorful fusion of calligraphy and dance. In this large-scale public musical pro­ duction, 140 dancers wore golden bronze crowns and donned five-colored vestments marked with strokes of characters. Whirling with their silken clothing flowing like calligraphy, these dancers followed a progression of 16 coordinated move­ ments, bodily forming the lyrics, one character at a time. Their movements traced the lyrics of a song that praised Wu Zhao and wished her a long life: The Sage transcends a thousand antiquities, following the exalted path of the Hundred Kings. Long live the Emperor with blessings and prosperity!

Central Asian drum music beat time for the dancers. It was said that the thunderous roar of these drums echoed for a thousand miles in mountains and valleys.

She is personally credited with the composition of a piece called “ Birdsong for 10,000 Years.” At that time tropical, col­ orful birds like -mynahs and parrots were frequently presented to Wu Zhao as gifts or tribute and kept in the palace as pets. People taught them to say “ Long live the Emperor!” whenever Wu Zhao passed by. Her musical composition imitated this “ birdsong,” as three dancers, wearing avian crests and robes with dark red silken sleeves rendered elegant mynah birds in the air. Other avian-themed songs like “The White Dove” and “ Nocturnal Flight of the Bird from the Tower” were also popu­ lar in her court. Thirty years after Wu Zhao played a secondary role to Gaozong in the feng and shan rites at Mount Tai, the Eastern Peak, she performed the rites again at Mount Song, the Central Peak. This time she played the starring role, offering to Heaven and Earth a humble homage for the harmonious and peaceful empire she governed. She had long sought this second opportunity to perform these grand ceremonies, only to be thwarted time and again. In 676 and 679, incursions by the Tibetans and Western Turks, respectively, scuttled the plans of the two Celestial Sover­ eigns for an encore performance. Gaozong’s illness and death prevented a final effort scheduled for the first month of 684. Again in spring 691, not yet sufficiently confident in the security of her nascent Zhou dynasty, and ever aware of the importance of timely performance of rites, Wu Zhao declined the petition by 2,800 people that she perform the feng and shan sacrifices. Finally, in early 696, she felt that the time was right. Rather than Mount Tai, Wu Zhao chose M ount Song, a mere 30 miles southeast of Luoyang. In the Records o f the Grand Historian, H an dynasty annalist Sima Qian recorded in his “Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices” that, “ Rulers of the Three Dynas­ ties of antiquity—the-Xia, Shang, and Zhou—all were situated between the Yellow River and the Luo River. Therefore Mount Song is known as the Central Peak, and the other four marchmounts by their respective directions.” After a ten-day journey from Luoyang, she performed the feng sacrifice, presenting burnt offerings to Heaven at a circular three-story altar to the south of the mountain. Then she

climbed to M ount Song’s peak and performed a solitary sacri­ fice to Heaven. Next, in the shan ceremony, she provided the primary offering to Earth at an octagonal altar set atop a square platform. In the concluding “ Altar of Audiences” cere­ mony, she held court at an altar set before a temporary palace built especially for the ceremonies and received the congratula­ tions of her ministers. Wu Zhao used the occasion to heap hon­ ors and rewards on officials. Staging a nine-day thanksgiving feast, she called for a general amnesty and relieved the common people of the grain tax for the entire year. On the day of the amnesty, a rooster perched on the topmost branches of a black oak tree just south of the feng altar. Hearing the clarion crow of the august fowl broadcast her triumph, she dubbed the oak “ Tree of the Golden Chanticleer.” N ot long after she returned from M ount Song to Luoyang, Wu Z hao’s new Bright Hall, Communing with Heaven Palace, standing more than 250 feet tall, was completed. Though smaller than the original that had burned down the previous year, it was still immense. This new Bright Hall combined the elements of its predecessor into a single tower crowned by a 20-foot-tall gilded phoenix. With neither an astronomical clock nor a massive statue, a more humble Buddhist pagoda was set atop the Confucian administrative hall. The following spring, on Wu Z hao’s orders, nine massive bronze ding tripods were arrayed before Communing with Heaven Palace. In traditional China, no ritual vessel carried greater symbolic moment than the ding tripod. During the Shang dynasty in the second millennium B . C ., shaman-kings used tripods for divination and sacrifices. In the Zhou dynasty of antiquity, even though the tripod developed into a more sec­ ular symbol of rank and power, its earlier divine aura remained. According to the myth of the Nine Tripods that developed in this period, in the shadowy mythological past the tireless hy­ draulic engineering of the heroic Yu the Great delivered China from an eight-year deluge. Grateful denizens of the Nine Provinces willingly presented Yu with copious gifts, and from their offerings of bronze the Nine Tripods were cast, each fea­ turing the flora and fauna of its representative region. Thus, a

miniaturized vision of the empire, of China, was encoded on these vessels, and they became symbols of the voluntary sub­ mission of peoples-from every region to a righteous sovereign. They were placed in the innermost sanctum of the ancestral temple. Rulers came to believe that the tripods appeared and disappeared based on their moral conduct. Thus, the presence of the vessels served as proof of a sovereign’s virtue and a dy­ nasty’s legitimacy; their absence indicated that a ruler had for­ feited the Mandate of Heaven. So it was that in the spring of 697 that Wu Zhao, ever ready to adopt symbols from the distant past, arrayed Nine Tripods in the audience hall of Communing with Heaven Palace. On the surface of each tripod were images of the mountains, rivers, re­ sources, and products that belonged to their respective province. The central vessel stood 18 feet tall. The other eight were 14 feet tall. Nearly 30 tons of bronze was used in their casting. To fix the tripods in their proper spots, chief ministers and princes led a massive procession of more than 100,000 guardsmen. This tremendous martial force flanked white ele­ phants and great oxen who dragged the giant vessels through the city gates and on to their destination. Human pullers as­ sisted, chanting a “Tripod Dragging Anthem” of Wu Z hao’s composition in unison as they heaved. This verse was inscribed on the central vessel: Fu X i and Shen Nong first emerged, The Yellow Emperor and H ao acted in timely fashion; Yao and Shun followed in their footsteps, Tang and Yu availed themselves of the times. The empire was enlightened and populated, Within the seas there was harmony and peace; From distant antiquity Heaven has sent a mirror; squarely to fix an exalted foundation.

Wu Zhao styled herself the modern counterpart of the glorious lineage of worthies and sages from the Golden Age featured in her anthem, the heir to their legacy of virtue; a magnet of benevolence toward whom the myriad commonfolk would nat­ urally gravitate. There is an old saying: “When the Duke of

Zhou fixed the tripods in Luoyang, the empire returned to its heart.” Luoyang was the heartland. Wu Zhao, styling herself a latter-day Duke of Zhou, set the nine massive vessels before her Bright Hall. Even in this age of extravagant carnival and monumental theater, Wu Zhao had outdone herself, once more choreograph­ ing and orchestrating a spectacle, a garish procession with all of Luoyang her stage. Unlike the mythological Nine Tripods, se­ creted away in the innermost recesses of the ancestral temple, after the public ceremony her vessels were displayed promi­ nently in the administrative and ritual heart of Luoyang.

Octogenarian in Retreat: Succession, Factionalism, and Craneriding in the Final Years As soon as Wu Zhao deposed Li Dan and established her own dynasty in 690, succession became a paramount issue. The fu­ ture possession of the empire was at stake. Both her Wu clan and her Li imperial in-laws were potential candidates. The bio­ logical fact that Wu Zhao was a woman presented serious prob­ lems in her effort to establish a lasting dynasty. She could not, within a single generation, wholly reinvent the traditional sys­ tem of inheritance and succession. Imperial succession generally passed from father to eldest son. Sacrificial offerings to ances­ tors were made by blood sons and grandsons. Thus, Wu Zhao faced a conundrum. If she bequeathed sovereignty to one of her sons she would simply be handing the reins of power back to the Li family, effectively restoring the Tang dynasty. If, on the other hand, she passed the empire to her nephew Wu Chengsi, thereby keeping rule within the Wu clan, he would offer sacri­ fices not to her, but to his father, her half-brother. Therefore, no one would sweep her tomb or bring sustenance for her immor­ tal soul. Deeply preoccupied with her position within the ances­ tral temple, and concerned whether or not her descendants would tend to her spirit in the afterlife, Wu Zhao never was truly able to think outside the Confucian box.

In 691, Wu Zhao bestowed her Wu surname upon surviving princes of the House of Tang, including her son Li Dan. She de­ moted these princes to Commandery Princes and kept them un­ der house arrest. At this juncture, she seriously considered establishing Wu Chengsi as Crown Prince and asked her minis­ ters their thoughts about succession. M any in her court, believ­ ing it accorded with her desires, sycophantically touted Wu Chengsi as her successor. Taking her part, one official argued, “ Ancestors do not accept offerings from other types. People do not offer sacrifices to the ancestors of other clans. Yet now that Your Majesty holds the empire, how is it that you still have a member of the Li family as your heir?” On the other hand, stalwart Tang loyalist Li Zhaode sup­ ported Li Xian, stating, “ Celestial Sovereign Gaozong was your husband. Imperial Heir Li Dan is your son. Your Majesty pos­ sesses the empire. For the imperium to flourish for 10,000 generations, it is appropriate that you pass it on to your sons and grandsons. Where is the precedent for an aunt to name her nephew heir? From antiquity, I have never heard of a nephew being enthroned by his aunt and made Son of Heaven. More­ over, Your M ajesty has received Gaozong’s bequest. If you con­ fer the empire upon Wu Chengsi, the Celestial Sovereign will neither enjoy offerings of blood nor of grain.” He continued, pointedly hinting at the grave threat appointing Wu Chengsi heir would pose to her security: “ How does the intimate bond of nephew to aunt compare to that o f son to father? If there are cases of sons committing regicide to usurp their father’s throne, how much more likely is it, then, for a nephew to wrest power from an aunt? Now, you have made Chengsi both an imperial prince and chief minister, his power is equal to that of a ruler. I fear that Your Majesty won’t sit peacefully in your throne for long.” Still, beginning in 693, Wu Zhao made a concerted effort to elevate her natal family above her Li in-laws. During her grand New Year’s rites, when legions of dancers performed the “ An­ them of the Sage’s Longevity,” nephews Wu Chengsi and Wu Sansi replaced her sons in the performance of the secondary and tertiary rites. She gave Wu ancestors ever more lofty titles. Her father’s honorific appellation Grand Ancestor, Exalted Filial

and Enlightened Emperor, became the even more grandiose Peerless One, Exalted and Enlightened Emperor. By the late 690s; as Wu Zhao grew more frail, succession re­ mained unresolved. Raising the argument again that the Em­ peror never handed the empire over to one with a different surname, Wu Chengsi resuscitated the issue in 698, sending people to petition to install him as Crown Prince. To counter his efforts, Confucian chief minister par excellence, Di Renjie, waged a campaign to persuade Wu Zhao to return the throne to the House of Tang. When Wu Zhao told Di Renjie that she had dreamed of a splendid parrot with two broken wings, the clever minister availed himself of the opportunity, explaining: “ The urn of parrot is homophonous with Your M ajesty’s surname Wu. The wings represent your two sons. If you elevate them, the two wings will flap again.” Aware that Wu Zhao attached tremen­ dous import to dreams, he interpreted her vision in such a man­ ner as to prod her to bequeath the empire to her sons, the scions of the House of Tang. To rally dispirited Tang troops against powerful Turkish khan Mochuo in 698, Di Renjie persuaded Wu Zhao to recall Li Xian, deposed in 684, from his long exile. Apparently, Li X ian’s return to Luoyang bolstered the flagging morale of Wu Z hao’s armies, for Di Renjie remarked, “ Humbly, I observe that Heaven and Earth have not yet rejected the virtue of the Tang. When the barbarians penetrated the borders, Your M ajesty sent your nephew Wu Sansi to raise an army. In more than a month, he could not exceed 1,000 men. Your son Li Xian, in less than a single day, amassed 50,000 soldiers. The will of the people has been made manifest. N ow that Your Majesty desires to appoint a successor, it can be none other than Li Xian. Heaven and man have not yet forsaken the virtue of the Tang!” Deftly, he added, “ Does Your M ajesty not take Heaven’s will with a sense of urgency? The imperial prince is the foundation of the empire. When the foundation shakes, the whole empire is imperiled. When Gaozong was bedridden and ill, he summoned Your Majesty and charged you to protect the empire. You have ruled yourself for more than a decade, and now you further de­ sire to pass the empire to Wu Chengsi. Which is the more inti­ mate bond: aunt-to-nephew or mother-to-son? If Your Majesty

bequeaths the empire to Li Xian, the ancestral temple will pros­ per for 10,000 years. If Your M ajesty passes the throne to Wu Chengsi, as aunt you will have no tablet in the ancestral tem­ ple.” To an aged woman who had long lived in palatial luxury, the prospect of eternal neglect, of becoming a wandering hungry ghost cast out by her descendants, was a terrifying one. Other court ministers joined the increasingly vocal chorus clamoring for Li X ian’s return. Li Dan refused to eat or drink, earnestly beseeching Wu Zhao to make his elder brother Crown Prince. Finally, in the ninth month of 698, bowing to the pressure of Di Renjie and others, Wu Zhao formally established Li Xian as Crown Prince. At this critical juncture, she remarked, “I have a sage son. Chengsi and Sansi are like scrofulous ringworms.” Ultimately, she was shrewd enough to realize that the alter­ nating backbiting and fawning of her nephews had won them the undying contempt of court and country alike. This blow, the last in a string of thwarted ambitions, proved too much for Wu Chengsi, who died shortly thereafter of unrequited ambition, his dreams of donning the dragon robes quashed. This agonizing decision determined that the Zhou dynasty would not outlive Wu Zhao. Nonetheless, this decision did not mark a precipitous decline for her Wu kin. Wu Zhao devised a creative compromise. In the aftermath of Li X ian’s installment as Crown Prince, she be­ stowed her Wu surname upon him, which he bore until 705. She named her remaining nephew, Wu Sansi, a chief minister and Li X ian’s counselor. Other male Wu clan members held princely titles and high civil and military offices. In 699, fearing discord between the Li and Wu clans, she gathered Wu Sansi, her grandnephews, her sons, and the Taiping Princess and made them swear a binding oath to Heaven and Earth. Their oath to mutually maintain harmonious relations between the Li and Wu families was graven on an iron contract and secreted in the Institute of Historiography. To further reinforce ties, Wu Zhao also engineered a series of marriages between the Li and Wu families. After the husband of her daughter, the Taiping Princess, was implicated for conspir­ acy in 688, Wu Zhao found a new, suitable partner, Wu Youji,

the son of one of her cousins. She also married her Wu grandnephews to the daughters of her sons: Wu Chongxun married the Anle Princess; Wu Yanji, the Yongtai Princess; and Wu Yanhui, the Xindu Princess. To secure future cooperation and har­ mony between her natal clan and her Li in-laws, Wu Zhao sought to fuse the two families into a single political entity, making it hard to discern where the depleted Lis ended and the Wus began. At the same time, after more than a decade of estrangement, Wu Zhao and Li Xian made an effort to restore their maternal and filial feelings for one another. In 701, on a wintry journey from Luoyang to Chang’an, as the imperial carriage rumbled over snow-shrouded frozen ground, Li Xian solicitously rubbed his mother’s feet. Nonetheless, this arrangement of combining the Lis and Wus was problematic. In 700, discussing the matter with Wu Zhao, one minister said, “ If water and earth are mixed into mud plas­ ter, is there contention?” Wu Zhao answered, “ N o .” “ If half of the mud plaster is used to make a D aoist image and the other half to fashion a Buddha image, is there then contention?” “ Yes.” “ If the imperial family and imperial in-laws both have their respective places, then the empire will be at peace. Today, the Crown Prince has been restored and yet your Wu kinsmen still have princely titles. This will invariably cause dissension at a later date, and neither side will enjoy peace.” She answered, “I am aware of this. But as circumstances have already reached this point, nothing can be done.” Still, even after her death in 705, the Li-Wu compact which she had so assiduously forged remained essentially intact and Wu Sansi and other Wu kinsmen remained very influential in court. Since Daoism was associated with the first ancestor of the Li family, Laozi, Wu Z hao’s attitude toward Daoism was decid­ edly tepid in the years immediately preceding and following the inauguration of her Zhou dynasty. In 693, as Buddhist activities in her court reached their zenith, renowned Daoist priestess

Huang Lingwei discovered the lost altar o f a legendary Daoist Lady Wei (251-334), and beneath it unearthed relics. Wu Zhao asked for and kept the relics, but neither honored Huang Ling­ wei nor took any measures to officially recognize the site. This non-recognition was not because she harbored any personal an­ imosity toward Daoism: Had she felt it politically advanta­ geous, she might well have turned this discovery into a grand event by establishing a Daoist abbey on the site or staging a huge celebration. As she grew ever more frail and infirm, however, Wu Zhao turned increasingly to Daoism, long the repository of rites of absolution and elixirs of immortality. By the late 690s, the rep­ utation of Hu Chao, an unorthodox Daoist master who had aided Huang Lingwei in the discovery of Lady Wei’s immortal altar, had reached Luoyang. Men claimed that this mysterious recluse was a powerful and venerable geomancer, more than 200 years old, a human dowsing rod capable of detecting under­ ground treasures. In 1982, a local peasant found an inscribed bronze tally on one of the peaks of Mount Song which shows that Wu Zhao commissioned Hu Chao to perform a ceremony of expiation: Words of the emperor: The ruler of the Great Zhou Wu Zhao admires the true dao with its long-lived immortal spirits. Her servant Hu Chao has been commissioned to go reverently to the pinnacle of the Central Peak of M ount Song and cast the Golden Tally, praying to the Three Ministers and Nine Treasures of N a ­ ture that they might expiate her sinful nature. Kowtowing re­ peatedly and paying obeisance, he makes this humble petition.

This tally was part of the “tossing the dragons” ceremony, in which inscribed bronze or jade slips were ritually cast down mountain slopes in an effort to commune with Daoist divinities. In this case, the prayer beseeched them to absolve Wu Zhao of her ponderous accumulation of sin and guilt. Perhaps looking back at her remarkable ascent to Emperor, she felt not a smug sense of accomplishment, but biting remorse as she envisioned the winding, corpse-strewn path in her wake. Old and frail, she was haunted by the thought that soon she would have to con­ front the victims of her intrigues and the persecutions of her

vicious underlings, a lengthy parade of aggrieved souls in the netherworld. Wu Zhao’s advancing age precipitated an aggressive quest, by means of Daoist elixirs and rites, for a cure to the essentially human condition of mortality. In 699, when she felt ill she sent Daoist wizard Yan Chaoyin to M ount Song to perform ablu­ tions on her behalf. He prostrated himself upon a huge bronze stand for presenting meat sacrifices, offering himself bodily to Heaven. Feeling slightly better, she richly rewarded him. She or­ dered Hu Chao to decoct a longevity potion. After three years and massive expenditures, the Daoist master completed the po­ tion in 700 and, having completed the “ tossing the dragons” ceremony, presented it to Wu Zhao at her recently completed Sanyang Palace on M ount Song, a magnificent summer retreat. She imbibed the potion and felt revitalized, claiming she ex­ pected to live as long as Peng Zu, the Chinese Methuselah. In this manner Wu Zhao would be covered either way: enjoying longevity if the potion worked, and entering the netherworld with a clear conscience if it did not. In these later years, Wu Zhao frequently withdrew from her court at Luoyang and headed for M ount Song’s salubrious hot springs and Daoist temples. On one occasion, in order to wel­ come her properly, a Daoist from Central Peak Temple adorned the 72 cypress trees on the temple grounds with horses, mon­ keys, sheep, two bulls locked in combat, and a solitary golden rooster. The creatures, apparently, were bound to or suspended from the trees to create a bizarre topiary garden of sorts. When she arrived to honor the tutelary deity of Mount Song, Emperor of the Central Peak, she paid little heed to the creatures, but ad­ mired the trees themselves, for cypresses and pines were sym­ bols of the longevity that she sought. She wrote a poem on the occasion: The mysterious cypress remains elegant for a thousand autumns, The strange pine forever retains its fragrance.

During her ever more frequent retreats from her contentious court, she sought relaxation and harmony among the twisting ravines and mountain streams of M ount Song.

On one such summer sojourn, while resting in one of the nat­ ural caves near Stony Torrents Gorge, not far from Sanyang Palace, Wu Zhao saw an emerald bird with an odd call which sounded curiously like an admonition against women drinking. She learned that, according to local legend, a man in the area had once been drinking and matching couplets with his com­ panions when he discovered that his wife had been secretly tip­ pling as well. Humiliated and enraged, he ordered her to commit suicide. After her death, the wife turned into an emer­ ald bird. Learning of this tale, Wu Zhao decided to demonstrate that women, as well as men, could imbibe. Thus, as a cheerful diversion during her long tour of M ount Song, she feted her en­ tourage, men and women alike, with a banquet and staged a convivial poetry competition. Her coterie included Heir Appar­ ent Li Xian, her nephew Wu Chengsi, and her new male fa­ vorites, Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi. Each strove to outdo the others in this lively competition. Poems of the 17 com­ petitors were all carved in the walls of Stony Torrent Gorge. Wu Z hao’s delight in the freedom afforded by these ever more frequent retreats is reflected in the poem she composed on this occasion: Three pinnacles, ten caverns and a brightness to them ordered By the mysteries in Heaven; these jade spires, these golden ranges, guard the Imperial Home. They regulate the dews and frost, no pretty scene, no other feature of this earth, their match. Crossed by winds and rains, they flank Our Capital. Firmament-piercing cliffs conceal the sun’s rays; secret ravines lie drenched in cloaks of mist, extending a thousand miles. But stop. Take joy in feasting. Admire the creek-lover’s wisdom, the charity of hills. And then, on jeweled saddles, as twilight falls, above the roiling dust, we’ll fly away.

Light-hearted and unencumbered by claustrophobic court pro­ tocol, these outings put a more relaxed Wu Zhao in the mood for poetry. In her tone, one readily detects her delight in escaping her dissension-ridden court to the comforting vastness of the

mountains and dales south of Luoyang. The poem reflects too her Daoist leanings at this juncture, for she would fain escape the tribulations of the dusty world and join the company of im­ mortals dwelling in Heaven above. Gazing down the dizzying escarpments and steep gorges, one can easily understand why she might favor the drifting mists and beetling peaks of Mount Song. Among the cliffs, often hidden by clouds, are set Buddhist temples and Daoist monasteries. Unseen water drips and echoes, carrying faint voices. One can almost see the immortals and spirits spiraling above. In 699, not far from M ount Song at flat-topped Mount Goushi, Wu Zhao erected the Commemorative Plaque of the Ascended Immortal Prince. This stele was erected next to the Temple of the Ascended Immortal Prince which Wu Zhao had established three years earlier on the occasion of the feng and shan rites. Both temple and stele honored Prince Jin, the leg­ endary son o f King Ling who in the sixth century B.C., disgusted with his father’s maladministration, rejected wealth and station to become a wandering mountain ascetic during the Eastern Zhou dynasty. Lord Fuqiu, a wandering immortal, taught Prince Jin the art of craneriding, a sublime skill usually reserved for spirits and fairies. On the seventh day of the seventh month, Prince Jin joined the Immortal Jade Chrysanthemum Maiden and, riding his crane, ascended to join her as an immortal. On the site where he left this earthly realm, his repentant father erected the Ascended Immortal Observatory. Of M ount Song’s peaks, three are called Zijin, after Prince Jin, Fuqiu, after Prince Jin ’s Daoist teacher, and Three Cranes. In Chinese lore, the ele­ gant and graceful crane is closely associated with longevity and immortality. Indeed, the red-capped crane is known as the xianhe, the immortal crane. Even today, many elderly Chinese mount pictures of red-capped cranes with titles such as “ cranes roost on the pine-covered crag” on their walls, hoping to prolong their lives. The individual strokes of the title characters on the Commemorative Plaque of the Ascended Immortal Prince, which are attributed to Wu Zhao herself, appear to be beauti­ ful, ornate cranes.

At the same time that the temple and plaque were erected on Mount Goushi, a cult of Prince Jin developed in Wu Zhao’s court which centered on an exquisitely handsome young musician, Zhang Changzong. In 697, on the recommendation of the Taip­ ing Princess, Wu Zhao brought Zhang Changzong into her inner quarters. Zhang Changzong promptly recommended his younger brother Zhang Yizhi. These gay youths, accoutered in colorful silks and wearing vermilion rouge, rapidly emerged as Wu Zhao’s male favorites, her first since the death of Xue Huaiyi two years earlier. Their ascending influence soon rivaled that of the fore­ most ministers and statesmen. Soon court officials served as their personal valets, addressing them reverently as “ Fifth Master” and “Sixth Master,” and vying for the honor of stabling their horses. By 699, Wu Zhao had established these brothers as the direc­ tors of the Reining Cranes Institute, a combined company of talented scholars and male favorites. Though she enjoyed the free-spirited revelry of their festive banquets, some court minis­ ters found these gatherings highly inappropriate. When one crotchety chief minister complained of the cavalier, indecorous behavior of the Zhang brothers, Wu Zhao merely replied that, as he was already old, he need not attend the banquets. Claim­ ing he was ill, the man requested leave from court. When, after more than a month, Wu Zhao had not asked after his health, he sighed, “ How can a ruler go a single day without consulting with a chief minister let alone an entire month? Clearly, I am cherished no longer.” Crestfallen, he died a month later. The following year, Wu Z hao’s sycophantic nephew, Wu Sansi, claimed that Zhang Changzong was the reincarnation of Prince Jin. In his effort to flatter and exalt Zhang Changzong further, Wu Sansi wrote the “Verse o f the Immortal Cranes,” which appears in the Complete Tang Anthology o f Poetry. The opening includes the lines: Whither soars the immortal crane ascending on high? From M ount Goushi in the seventh month it flies into the distance: From M ount Goushi he mysteriously ascends into the boundless emptiness.

Wu Zhao was delighted with the idea that her new favorite was a reincarnated Daoist immortal. So it was that Zhang Changzong

donned a colorful feathered cloak, played a flute, and, to simu­ late Prince Jin ’s ascent to immortality, pranced around Wu Z hao’s court astride a reined wooden crane. If the inner court was a Daoist fairyland and Zhang Changzong was craneriding Daoist immortal Prince Jin, then Wu Zhao was the Queen Mother of the West, the most exalted female divinity in the Daoist pantheon. The poem of Changzong’s brother Zhang Yizhi to commemorate the outing to Stony Torrents more ex­ plicitly linked female emperor and Daoist goddess: With alacrity, six dragons raise their heads in clarion announcement As the Seven Sages join the Yellow Emperor, gathering in the shade of the Ying River. A thousand zhang tall, pines intertwine with wisteria, forming an emerald canopy. The entire mountainscape echoes with avian calls and strains of flute, As white cloud and bluebird, emissaries of the Queen Mother, Part the hanging vines and creepers that make men’s hearts grow wild. As the evening sun settles in a secret crevasse deep in the mountains with airy nonchalance a zephyr blows flowers earthward.

Wu Z hao’s role as Queen Mother of the West, assumed only af­ ter making the wrenching determination to pass the empire back to the House of Tang, might better be understood as a playful, theatrical diversion during her waning years than as a bid to magnify her political authority. Confucian histories derisively depict the Zhangs as frivolous pretty boys who, relying on the favor of their powerful patron, gathered a band of young libertines and turned the Inner Palace into a raucous theater of debauchery. The brothers invited rich southern merchants, men who in the Confucian paradigm were selfish, vulgar sorts who understood only profit, into the Inner Palace for unrestrained parties, a ceaseless flow of carousing, satirical plays, and other licentiousness. Meanwhile, the broth­ ers accumulated riches beyond measure and competed with each other in extravagance and ostentation. They owned huge,

elaborate mansions. For their mother, they constructed a re­ splendent Seven Treasures Tent, adorned with gold, silver, pearls, and jade. Other strange tales circulated about the Zhangs. In one, Zhang Yizhi made a huge iron cage into which he put many ducks and geese. A fire pit was set in the bottom ringed by a bronze basin filled with five-flavored juice. As the geese and ducks circled, the heat made them thirsty, and they drank broth from the bronze basin. Meanwhile, they were slow-roasted alive, dying only once their feathers dropped out and their meat was roasted a deep red. It was also rumored that Zhang Changzong had anchored a post in the floor, from which he suspended four dogs with their feet tied together. For the amusement of the as­ sembled company, he then released kestrels and falcons to rend the hounds alive. In fact, the Zhang brothers were more than perfumed playtoys and sadistic revelers. Their Reining Cranes Institute produced the 1,313-chapter Pearls and Blossoms o f the Three Faiths, a broadreaching anthology that sought to systemically gather the sum total of human knowledge: histories and biographies; ritual codes and political manuals; and Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian texts. Still, because of the rumors swirling around the Reining Crane Institute, many argued that the entire project was little more than an elaborate aesthetic gloss created to squelch the court’s vocif­ erous criticism. To no small extent, the meteoric ascent of the Zhangs eclipsed the return to prominence of Li Xian and the House of Tang. As a popular children’s ditty of the time mock­ ingly put it, “When Lord Zhang imbibes, Lord Li gets tipsy.” The rites of expiation, the elixirs of immortality, and the emergent cult of Prince Jin all signaled a shift in Wu Zhao’s im­ perial favor during her later years from Buddhist utopias to Daoist fairy lands. Rather than deal with the constant pressures of court, she now preferred to retreat to her mountain villas or indulge in the flamboyant gaiety which the Zhangs provided in her inner quarters. By 701, an increasingly infirm Wu Zhao, lacking the com­ manding presence and sound judgment she had so often dis­ played in earlier years, began to entrust affairs of state to the

Zhang brothers. She became extremely sensitive to any criticism directed at her male favorites. When tidings reached the Zhangs that Wu Zhao’s grandnephew, Wu Yanji, and his wife, her granddaughter, the Yongtai Princess, were secretly discussing their dismay at the state of affairs at court, the brothers reported to their benefactress, who promptly ordered her grandchildren beaten to death. The following year, perhaps in a misguided ef­ fort to humor their ailing mother, Crown Prince Li Xian, Li Dan, and the Taiping Princess all petitioned Wu Zhao to make Zhang Changzong a prince. Fortunately, she retained the acuity to compromise and give him a lesser title. That same year, after she returned to Luoyang from a twomonth summer vacation at Sanyang Palace, certain ministers in her court, sensing that Wu Zhao was losing her appetite for po­ litical and administrative affairs, began to request openly that she yield the throne to her son. A minister named Su Anheng bravely petitioned, “ For twenty years, since the former Emperor entrusted the country to Your Majesty, you have been respectful to Heaven and ruled in accordance with the common people. But now, mature in years, the Crown Prince is filial and reverent. If he ascends to the apex of imperial power, how is it different from Your Majesty herself being seated on the throne? Having already reached a venerable age, Your Majesty is weary of oc­ cupying the precious throne. The manifold duties of state are vexing and tiresome, greatly exhausting one’s mind and spirit. Why not ease the hardship on your saintly body?” Gently, he endeavored to nudge her toward retirement. He went on to urge her to strip her Wu kinsmen of their princely titles and bestow them upon her untitled grandsons of the Li family. Far from be­ ing angered by his remonstrance, Wu Zhao summoned him to a private audience, laying a banquet in his honor. Afterward, she personally saw him off. Su Anheng’s admonition had struck a chord. The following month, Wu Zhao, after more than two decades in Luoyang, left her Divine Capital and returned to Chang’an. This symbolic return to the erstwhile capital and the heartland of the House of Tang clearly marked her determina­ tion to hand the empire back to her Li in-laws. In Chang’an, Su Anheng presented a second petition in stronger, more urgent terms: “ The legitimacy of your rule is

built upon the foundation of the House of Tang. Yet though in terms of his years and his virtue the Crown Prince is in full bloom, Your M ajesty has forgotten the deep bond of gratitude between mother and son and jealously kept hold of his precious throne. How does Your Majesty have the face to visit the ances­ tral temple of the House of Tang? How can Your Majesty, in the next life, be interred with your husband Gaozong? Your foolish subject mistakenly thought that because it was the will of Heaven and man, Your Majesty would willingly relinquish the throne.” This time, Wu Zhao neither rewarded nor punished him. The year 703 was a grim one. Old and tired, Wu Zhao lis­ tened to reports of thousands dying in disastrous floods and of an unseasonable hailstorm that froze men and livestock by the hundreds. Meanwhile, her court became an arena of backbiting and mudslinging that centered upon an intense dispute between chief minister Wei Yuanzhong and the Zhangs. Factional lines were drawn. Seeing that the Crown Prince, the Taiping Princess, and the Wu princes all flattered the Zhangs, many court minis­ ters backed them, composing odes to their greatness and fawn­ ing on them at every turn, hoping that in doing so they might rapidly advance up the bureaucratic ladder. When one o f the Zhangs remarked that Yang Zaisi, an oily sycophant nicknamed the “Two-footed Fox,” looked Korean, Yang delightedly cut out a Korean-style cap and kerchief, draped his purple chief minis­ ter’s robes backwards, and cut a Korean caper. Another minister once lauded Zhang Changzong, saying, “ The Sixth M aster’s face is like a lotus.” The fulsome Two-Footed Fox corrected the man: “ N o, it is the lotus that resembles Sixth Master.” In the opposing camp, Wei Yuanzhong and Su Anheng viewed the Zhangs with unmitigated contempt, holding them to be nothing more than male favorites, unsavory impediments be­ tween Wu Zhao and legitimate, upright court ministers like themselves. Still worse, they felt that the Zhangs sought to ob­ struct the channels of communication between ruler and court by intentionally isolating Wu Zhao in the Inner Palace. When one of the Zhangs’ servants put on airs and kicked up a ruckus in the marketplace, Wei Yuanzhong summarily had the trouble­ maker beaten to death. He also adamantly opposed the ap­ pointment of a younger Zhang sibling as governor of Chang’an.

Later, before Wu Zhao, the Zhangs, and the entire court Wei Yuanzhong sighed, “ From the time of Gaozong’s court, I have received gracious support and enrichment that has enabled me to reach the lofty position of chief minister. Yet because of the presence of petty men in the wings, I cannot exhaustively dis­ play my loyalty and die for my country. This is your humble of­ ficial’s fault.” The Zhangs countered by mounting a campaign of slander against Wei Yuanzhong. They fabricated a tale that Wei Yuanzhong had secretly suggested to a favorite of the Taiping Princess, “ The Grand Dowager is too old; in the long run it would be wiser to throw our weight behind the Crown Prince.” Such a charge amounted to conspiracy. The Zhangs convinced a reputable minister, Zhang Yue, to corroborate their story. H ow­ ever, when he came before the court and was questioned, Zhang Yue balked, feeling intense pressure from both sides. Finally, he told the truth: “I never heard Wei Yuanzhong say any such thing. Zhang Changzong compelled this humble official to slan­ der him.” Immediately, the Zhangs claimed that the minister and Wei Yuanzhong were in league. Siding with her favorites, Wu Zhao remarked, “ Zhang Yue flip-flops like a scoundrel. Take them both into custody! ” Audacious Su Anheng stepped forward in protest, “ When Your Majesty first severed the mandate, you were known as a ruler who willingly accepted remonstrance. In recent years, though, people have come to perceive you as a ruler who has fallen under the sway of favorites. Now that Wei Yuanzhong has been imprisoned, in every hamlet and alleyway people are nervously saying that Your M ajesty places her trust in traitors and villains, while denigrating the virtuous and worthy. In the privacy of their residences, loyal ministers and noble statesmen slap their thighs in dismay; but in the audience hall of court they act as though gagged, for fear their words might run counter to the will of the Zhangs.” This bold speech enraged Wu Zhao. Only the vigorous intercession of a group of ministers saved Su Anheng from death. To avoid further upheaval, Wu Zhao exiled Wei Yuanzhong, appointing him to be a local official near Canton, and sent Zhang Yue to distant southern hinterlands. Before he left, Wei

Yuanzhong took one last parting shot, telling Wu Zhao, with the Zhangs in attendance, “ Though I’m old and there’s only one chance in ten that I’ll return alive, there will most certainly come a day when Your Majesty will think of me again.” “ And when will that be?” Wu Zhao queried. “ On the day these two little brats bring about the calamitous end of your dynasty!” As the Zhangs kowtowed and strenu­ ously protested their innocence, Wu Zhao railed, “ Begone, Yuanzhong! ” This ugly episode further polarized a court already unbal­ anced by factionalism. Though the Zhangs continued to fabri­ cate charges of conspiracy against ministers sympathetic to Wei Yuanzhong, Wu Zhao still possessed the foresight to realize that an untimely witch hunt at this juncture would further rive her divided court, and by year’s end she reined in the investigation. After several unhappy and stressful years in Chang’an, a worn-out eighty-year-old Wu Zhao returned to Luoyang. Yearn­ ing to escape the strife and breathe the refreshing mountain air, she eagerly concurred with Wu Sansi’s suggestion that she build a new summer retreat. In the spring of 704, he supervised the construction o f Xingtai Palace on the slopes o f Mount Perfectpeace, a name in which his embattled aunt no doubt found a measure of solace. Though she used the materials from her for­ mer summer palace, one Confucian minister, ever ready to paint her as a self-indulgent ruler, protested, “Those close to Your Majesty mistakenly believe that catering to your every whim constitutes loyalty. The court, too, fears to oppose Your M ajesty’s wishes. Resultantly, Your Majesty is unaware of the hardships of the common people. This could injure your lofty reputation for benevolent governance. If you suspend this pro­ ject, then the empire will know that Your Majesty, at the ex­ pense of your own comfort, cherishes the common people.” She did not heed his advice, and in the spring of 704 headed to her newly completed mountain palace, where she remained for three months. Almost immediately after her return, three of the lesser Zhang brothers were imprisoned for accepting bribes. Soon the investi­ gation targeted her two favorites, Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi. Some ministers presented a memorial accusing the Zhangs

of accumulating more than four million cash through bribery and extortion, and urged Wu Zhao to strip them of rank and ti­ tle. Above the clamor o f the court, Zhang Changzong main­ tained, “ Your minister has accumulated merit in the service of the state. My offense should not result in dismissal from office.” Wu Zhao asked the assembled ministers, “What meritorious service has Changzong performed?” Two-footed Fox Yang Zaisi glibly replied, “ Changzong de­ cocted a divine elixir, and when Your Saintliness drank it, the draught proved most efficacious. Certainly, there is no greater merit than this!” Though Zhang Changzong had played the theatrical role of immortal Prince Jin, there are no records of him possessing any real skills in Daoist alchemy or magic. N or is there evidence that he brewed a potion of longevity for Wu Zhao. In seems likely that Yang Zaisi was making advertent ref­ erence to the personal and sexual nature of the relationship be­ tween Wu Zhao and Zhang Changzong. In the Daoist conception o f sexuality when an elderly female absorbs the semen— the yang essence— of a youthful male, it could fortify her constitu­ tion. In any event, Wu Zhao showed no indication of mortifica­ tion. Rather, delighted that her favorite had found an influential defender, she pardoned Changzong and restored his rank. Sev­ eral of the lesser Zhangs took the brunt of the blame and were demoted, though they remained in the vicinity of Luoyang and continued to visit their brothers. However, the growing and in­ creasingly vocal faction of ministers who adamantly opposed the Zhangs did not unquestioningly accept Wu Zhao’s pardon. To lampoon the hated Yang Zaisi, one minister wrote a series of satirical verses called “ Rhapsody of the Two-footed F ox.” In the later months of 704, Wu Zhao became seriously ill and lay in her bedchamber in Longevity Basilica. Within the walls of the Inner Palace, she was isolated from the court and attended by the Zhangs. Those with a direct conduit to the Em­ peror had access to power and influence: Exclusive access meant tremendous power. Great unease rippled through the outer court. In a memorial, one minister made a plea to replace the Zhangs: “Your two sons are benevolent and enlightened, filial and good-natured—ample qualifications to wait on Your M ajesty with medicine and soup. Affairs of the Inner Palace are

very important, and those of different surnames should not ca­ sually enter and exit.” She did not act upon the memorial, and ignored the growing accumulation of secret missives that claimed “ Zhang Yizhi and his brothers are conspiring to rebel.” Though the Confucian histories are muddy, making it seem as though for months on end the court ministers had no access to Wu Zhao, she continued to make decisions of state. There are records that she ordered relief grain to be distributed late in the autumn o f 704 and continuing accounts of appointments, pro­ motions, and demotions, suggesting that she still held court. In January of 705, an official presented evidence that an as­ trologer had told Zhang Changzong that he possessed the noble visage of a Son of Heaven and advised him to build a grand Buddhist statue so that the people would voluntarily submit to his rule. Wu Zhao ordered an investigation. The court was split. Some felt that because Zhang Changzong told Wu Zhao of the interview, the offense was pardonable. Censor Song Jing, how­ ever, railed, “ Despite the favor and glory that Changzong has received, he still audaciously summoned a sorcerer to examine his physiognomy and divine his future! What further ambition does he seek?” In the eyes of the Song Jing and many in the court, this was clear evidence that Zhang Changzong wanted to seize the throne, which was “ great sedition,” a crime punish­ able by the extermination of one’s entire clan. N o longer pos­ sessing her former decisiveness and discernment, Wu Zhao sat speechless, nearly dumbstruck, as Song Jing heaped invective upon the object of her adoration. A coterie of influential officials took Soijg Jing’s part, includ­ ing chief ministers Huan Yanfan and Cui Xuanwei. Huan Yanfan petitioned Wu Zhao in forceful terms, warning, “ If Your M ajesty cannot bear to execute Changzong, it will cast an in­ auspicious air over the empire. Though it has already come to light that Changzong has met with the astrologer, Your Majesty has not pursued the matter. Changzong continues to throw his weight around, so that the empire wonders whether the M an­ date of Heaven is in his grasp or yours. Your M ajesty’s indul­ gence has fostered and brought to maturity his rebellion! If this treacherous minister is not killed, the altars of state are doom ed!”

Song Jing added, “ In cases of great sedition and conspiracy, the chief rebel cannot be pardoned. If Changzong does not re­ ceive a death sentence, of what purpose are the laws of the em­ pire?” There was a time when Wu Zhao, eminently confident that her sharp tongue and keen-edged wit might slice to ribbons any man who questioned her judgment, would have rounded on Song Jing with abandon. And if fiery temper and deft rhetoric were not enough to cow him, she would have, as a final resort, as she had told Taizong six decades earlier when he asked her how best to break the feisty, untamed colt, “ slit his throat with the dagger.” She had imposed her will and resolve upon minis­ ters far more powerful than Song Jing, men like Changsun Wuji, Shangguan Yi, and Pei Yan. But that time was past. N o longer indomitable, this time it was she who sat cowed, weathering Song Jing’s verbal onslaught. In the end, she agreed to allow the Censors to try Zhang Changzong for his alleged crimes. However, in the middle of the proceedings, Wu Zhao arbi­ trarily issued a special pardon. Misjudging the depth of the court’s hatred for the Zhangs, she sent Zhang Changzong to apologize to Song Jing, mistakenly believing that the enmity be­ tween the two men, and between the two factions, might still be mitigated. With utter disdain, Song Jing refused to see Zhang Changzong. Overwrought by the tumult gripping her court, sad­ dened by the infighting among her children, the weary matriarch took to her sickbed again, attended, as before, by the Zhangs. As the new lunar year dawned in 705, Wu Zhao, feeling her authority waning, sought to refurbish her political image by staging another “ relic veneration” ceremony, rallying the Bud­ dhist faithful by bringing the Buddha’s fingerbone from Famen Temple to Luoyang as she had in 659. To help stage the grand rite, she looked to the famous Sogdian monk, Fazang, whom she had known for m ore than 30 years. On the Buddhist Lantern Festival, Wu Zhao prayed for universal good as Fazang held the relic. Mere days later, the Confucian court took drastic action, fearing that Wu Zhao might either stage further Buddhist re­ vivals or rashly issue an edict transferring the M andate of Heaven to her favorites. Some of the chief ministers, Zhang Jianzhi, Huan Yanfan, Cui Xuanwei, and Jing Hui among

them, plotted a coup to remove Wu Zhao from the throne and supplant her with Li Xian. They found help from an unlikely source, the monk Fazang. Cui Xuanwei had accompanied Fazang on his recent journey to Famen Temple to fetch the Buddha’s fingerbone for the relic veneration ceremony. Somewhere along the route this eminent monk betrayed Wu Zhao and agreed to help the ministers stage a coup. With his access to the Inner Palace, Fazang, who knew that Wu Zhao’s days were num­ bered, proved a valuable ally for the conspirators. Before Fazang’s death in 712, this ideological mercenary would go on to enjoy the patronage of Li Xian and two subsequent rulers. Knowing that as civil officials they lacked the coercive ability to pull off the coup themselves, the plotters sought among the palace guards officers fiercely loyal to the House of Tang. Zhang Jianzhi asked General Li Duozuo, “ To whom do you, my General, owe the wealth and position that you enjoy today?” “ Emperor Gaozong of the House of Tang,” the man tearfully replied. “ Today Gaozong’s son is threatened by two worthless scoundrels. H ow is it that you, General, fail to recall your old debt of gratitude?” Moved, Li Duozuo joined the plotters, swearing an oath to Heaven and Earth. Once when crossing the Yangzi River, Zhang Jianzhi, the ringleader of the plot, had confided his ambition to restore Li Xian to another general of the Palace Guard, Yang Yuandan. Now, Zhang Jianzhi approached Yang Yuandan and said, “N o ­ ble Sir, do you recall our conversation on the Yangzi? Well, the time has arrived.” The general nodded, understanding his meaning. When all was in readiness, they informed Crown Prince Li Xian, who endorsed the plan. However, at the critical moment, with 500 palace guards and the instigating ministers assembled outside the northern gate to the Inner Palace, he wavered. The man sent to summon Li Xian desperately sought to incite the vacillating Crown Prince to action with impassioned rhetoric: “The former Sovereign wished to bequeath the sacred vessel of Emperorship to Your Highness, but you have gone through the great misfortune of being deposed and exiled for twenty-three years, prompting the righteous indignation of men and spirits

alike. Tonight, Heaven finally shall mete out justice! The Northern and Southern Palace Guards have united as a single force to execute the nefarious scoundrels and restore the altars of state to the House of Tang.” Balking, Li Xian responded, “ Those nefarious scoundrels are truly deserving of death, but the Emperor’s health has been fragile lately and couldn’t withstand such an alarm! Let’s post­ pone the plan until another day.” In frustration, a minister resorted to deception, claiming, “ Soldiers and ministers have gathered, willing to martyr them­ selves to restore the altars o f state of the House of Tang. How can Your Highness bear to cast them vainly into a boiling caul­ dron? I humbly request that Your Highness go in person and order them to stand down.” Knowing that if he did nothing all those involved would be executed for sedition, the Crown Prince reluctantly went to disperse the troops. Though they needed his presence to justify the Tang restora­ tion, the plotters of the coup did not intend to allow weakwilled Li Xian to scuttle their plans. As soon as he arrived, they promptly battered down the gate and surged into the Inner Palace. In the Palace of Welcoming the Immortals, the guards encountered Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi on the veran­ dah of Longevity Basilica and butchered them on the spot. Everyone poured into Wu Z hao’s bedchamber and encircled the formidable old woman. Startled awake, Wu Zhao hoarsely asked, “Who is the cause of this ruckus?” Someone answered, “ The brothers Zhang were plotting re­ bellion. The Crown Prince ordered us to execute them.” And then Wu Zhao picked her son out of the crowd and addressed the fifty-year old man as though he were a vexatious child, “And you? N ow that the boys have been executed, you may re­ turn to the Eastern Palace.” Without giving Li Xian time to comply, Huan Yanfan said, “ H ow can the Crown Prince go back? Formerly, the Celestial Sovereign entrusted his cherished son to Your Majesty. Though he is already mature in years, he has long resided in the Eastern Palace of the Crown Prince. The will o f Heaven and the hearts of men still lie with the Li family. The ministers in court have not forgotten the virtue of Taizong

and the Celestial Sovereign, and therefore have followed the Crown Prince’s orders to kill these rebellious ministers! To ac­ cord with the will of Heaven and man, we humbly desire that Your M ajesty transfer the throne to the Crown Prince.” Sourly, she turned to the speaker and asked him to recall her past generosity to both his father and himself. Shamed, Huan Yanfan withdrew. She spotted Cui Xuanwei and reminded him that she personally had recommended and promoted him, adding sardonically, “ So this is your idea of reciprocity?” De­ crepit, bedridden, and disoriented, Wu Zhao nonetheless kept her presence of mind. Still, the conspirators were not to be deterred. They rounded up the other Zhang brothers, dragged them from their lavish, palatial homes, and executed them, displaying the heads of all five publicly just south of Heaven’s Ford Bridge. The following morning, Wu Zhao was forced to issue an edict that named Li Xian Regent. The third day following the coup Li Xian formally donned the purple robes of Emperor once again. In the coming weeks and months, he and his court undid many of Wu Zhao’s reforms. The Zhou dynasty once more became the Tang. Her Divine Capital, Luoyang, became merely the Eastern Capital. The ancestral temple of the House of Tang was elevated to seven chambers, while the Wu family temple was downgraded to five. M any of the Buddhist temples and Daoist abbeys she had established were renamed “ Restora­ tion Temple.” Her text, Regulations for Ministers, was stricken from the examination curriculum and replaced once again with Laozi’s Daodejing. The original Tang official titles, court colors, and vestments were reintroduced. The new characters Wu Zhao had created in 689 were discontinued. The scattered remnants of the imperial family were recalled from their long exile in the Southland, their rank and position restored. Those who had been branded with the unlucky names of poisonous creatures and exiled were now summoned back. M any imperial kinsmen and ministers killed by Lai Junchen and his sadistic henchmen were posthumously rehabilitated and honored. To the greatest degree possible, everything was restored to the way it was be­ fore Wu Zhao had deposed Li Xian in 684.

This was not merely the restoration of the Tang dynasty. These were highly conscious political acts designed to erase from history as many vestiges o f Wu Z hao’s eminence as possi­ ble. It was an effort to make it seem as though the two decades of Wu Zhao’s regency as Grand Dowager and rule as Emperor were nothing but chimerical bad dreams that had never really happened. When Li Xian became Emperor, Wu Zhao was moved to Shangyang Palace in the Imperial Park, outside the walls of the imperial city. Upon his restoration, one of Li X ian’s first acts of state was to lead the entire court to visit his mother and bestow upon her the honorific title Conforming to Heaven (Zetian), Great Saint August Emperor. Thereafter, every ten days Li Xian led the court to inquire after her health. After the jarring vio­ lence of her midnight ousting, these ritual niceties likely struck Wu Zhao as cheap, hollow ceremony. Her forced removal from the throne by her own son and a group of ministers, many of whom she had hand picked, came as a great humiliation and a shock. For all intents and purposes, she was being kept under house arrest. A general from the imperial bodyguard who had helped stage the coup kept watch over her residence in Phoenix Viewing Tower. Sick at heart, Wu Zhao, whose surpassing skill in using cosmetics was such that even in her later years those standing by her side could not tell that she had grown old and decrepit, no longer took pains to appear vital and beautiful. She did not brush her hair or bother to wash her face, and grew ever more unkempt and haggard. For almost half a century, ever since Gaozong’s stroke in 660, Wu Zhao had been in a position of authority. Surrounded by court ministers, attendants, and favorites, she had tirelessly made administrative decisions, crafted policy, and performed ceremonies of state. Naturally, she felt a tremendous sense of civic duty, a proprietary sense toward the empire, and wished to bequeath this cumbersome heirloom, prosperous and intact, to both her natal family and to her affines from the House of Tang. She recognized her son Li Xian for what he was, a weak-willed man who easily fell under the influence of others, and therefore

remained on the throne until she was forced out. Undoubtedly too, accustomed to the grand trappings of imperial power, she found it hard to relinquish her control. Now, she spent the final ten months of her life alone, sadly reflecting as she looked out over the grounds of the imperial park. Little is known of Wu Z hao’s final days. As she lay on her deathbed in Shangyang Place, disheveled and wretched, her son Emperor Li Xian watched a Sogdian play in which half-naked actors gesticulated wildly and hollered, sprinkling water to summon forth the winter cold. On December 16, 705, at the age of eighty-one, Wu Zhao died. In her will, she relinquished her title of Emperor, and, to assuage the anger of vindictive spirits in the netherworld, bequeathed a blanket pardon to the descen­ dants of many of her bitter enemies of yesteryear: Empress Wang, Pure Consort Xiao, and Chu Suiliang among others. She also stated that she wished to be buried beside Gaozong and to have a tablet next to her husband’s in the ancestral temple of the House of Tang. Some members of court opposed her final will, including one minister who memorialized, “ According to the ceremonial rules for imperial burials, when the noble and greater is first buried, the humble and lesser can not subsequently receive a joint burial. With all due humility, I have heard that the Great Sage Heavenly Empress Conforming to Heaven desired that Qianling be opened that she might be jointly buried therein. Nonetheless, she is of lower standing than the Grand Emperor Celestial Sovereign. This would be a case of improperly ‘using the lowly to move the ven­ erated.’ Furthermore, the entry to the tomb chamber is blocked by a great stone, and the seam in the gate has been welded shut with iron and would have to be chiseled and pried open.” Li Xian did not heed the memorial. He opened the tomb chamber at Qianling and allowed his mother, Wu Zhao, to be reunited with his father, her husband, Gaozong. Cui Rong, a lit­ erary master of the day, wrote an elegant eulogy. She was interred on the eighth day of the fifth lunar month of 706. Qianling is the only tomb in Chinese history to house two emperors.

The Vain Quest for Wu Zhao Wu Zhao is not a significant figure simply because she was the sole female emperor in China’s 5,000-year history. Her mastery of rhetoric and propaganda illustrates a great deal about the na­ ture of statecraft in traditional China. Her consummate skill with language shows that tradition was not unchanging and in­ violable, but rather a plastic medium. She also played a pivotal role in the development o f East Asian Buddhism. Her zealous sponsorship of the Buddhist faith was instrumental in the growth of sects like Chan and Flower Garland Buddhism. Un­ der her ardent cultural patronage, literature and art flourished in Wu Zhao’s expansive and cosmopolitan empire. Several modern scholars have argued that Wu Zhao was ulti­ mately reliant upon conventional and traditional patriarchal modes of power. Chen Jo-shui opined that as a feminist Wu Zhao “ not only failed to establish the right of women to enter public life, she also reconfirmed that their only legitimate domain was the home.” Jennifer Jay remarked that Wu Z hao’s political ca­ reer was a “ case in point that simply having a woman on the throne does not signify female dominance, matrilineal descent or residence within the mother’s maternal clan.” Nonetheless, Wu Zhao made an effort to improve the lot of women by bring­ ing a wider circle of women into state ceremony, honoring women who assisted in border wars, and involving talented

women like Shangguan Wan’er in administration. Her decree in 674 ordering that the length of mourning for the mother equal that for the father set a precedent that subsequent dynasties fol­ lowed. While she did not establish an enduring precedent for female participation in government, she dramatically stretched the parameters of Confucian tradition, creating substantial space for women to exercise political agency within that tradition. Wu Zhao consistently bent, stretched, twisted, and when neces­ sary circumvented these traditional modes. Women dominated the court in the years immediately fol­ lowing Wu Z hao’s deposal and death. The inner court became a tangle of intrigue in which Empress Wei, Shangguan Wan’er, and Wu Sansi formed the braintrust behind the inept Emperor Li Xian. The respective heads of the Li and Wu clans, Li Xian and Wu Sansi, shared more than just political authority: Wu Sansi enjoyed the sexual company both of Empress Wei and the Emperor’s favorite concubine, Wu Z hao’s former personal sec­ retary, the eminently capable Shangguan Wan’er. To the disgust of the ministers, who mistakenly had believed that with the re­ moval of Wu Zhao authority would revert to the outer court, this unorthodox cabinet of the Inner Palace dominated political decision-making for several years. Other powerful women also possessed great influence in Wu Z hao’s wake. Her daughter, the Taiping Princess, remained entwined in court politics. The Anle Princess, her granddaughter, coaxed her tractable father, Emperor Li Xian, into granting her the unprecedented title Crown Princess. This bevy of women vying for political emi­ nence following Wu Z hao’s death stands as a strong testimony to the success of her remarkable career. Despite their lofty am­ bitions and schemes, however, none of these women were fa­ vored with the fortitude, the will, the wit, the intelligence, the sharp tongue or the good fortune of Wu Zhao. There were other famous dowagers, like Cixi in the final decades of the Qing dynasty (1644—1911), but no woman would ever again be Emperor of China. Wu Z hao’s rule, however, prompted the indwelling patriar­ chal impulse of Confucianism to swell, developing into what would become in the subsequent centuries a full-blown back­ lash against women appearing in the public, political arena. By

I

the dawn o f the eighth century, the breath of fresh Central Asian steppe air that had helped create a more open society and fostered the emergence o f confident, strong women in the early Tang, had grown stale. Growing ever more prevalent were con­ servative attitudes like those of Wu Zhao’s statesman Di Renjie, who maintained that to keep hold o f the rocky, infertile border­ lands of the empire would distract the energies of the populace from the primary concern of state— agriculture. Non-Han peo­ ple of the northern and western frontiers, whom Taizong had once famously called “ equals” of the Chinese, were regarded once more disparagingly as “ barbarians,” and viewed with a suspicious and xenophobic eye. By the late Tang, Buddhism, so prominent a presence in everyday life in the early dynasty, came to be persecuted as a foreign religion. To no small extent, Wu Z hao’s legacy has been defined by this negative backlash against her rule. In the ninth century, during the late Tang, with a young emperor on the throne, some ministers requested Empress Dowager Guo to attend court and make decisions of state on his behalf. Taken aback, she refused, remarking with moral outrage, “Do you want me to follow the example of Wu Zhao? Although the prince is very young, we may choose ministers of noble character and great prestige to help guide him! How can I take part in external affairs of the outer court?” Likewise, in Confucian histories, Wu Zhao has been cast in a negative light. She has long been judged an anti-heroine, a regi­ cide where the ideal male ruler was duly filial, corrupt and lewd where he was virtuous, self-aggrandizing where he was austere. In short, these histories have consciously, if inconsistently, de­ monized Wu Zhao. In the Old Tang History, compiled after the fall of the Tang during the chaotic Five Dynasties period (907-960), Confucian annalist Liu X u offered the following bleak assessment of Wu Z hao’s reign: “Men of superior talent were joined in distress, dragged unwillingly into the perils of her court. None but felt great apprehension for his family. And in the end, they could neither reciprocate the kindness of Gaozong nor protect Li Xian and Li Dan. For a time, the innocent were ensnared, and those who stuck their necks out were exe­ cuted. All Heaven and Earth were a cage—where was there a

safe haven? How tragic! Empress Wu’s conspiracy to seize the position of Gaozong’s legitimate wife by choking the breath from her own swaddling infant; her mincing and pickling of en­ emies, grinding their bones into pepper dust—who would not claim this to be egregious? This is the disposition of a licentious and jealous w om an!” Wu Zhao is portrayed as violent and dis­ solute, the very embodiment of political entropy. Life in her court is depicted as a maelstrom of slander and cruelty. Yet it should not be said that the Confucian historians were entirely ungenerous in their verdicts. Even amidst the invective and calumnies, one can glean a certain begrudging admiration for her achievements. In this same O ld Tang History, Liu Xu concluded his assessment of her reign with: “Though in the be­ ginning the hen crowed to welcome the dawn, in the end, she restored the throne to her son, the enlightened ruler. Her lofty speech defended Wei Yuanzhong from punishment. Her kind words assuaged Di Renjie’s heart. She respected the paragons of the time and suppressed court favorites. She heeded the words of the loyal and eradicated the harsh officials. H ow splendid! How splendid!” In the New Tang History dating from the Northern Song (960-1125), literary master, historian, and polemicist par excel­ lence, Ouyang Xiu, delivered a curious verdict on Wu Zhao: “Auspicious and inauspicious influences still impact men. Yet though the good are frequently favored with good fortune, there are still those who encounter an inauspicious fate. Like­ wise, evil-doers are not predestined to meet with inauspicious influences. There are those who avoid them by a stroke of good luck. In the ruminations of the petty man, therefore, the way of Heaven is difficult to discern. The virtuous are not necessarily blessed with good fortune nor are the wicked doomed to meet with calamity. Despite Empress Wu’s iniquity, she did not meet with great disaster. Thus she might be called one of these ‘lucky avoiders.’ ” Despite the moral and didactic imperative for Con­ fucian historians to champion virtue and condemn wickedness, Ouyang Xiu knew all too well there were bound to be “ lucky avoiders” like Wu Zhao who managed to sidestep the wrath of Heaven and flourish. Eloquently, here, he explodes the over­ simplified Confucian notion that “ Heaven rewards the virtuous

and punishes the wicked,” a facile paradigm that utterly fails to explain the complexity of historical reality. Like Liu X u, Ouyang Xiu did not categorically condemn Wu Zhao. Indeed, elsewhere in the New Tang History, in “ Biogra­ phies of Empresses and Consorts,” he compared Wu Zhao fa­ vorably to Empress Wei, her scheming daughter-in-law: Some say that in causing havoc during the Tang, Wu and Wei followed the same track, the only difference being that Wu with­ stood the test of time while Wei was promptly destroyed. Why is this? This commentator thinks they are not the same. From the time of Gaozong, Empress Wu arrogated the blessings and prestige of the Son of Heaven. Abusing power, she issued edicts to everyplace bounded by the Four Seas. Although she expelled the legitimate emperor and changed the dynastic name, still she alone issued rewards and punishments and did not surreptitiously delegate authority to ministers, allowing them to usurp power from above and govern from beneath. Therefore in her later years, though there was a crisis, she did not perish. Empress Wei took advantage of her husband [Li Xian], Her lasciviousness brought the court to the boiling point. Recklessly and illicitly, she issued enfeoffment rights. Political authority came from many different sources. Even though she poisoned and killed the Emperor and assisted Li Dan in ruling, power was not in her hands, and she never even knew it.

In short, Ouyang Xiu contrasts Empress Wei’s reckless sexual incontinence and arrant maladministration to Wu Z hao’s polit­ ical competence, her ability to concentrate authority in her own hands and her acute understanding of the mechanisms of power. In the Comprehensive Mirror, the Northern Song historian Sima Guang gives a positive assessment of Wu Z hao’s handling of officials: Even though the Grand Dowager excessively used emolument and rank to gain the hearts of the people, those who proved irre­ sponsible in office were dismissed and punished. The Grand Dowager grasped the handle of punishment and reward in order

to administer the empire. Government issued from her alone. She possessed enlightened oversight and good judgment of char­ acter. Therefore, at that time outstanding and sagely men com­ peted to be employed by her.

Given this reluctant praise by Confucian scholars, men to whom Wu Z hao’s exercise of power was an abomination, a contravention of nature, there can be little doubt of Wu Zhao’s political virtuosity and superb administrative skills. Still, the effort of Confucian scholars to erase and denigrate Wu Zhao is obvious. One Song dynasty text, the Essential Col­ lection o f Tang Documents, often marks the time during Wu Zhao’s rule by using the name of Li X ian’s reign that began in 684, transparently manipulating the calendar to make it appear as though the female emperor had never sat upon the dragon throne. In the Comprehensive Mirror and both Tang histories even once Wu Zhao established her own dynasty and ruled as Emperor, she is referred to as “ Grand Dowager” or “ Empress Wu,” titles that, both consciously and intentionally, suggest she never legitimately reached the pinnacle of political authority. Later Confucian historians like Yuan Shu of the Southern Song (1127-1279), who derisively referred to “ The Calamities of Empress Wu and Empress Wei,” cast Wu Zhao in an increas­ ingly negative light by presenting her in more cartoonish fash­ ion as a Confucian anti-heroine, a ruthless and illegitimate usurper. Literature in late imperial China painted Wu Zhao in a similar light. The M ing novella, The Biography o f the Lord o f Perfect Satisfaction, depicted Wu Zhao in highly unflattering terms: “ Empress Wu was violent beyond regulation and she be­ came more lecherous with each passing day.” So too, among modern Chinese and Western scholars, there are those who have painted Wu Zhao as a lascivious monster who fostered a culture of corruption and extravagance. Lin Yutang scaldingly criticizes her political career, claiming that in terms of “ her caprice, brutality and autocratic temper and love of self-glorification” she bore a marked resemblance to Stalin. He ranks her as the fourth greatest domestic murderer in human history, behind only Stalin, M ao Zedong, and Genghis Khan.

Jacques Gernet recently dismissed Wu Zhao as a “squanderer” and “ usurper,” a demagogue who “ relied on riff-raff, slaves, eu­ nuchs, disreputable monks and merchants” to rule. M ost modern historians have been more generous and sym­ pathetic in their interpretations. C.P. Fitzgerald’s biography con­ cludes that Wu Zhao left China “stronger, more united and richer than ever before.” Wu Feng, a historian from mainland China, reaches a similar positive conclusion in his biography: The fifty years that the female emperor held the political reins was an epoch of flourishing development in our country’s his­ tory. Society was relatively stable. The population increased. The economy expanded. Culture thrived. At the same time, minority relations were normalized, the nation was unified and borders remained stable. She inherited Taizong’s glorious legacy, and be­ queathed to the nation the strong foundation upon which Xuanzong’s “Flourishing age of Kaiyuan” (713-742) was constructed. The nation’s strength was not diminished and popular morale remained high.

These assessments are much more balanced. By most objective criteria, Wu Zhao’s reign was highly successful. Her economic and cultural achievements rival those of the best Tang emperors. There were no major peasant rebellions. Neither the Yangzhou Uprising in 684, nor the Revolt of Princes in 688 gained popu­ lar momentum. Wu Zhao held onto the vast territories of the Tang empire, reestablishing control of the Four Garrisons along the Silk Road and staving off the aggression o f the great Turk­ ish Khan, Mochuo. She also fostered commerce and economic growth. The registered population significantly grew, from 3.8 million family households in 652 to 6.15 million (roughly 31 million people) in 705. Such growth reflects stability and eco­ nomic prosperity. An ardent patron of scholarship and culture, Wu Zhao spon­ sored a prolific volume o f Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist works. Her court was filled with a talented array of literary and poetic masters like Song Zhiwen, Li Qiao, and Chen Z i’ang. Weichi Yi, a Buddhist painter, designed her murals. Ornate and elegant inscriptions were crafted by famous calligraphers. Wu Zhao commissioned grand feats of architectural engineering to

attest to her majesty. Capped by the fire pearl, the Heavenly Pivot stood for all to see at Heaven’s Ford Bridge. Her Bright Halls towered over Luoyang. In Longmen, Sichuan, and Dunhuang, monumental Buddhist statuary, extant today, exalted her sovereignty. On the slopes of M ount Song rose palaces fit for Daoist immortals. The enduring legacy of this female emperor Wu Zhao is writ­ ten in the rock and stone of the mountainscape of Qianling, where she and Gaozong are interred. The sculpted contours of Mount Liang, shaped by nature and human artifice, form a colossal supine female figure overlying her corporeal remains. Perhaps there is no more apt memorial for Wu Zhao than the Blank Stele that still stands along Qianling’s spirit path. There are many theories on the meaning of this 20-foot tabula rasa. Some believe that she ordered the stele left blank to make a bold statement: Pale language was not a worthy medium to convey her exalted and unprecedented political career. Others interpret the stele’s blankness as a final challenge posed by Wu Zhao, defying future generations to record their historical judg­ ment. Others have pointed out that the Blank Stele was erected after Wu Zhao’s death, by her successor and son, Li Xian. They note that he could not very well leave an inscription that labeled her Emperor of the Great Zhou, but neither could he ignore the past decades and simply call her Empress. Therefore, he com­ promised, leaving the stele blank. Still others contend that Li Xian erected the Blank Stele simply for the sake of symmetry, to complement the Exposition of the Sage Stele, a plaque that recorded Gaozong’s political and military successes. Her epitaph has not remained blank. Over the centuries, Song, Yuan, and Ming leaders have inscribed their judgments beneath the attentive snouts of the coiling dragons atop the stele. The name, Blank Stele, however, has endured, conjuring the image of a vacant space repelling the vain labels of histori­ ans, stubbornly defying the conceit of definition, empty yet pregnant with meaning, containing both color and absence of color, origin and annihilation, reconciling within itself apparent contradictions. To some extent, efforts to paste labels upon or to attach meaning to the Blank Stele might be explained in

terms of the primitive human fear of the unknown and inexplic­ able. Men hope, by affixing names and meanings, to delimit the mysterious. Yet the opposite effect is achieved. One person says the blank represents emptiness. Another maintains it symbol­ izes purity. A third says it portrays ritual humility. A fourth says it is the face of God. The blank comes to possess all of these at­ tributes. The very act of trying to limit and define blank space imparts to that space greater power and significance. Yet, paradoxically, it is precisely in the undefined blankness of Wu Zhao’s Blank Stele that one can begin to apprehend the nature of her power. Her blankness expanded to enfold each of these three major ideologies of her age— Confucianism, Bud­ dhism, and Daoism. Her reign was marked by ideological toler­ ance, a liberalism of spirit that helped defuse religious strife and social tensions in her diverse empire. Depending upon her polit­ ical needs, her support and patronage of the various ideologies waxed and waned. Thus, all were contained in her broad empire and in herself. Wu Zhao was aware that defining herself she im­ posed limitations upon her exercise of power. If she identified herself exclusively as a Buddhist sovereign or as a Confucian sage, she would invariably alienate other powerful constituencies. Whereas names limit, blankness allowed Wu Zhao to assume simultaneously a multiplicity of ideological and political guises that, in turn, enabled her to administer with greater efficacy the subjects of her multi-ethnic, multi-denominational, and socially complex empire. Handling the different constituencies was a difficult balancing act. While her court was filled with an array o f bureaucrats from humble or freshly risen families, she was careful not to totally alienate the old, entrenched aristocracy. When a sycophant was promoted, a voice of remonstrance would be elevated at the same time. When the target of slander was executed, the slanderer himself was rarely far behind. Im­ plements of torture were cleverly complemented by rhetoric of clemency. This opacity, this blankness, enabled Wu Zhao to grasp the handle of power. She was Buddhist. She was Daoist. She was Confucian. She was Han Chinese. She was a nomad of the Cen­ tral Asian steppe. She was the personification of tolerance and mercy. She was bloodthirsty and ruthless beyond compare, a

cold-blooded killer. She was the human embodiment of Heaven’s perfect cadence. She was a force of entropy. She was a wife, a beautiful woman, and a nurturing mother. She was born with the aura of a man. She was genderless. She was a sage. She was a shrewd politician, who, after three decades of ruling “ behind the curtain,” was quite familiar with the workings of the court and the realties of the free-flowing empire which she openly governed. She became the source of power to whom the myriad peoples appealed for validation. She was China’s only woman emperor.

A Note offiffle Sources I J

More than fifty biographies have been written on Wu Zhao in the past hundred years, more than for any other ruler, poet, or minister living in the Tang. Throughout the writing of this biography, I kept more than a dozen of these biographies, in English, French, Chinese, and Japanese by my side. The four I used most fre­ quently as points of reference were C.P. Fitzgerald’s The Empress Wu (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1955), Hu Ji’s Wu Zetian benzhuan [Essential Biography o f Wu Zetian], (Xi’an: Sanqin Press, 1998), Yasunori Kegasawa’s Sokuten Buko [Empress Wu Zetian], (Tokyo: Hakuteisha, 1995), and Zhao Wenrun and Wang Shuanghuai, Wu Zetian pingzhuan [A Critical Biography o f Wu Zetian], (Xi’an: Sanqin Press, 2000). Also close at hand were Richard Guisso’s Wu T ’se t’ien and the Politics o f Legitimation in T a n g China (Bellingham: Western Washington University Press, 1978) and the excellent works of Antonino Forte (see below). This project owes a great debt of gratitude to all of these works. Other Western secondary sources on Wu Zhao that I have uti­ lized include, but are not limited to: Guisso’s chapters in the third volume of the Cambridge History o f China (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1979) and Diana Paul’s “Empress Wu and the Historians: A Tyrant and Saint of Classical China,” in Falk and Gross ed., Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures, (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1980). I have also drawn on my own work: my doctoral dissertation at Brown University, “ Rhetoric, Ritual and Support Constituen­ cies in the Political Authority of Wu Zhao, Woman Emperor of China,” and several articles, “The Remarkable Aviary o f Wu Z h ao” (Southeast Review o f Asian Studies XXVII, 2005) and “An Inquiry into Reign Era Changes under Wu Zhao, Woman Emperor on China” (Early Medieval China 12, 2006). I have also referred to several other yet unpublished conference papers on topics including Wu Zhao’s new characters, her evolving relations

with Daoists, the development of Luoyang during her reign, and the role of Koguryans in the construction of the Heavenly Pivot. For dates and the calendar, I utilized Paul Kroll’s “ True Dates of Reign Periods in the Tang Dynasty,” Tang Studies 2 (1984), Hiraoka Takeo’s Todai no kyomi (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Press, 1990) and The Rulers o f China: 221 b .C .- a . d . 1949, chronolog­ ical tables compiled by A.C. Moule (New York: Routledge, 1957). Though I have tried to minimize the amount of titles that appear, I kept Charles Hucker’s A Dictionary o f Titles in Imperial China, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985) nearby. For financial and legal matters, respectively, I have con­ sulted Denis Twitchett’s Financial Administration under the T ’ang Dynasty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) and Wallace Johnson’s annotated translation of The Tang Code: Volumes I and II, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). Further, Victor Cunrui Xiong’s Sui-Tang Chang’an (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2000) gives a detailed layout o f the palaces, marketplaces, and residential districts of the Western Capital. Situating Wu Zhao’s unique sovereignty within the wider per­ spective of gender relations in traditional China was also an im­ portant task in this project. The following sources were vital in this effort: The Chalice and the Blade in Chinese Culture (Beijing: Academy of Social Sciences, 1995), an excellent work edited by Min Jiayin and Gao Shiyu, and Jennifer Jay ’s “ Imagining Matri­ archy: Kingdoms of Women in Tang China,” Journal o f Ameri­ can Oriental Studies 116.2 (1996). I also referred frequently to other works on women in traditional China such as Lisa Raphals’ Sharing the Light: Representations o f Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998); Yang Liensheng’s “ Female Rulers in Imperial China,” Harvard Journal o f Asian Studies 23 (1960-1); and the collection of essays, The Sage and the Second Sex (Chicago: Open Court, 2000), edited by Li Chenyang. Bernard Faure’s works The Red Thread: Buddhist Ap­ proaches to Sexuality, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) and The Power o f Denial: Buddhism, Purity and Gender (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003) provided a helpful Buddhist perspective on gender and sexuality in medieval China.

Many valuable general sources on Tang China proved useful in providing the setting in Chapter Two, “ Historical Precondi­ tions for the Ascent of a Female Emperor.” Both Charles Benn’s Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001) and S.A.M . Adshead’s T a n g China: The Rise o f the East in World History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) offered helpful broad perspectives. David Johnson’s The Chinese Medieval Oligarchy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1977) provided insights into the changing constitution of the aristocracy during the Tang. All of Edward Schafer’s vast body of work including Pacing the Void (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), The Golden Peaches o f Samarkand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963) and The Vermil­ ion Bird (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) provided great insight into diverse and far-reaching sources of the rich texture that composed Tang culture. Woodbridge Bingham’s The Founding o f the T a n g Dynasty: The Fall o f the Sui and the Rise o f the T an g (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1941) and Howard Wechsler’s Offerings o f Jade and Silk: Ritual and Symbol in the Legitimization o f the T a n g (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) helped provide setting and context in Chapter Three. In Chapters Four and Five, “ Empress Wu: A Changing of the G uard” and “ The Two Sages,” Chen Jo-shui’s essay “ Empress Wu and Proto-Feminist Sentiments in T ’ang China” in Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China (Seattle: University of Wasshington, 1994) proved very helpful. The rela­ tionship between Wu Zhao and her Confucian court ministers is a critical theme in these chapters and throughout the latter half of the book. To better grasp the changing nature of this rela­ tionship between ruler and officials, I frequently referred to P.A. Herbert’s Examine the Honest, Appraise the Able (Canberra: Australian National University, 1988), David McMullen’s State and Scholars in T an g China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Peter Bol’s This Culture o f Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T a n g and Sung China, (Stanford: Stanford Uni­ versity Press, 1992), and Denis Twitchett’s The Official "Writing o f History and Historiography during the T a n g (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Inspiration and impetus for the chapter “ Wu Zhao as Lover: Lady of Perfect Satisfaction” stemmed from Charles Stone’s Fountainhead o f Chintse Erotica (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), which contains both the Chinese text and an annotated translation of the late Ming “ Story of the Lord of Perfect Satisfaction.” The poem from Jin Ping Mei in this chap­ ter is cited from Chapter 37 of David Roy’s The Plum in the Golden Vase, Vol. 2: The Rivals (Princeton: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 2001). Dora Shu-fang Dien’s Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History (New York: N ova Science Publishers, 2003) discussed Wu Zhao’s presence in the Qing novel, Destinies o f Flowers in the Mirror. Robert Van Gulik’s Sexual Life in An­ cient China (Leiden: Brill, 1961) and Paul Rakita Gordon’s Cul­ ture o f Sex in Ancient China (Honolulu: University o f Hawaii Press, 2002) were also valuable sources. Antonino Forte’s Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the H is­ tory o f the Astronomical Clock: The Tower, the Statue and the Armillary Sphere Constructed by Empress Wu (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1988) was particu­ larly useful in the sections on Wu Z hao’s Bright Hall complexes in the chapter “ Sage Mother Rising.” Forte’s works have ex­ plored intensively the roles of ritual, propaganda, and monu­ mental architecture in Wu Zhao’s political authority. Denis Twitchett’s “ Chen gui and Other Works Attributed to Empress Wu Zetian,” in Asia M ajor 14 (2003) provided important per­ spective on Regulations for Ministers and on the relationship between Wu Zhao and her Scholars of the North Gate. The chapter “ Bodhisattva of Mercy” also owes a profound debt to Forte’s works. His Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End o f the Seventh Century (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1976) provides a meticulous annotated translation of the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra. Quoting the Commentary and the Precious Rain Sutra in this biography, I have borrowed Forte’s translations. Forte’s article “ Maitreyist Huaiyi and Taoism,” Tang Yanjiu 4 (1998) offers a curious perspective on Wu Zhao’s purported monk-lover, Xue Huaiyi. His A Jewel in Indra’s Net (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2000), featuring a letter sent from Chinese Bud­ dhist monk Fazang to a Korean friend Uisang, helped provide a sense of both the reach of Buddhism in Wu Zhao’s time and cul­ tural common ground that the Buddhist faith offered.

M ax Deeg’s excellent work on the Pan^avarsika in Sambhasa 16 (1995) and 18 (1997) sheds considerable light on the nature of that grand Buddhist vegetarian feast. Chen Jinhua’s excellent works on Fazang’s role in politics and Buddhist relic veneration, Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 2002) and “ Sarira and Scepter: Empress Wu’s Politi­ cal Use of Buddhist Relics,” International Journal o f Buddhist Studies 25 (2002): 33-150, were also important sources. Both in “ Bodhisattva of Mercy” and throughout the biogra­ phy, the abundant good Western sources on Buddhism in the early Tang proved useful. Arthur Wright’s Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959) and Kenneth Ch’en’s Buddhism in China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964) are two solid general sources. Stanley Weinstein’s Buddhism in T a n g China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), includes a chapter on the relationship of Gaozong and Wu Zhao with the Buddhist establishment. Jacques Gernet’s Economic Aspects o f Buddhism in Chinese Society from the 5th to 10th Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995) provided insight into the burgeoning secular might of the Bud­ dhist establishment. For Wu Zhao’s presence in and sponsorship o f Buddhist art, see the works of Patricia Karetzky: The Arts o f the Tang Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), “Wu Zetian and Buddhist Art of the Tang Dynasty” in T ’ang Studies 20-21 (2002-3), and “ The Representation of Women in M e­ dieval China,” T ’ang Studies 19 (2000-1); Angela H oward’s “Tang Buddhist Statuary of Sichuan: Unknown and Forgotten,” Stockholm Oestasiatiska Museet Bulletin 60 (1988); Amy MacN air’s “ Early Tang Patronage at Longmen” in Ars Orientalis 24 (1994), “The Fengxiansi Shrine and Longmen in the 670s” in Bulletin o f the Museum o f Far Eastern Antiquities 68 (1996) and “ On the Tang dynasty Patronage of Nuns at the Wanfo Grotto, Longmen,” Artibus Asiae 3-4 (2000); and Cave Tem­ ples o f M ogao: Art and History on the Silk Road (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute 2000) by Susan Whitfield, Roder­ ick Whitfield, and Neville Agnew. Bernard Faure’s essay on “ Relics and Flesh Bodies: The Creation of Ch’an Pilgrimage Sites” in Susan Nathan and Yu Chunfang’s Pilgrimages and Sa­ cred Sites in China (Berkeley: University of California, 1992) contained valuable material on Chan Buddhism and Mount Song’s emergence as a ritual center under Wu Zhao.

For Chapter Eleven, “ Emperor of the Zhou Dynasty,” Pan Yihong’s Son o f Heaven and the Heavenly Qaghan: Sui-Tang China and its Neighbors (Bellingham: Western Washington University Press, 1997) offered a good sense of foreign relations and diplomacy in Wu Z hao’s court. Ricardo Fraccaso’s article “ The Nine Tripods of Empress Wu” in T ’ang China and Be­ yond (Kyoto: Italian School of East Asian Studies, 1988) pro­ vided a nuanced picture of Wu Z hao’s grand ceremonial installation of the tripods in 697. For Chapter Twelve, “ Octogenerian in Retreat,” I have bor­ rowed Jeanne Larsen’s translation of one of Wu Z hao’s poems from her Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China (Rochester: BOA Editions, 2005), “ Shizong,” a verse from chapter 5 of the Quan Tangwen [Complete Anthol­ ogy o f Tang Poetry]. Several of Wu Z hao’s poems are translated in Women Writers o f Traditional China: An Anthology o f Po­ etry and Criticism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). On Wu Zhao and Daoism, which played a growing role in Wu Z hao’s final years, see the following sources: Florian Reiter’s The Aspirations and Standards o f Priests in the Early Tang D y­ nasty (Weisbaden: Asian African Studies in Humboldt Univer­ sity, 1998); Suzanne Cahill’s Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother o f the West in Medieval China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993); Livia Kohn’s Daoism, A Hand­ book (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Timothy Barrett’s Taoism Under the T’ang (London: Wellspring, 1996); Roger Ames “ Taoism and the Androgynous Ideal,” in Guisso and Johannesen Ed., Women in China (Youngstown, NY: Philo Press, 1981); Stephen Bokenkamp, “A Medieval Feminist Critique of the Chinese World Order: The Case of Wu Zhao,” Religion 28 (1998); and Suzanne Cahill, “ Performers and Female Taoist Adepts: X i Wang Mu as the patron Diety of Women in Medieval China,” Journal o f Asian and Oriental Society 106.1 (1986). In “Vain Quest for Wu Z hao,” Jowen Tong’s Fables for the Patriarchs: Gender Politics in Tang Discourse (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) contains a chapter, “ Monument without an Inscription: The Case of Wu Z hao,” which helped provide some perspective on the famous stele at Qianling.

618

624 626 635 637 649 652 654

Founding of the Tang dynasty Wu Zhao’s father, Wu Shiyue plays a role in helping Gaozu (Li Yuan) establish the new dynasty Second daughter Wu Zhao born to Wu Shiyue and Madame Yang Taizong (Li Shimin) seizes throne from Gaozu Death of Wu Shiyue Wu Zhao enters Taizong’s Inner Palace as a fifth-ranked concubine Death of Taizong Li Hong born to Gaozong and Wu Zhao Li Hsien born Wu Zhao promoted to Lady of Luminous Deportment

655 Wu Zhao elevated to Empress; Empress Wang deposed 656 Li X ian born to Gaozong and Wu Zhao 660 Gaozong first stricken by recurring illness Wu Zhao becomes increasingly involved with affairs of court

662 664 666 670 674

Li Dan born to Gaozong and Wu Zhao Taiping Princess born to Gaozong and Wu Zhao Gaozong and Wu Zhao perform feng and shan rites at Mount Tai Death of Wu Zhao’s mother, M adame Yang Gaozong and Wu Zhao assume titles, respectively becoming Celestial Emperor and Celestial Empress Wu Zhao issues Twelve Decrees

675 Death of Crown Prince Li Hong; Li Hsien named Crown Prince Scholars of the North Gate begin to help Wu Zhao consolidate political authority Crown Prince Li Hsien degraded, dies several years later

680 683 Death of Gaozong 684 First lunar month: Li Xian installed as Emperor; deposed two

months later Li Dan nominally installed as Emperor; real authority in hands of Grand Dowager Wu Zhao

Luoyang made Divine Capital; administrative offices and court colors altered X u Jingye Rebellion quelled 685

Xue Huaiyi enters Inner Palace of Wu Zhao

688

Precious Diagram discovered in Luo River; Wu Zhao assumes title “ Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign” Rebellion of Li princes quelled

689

First Bright Hall completed New calendar promulgated, following Zhou chronology of antiquity New characters introduced, including the “ Z h ao” of Wu Zhao

690

Promulgation of the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra Wu Zhao establishes Zhou dynasty, ascending the throne as China’s first and only female emperor

692

General Wang Xiaojie defeats Tibetans, reclaims Four Garrisons along Silk Road Wu Zhao formally elevates Buddhism over Daoism

693

Wu Zhao adds “ Golden Wheel” to her title, styling herself a Cakravartin, a Buddhist universal wheel-turning king Regulations for Ministers elevated to text for civil service examinations

694

Grand Buddhist Pangavarsika

695

Bright Hall burns; Xue Huaiyi’s death Heavenly Pivot, a symbol of internationalism, completed and set at heart of Luoyang

696

Wu Zhao performs feng and shan rites at M ount Song Second Bright Hall, Communing with Heaven Palace, completed

697

Nine Tripods arrayed before new Bright Hall

698

Li Xian recalled from exile and made Crown Prince, indicating that after Wu Zhao’s death, the Tang will be restored Powerful Tujue Turk chieftain Mochuo driven back to steppe Emergence of Zhang brothers as favorites in Wu Z hao’s court

701 702

Court moved from Divine Capital Luoyang back to Chang’an Military examination initiated

705

Wu Zhao deposed in first lunar month End of her Zhou dynasty; Tang restored under Li Xian Tenth month: death of Wu Zhao

706

Wu Zhao interred at Qianling

N : New Tang History, O: Old Tang History. This indicates the chapter and page of the following sources in which the biogra­ phies on figures or treatises on places appear. For example, O 190.5018 indicates chapter 190, page 5018 of the Old Tang History. All page numbers are based on the most recent Zhonghua shuju editions. For other texts, only chapter is indicated. Anle Princess, ambitious granddaughter of Wu Zhao, daughter of Li Xian and Empress Wei. (N 83.3654) Ascended Immortal Prince (also Prince Jin), wandering Daoist prince from the sixth century B.C.; central cultic figure in Wu Z hao’s court during her final years; her favorite Zhang Yizhi was thought to be his reincarnated form. Bingzhou, ancestral homeland o f the Wu family. Bodhiruci, South Indian monk who helped Wu Zhao translate Buddhist scripture. (Song gaoseng zhuan 3) Bright Hall, ritual hall based on models from ancient China; Wu Zhao blends traditional architectural models with new Buddhist forms. (O 22.849, Tang huiyao 11) Cakravartin, Buddhist universal emperor. Celestial Emperor, title assumed by Gaozong in 674. Celestial Empress, title assumed by Wu Zhao in 674. Chanchuo, ridiculous nickname bestowed upon Mochuo by Wu Zhao; “ Beheaded Sucker.” Chang’an, Western Capital; modern-day X i’an. Changsun Wuji, member of “ old guard” of chief ministers who opposed Wu Zhao becoming Empress. (O 65.2446, N 105.4017)

Chen Shuozhen, peasant woman and rebel who proclaimed herself an emperor in the early 650s. Chen Z i’ang, literary and aesthetic talent who supported Wu Zhao during her regency and at the beginning of her reign as Emperor. (O 190.5018, N 107.4067) Cheng Wuting, successful general executed at Wu Zhao’s order in 680s. (O 83.2784, N 111.4146) Chu Suiliang, member of “ old guard” of chief ministers who staunchly remonstrated against Wu Zhao becoming Empress. (O 80.2729, N 105.4024) Cui Rong, official and literary master during Wu Z hao’s later years. Cui Xuanwei, a member of the coup that overthrew Wu Zhao in 705. (O 91.2934, N 120.4316) Di Renjie, chief minister par excellence during Wu Z hao’s later years, particularly influential from 697 until his death in 700; a Tang loyalist who still earnestly remonstrated with and served Wu Zhao. (O 89.2885, N 115.4207) Divine Capital, Wu Zhao’s designation for her capital Luoyang. Dunhuang, a way station on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwest China (modern-day Gansu) along the Silk Road; many colorful Buddhist caves. Empress Lii, notorious Han dynasty Empress to whom Confu­ cian historians often compared Wu Zhao. (Sima Qian’s Records o f the Historian, chapter 9) Empress Wang, Gaozong’s first Empress, from eminent family; deposed in 655 and replaced by Wu Zhao. (O 51.2169, N 76.3473) Empress Wei, ambitious wife of Li Xian. (O 51.2171, N 76.3486) Famensi, important Buddhist center for relic veneration. Fazang, Sogdian Buddhist monk; an orator, translator, and pro­ pagandist for Wu Zhao; betrayed her when she was ousted in 705. (Song gaoseng zhuan 5) feng and shan sacrifices, grand sacrifices to Heaven and Earth performed by Wu Zhao and Gaozong at M ount Tai in 666

and by Wu Zhao at M ount Song in 696. (O chapter 23, Tang huiyao chapter 7) Fengxian Temple, massive Buddhist grotto at the Longmen caves overlooking the Yi River valley. Flower Garland Sutra, sutra based on the Buddha’s last lecture; central focus is the universality and interconnectedness of all things. Four Garrisons, four military strongholds installed by Tang China in modern-day Xinjiang that allowed early Tang China and Wu Z hao’s Zhou dynasty to control much of the traffic along the northern Silk Road. Fu Youyi, a man of lowly origins who enjoyed short-lived emi­ nence after petitioning Wu Zhao to become Emperor and changed the dynastic name from Tang to Zhao. (O 186.4842, N 223.6342) Gaozong, Wu Zhao’s husband and Emperor, (r. 649-683) (O Basic Annals 4 and 5, N Basic Annals 3) Gaozu (Li Yuan), first Tang emperor, (r. 618-626) (O Basic Annals 1, N Basic Annals 1) General Blacktooth, Korean general who helped quell the Yangzhou uprising in 684, but was executed several years later for perceived disloyalty to Wu Zhao. (O 109.3294 N 110.4121) Gu, legendary poison associated with madness and sexual excess. Guanyin, Bodhisattva of Mercy. H an Yuan, “ old guard” chief minister who opposed Wu Z hao’s ascent to Empress in 655. (O 80.2739, N 105.3923) Helan Minzhi, son of Wu Z hao’s elder sister. Hu Chao, Daoist magician who helped Wu Zhao attempt to gain immortality. Huan Yanfan, one of the conspirators who staged the coup to oust Wu Zhao in 705. (O 91.2927, N 120.4309) Jin Ping Mei, often known as The Golden Lotus; celebrated M ing dynasty erotic novel.

Jing Hui, one of the conspirators who staged the coup to oust Wu Zhao in 705. (O 91.2932, N 120.4316) Khitan, nomadic people of the northeastern steppe who, under the leadership of Mochuo, challenged Wu Z hao’s Zhou dy­ nasty in the mid-late 690s. (O 199.5349, N 219.6167) Khotan, oasis state along Silk Road along margin of Taklamakan Desert. Lai Junchen, foremost villain among Wu Zhao’s “cruel officials.” (O 186, N 209.5905) Lai Qi, “ old guard” chief minister who opposed Wu Z hao’s ascent to Empress in 655. (O 80.2742, N 105.3923) Laozi (also known as Li Er), Daoist founding philosopher; reputed ancestor of the House of Tang. Leizu, mythological goddess, founder of silk. Li, Tang dynastic family; House of Tang. Li Chong, one o f Taizong’s grandsons; a major actor in the re­ volt of Tang princes in 688. (O 76.2661, N 80.3576) Li Dan, Wu Zhao’s youngest son; Tang emperor, (r. 684-690, 710-712) (O Basic Annals chapter 7, N Basic Annals chap­ ter 5, chapter 4 for his early reign as Wu Z hao’s puppet) Li Hong, Wu Z hao’s eldest son; deceased 675. (O 86.2828, N 81.3588) Li Hsien, son of Gaozong and Wu Zhao’s widowed elder sister; deceased 680. (O 86.2831, N 81.3590) Li Ji, “ old guard” chief minister who tacitly approved Gaozong taking Wu Zhao as Empress in 655. (O 67.3313, N 93.3901) li jing, Final Judgment, (homophone for name of Luoyang gate) li jing, Beautiful Scenery, (name of Luoyang gate) Li Q iao, literary and poetic master whose aesthetic talents were often put toward supporting Wu Zhao. (O 94.2992, N 123.4367) Li Xian, son of Wu Zhao, Tang emperor, (r. 684, 705-710) (O, Basic Annals chapter 7, N Basic Annals chapter 4) Li Xiaoyi, general who helped quell the Yangzhou uprising of 684, but was later banished. (N 78.3529)

Li Yifu, corrupt chief minister; influential shortly after Wu Z hao’s ascent to Empress. (O 82.2765, N 223.6339) Li Zhaode, Tang loyalist, a principled Confucian general and minister who served under Wu Zhao. (O 87.2853, N 117.4255) Li Zhong, initially Gaozong’s Crown Prince; son by concubine. (N 81.3586) Liu Rengui, influential chief minister from 667 until his death in 685. Liu Weizhi, one of Wu Z hao’s Scholars of the North Gate and later a chief minister; executed in 687 for perceived disloyalty. (O 87.2746, N 117.4250) Liu X u, author of the O ld Tang History. Longmen, Buddhist caves south of Luoyang, many carved dur­ ing the reigns of Gaozong and Wu Zhao. Luo Binwang, talented rhetorician who wrote a polemic op­ posing Wu Zhao in 684. (O 190.5006, N 202.5742) Luo River, river running through Luoyang; important for transport and commerce. Luoyang, “Divine Capital” of Wu Zhao. M ochuo, powerful Khitan chieftain. M ount Felicity, mountain that suddenly appeared in 686 as a result of seismic activity, spurring debate at court. M ount Perfectpeace, site of construction of summer retreat in 704 south of Luoyang. M ount Song, southeast of Luoyang, the Central Peak of the five Chinese sacred mountains; an important Buddhist and D aoist ritual center. M ount Tai, in modern-day Shandong province, the Eastern Peak of the five Chinese marchmounts; site of Wu Zhao and Gaozong’s feng and shan sacrifices in 666. Ouyang Xiu, Northern Song scholar-official; author of the New Tang History. Pan Shizheng, a Daoist master consulted by Wu Zhao and Gaozong. (O 192.5126)

Pangavarsika, grand Buddhist feast often sponsored by Cakravartin. (O 87.2843, N 117.4247) Pure Consort X iao, favorite concubine of Gaozong before Wu Z hao’s return to imperial harem. (O 51.2170) Qianjin Princess, daughter of Tang founder Gaozu; favorite of Wu Zhao. Qianling, joint imperial tomb of Wu Zhao and Gaozong. qi tin, Chinese unicorn. qie, concubine; term of self-deprecation. Quan Xiancheng, Korean diplomat who helped harmonize re­ lations between Chinese and non-Chinese in Wu Z hao’s multi-ethnic empire. (N 110.4124) Scholars of the North Gate, extra-bureaucratic band of literary masters and scholars who worked in support of Wu Z hao’s political ambitions beginning in the mid-670s. Shangguan Wan’er, Wu Zhao’s “ secretary” ; granddaughter of Wu Z hao’s bitter political enemy Shangguan Yi; consort of Wu Z hao’s son Li Xian after he became emperor. (O 51.2175, N 76.3488) Shangguan Yi, member of “ old guard” of chief ministers who opposed Wu Zhao’s rise to empress. (O 80.2743, N 105.4035) Shen Nanqiu, likely fictitious Confucian physician who was supposedly Wu Z hao’s lover. Shenxiu, Chan master venerated by Wu Zhao. (Song gaoseng zhuan 8) Shunling, tomb where Wu Zhao’s mother Madame Yang is buried. Siksananda, Khotanese Buddhist monk who translated scrip­ ture from Sanskrit into Chinese. (Song gaoseng zhuan 2.31) Sima Guang, Northern Song scholar official who compiled the Comprehensive Mirror for the Aid o f Governance. Sima Qian, Han historian whose Records o f the Historian be­ came the blueprint for subsequent Chinese histories. Sogdia (O 198.5310, N 221.6243), Samarkand; region along Silk Road including modern western Uzbekistan and part of Kazakhstan.

Song Jing, one of conspirators who staged the coup to oust W u'Zhao in 705. (O 96.3029, N 124.4389) Song Zhiwen, literary and poetic master in Wu Zhao’s court. (O 190.5025, N 202.5750) Su Anheng, Confucian minister who stridently urged Wu Zhao to cede power back to the House of Tang and remonstrated against the Zhang brothers during Wu Zhao’s final years. (O 187.4879, N 112.4167) Sui Wendi, first Sui dynasty emperor, (r. 581-605) (Sui shu chapters 1-2) Sui Yangdi, second Sui emperor, (r. 605-617) (Sui shu chapters 3-4) Taiping Princess, only daughter and youngest child of Wu Zhao and Gaozong. (O 183.4738, N 83.3650) Taizong (Li Shimin), second Tang Emperor (r. 627-649), father of Gaozong; first husband of Wu Zhao. Tang, dynasty 618-690, 705-907. Tujue, Turkish tribal confederation. (O 194.5153, N 215.6023) Wan Guojun, one of Wu Zhao’s “ cruel officials.” (O 186.4845) wan sui, “ Long live the Emperor” ; literally “ 10,000 years.” Wang Mang, ruler who usurped the Han dynasty and established the Xin (“New” ) dynasty in its place in the first century A.D. Wei Yuanzhong, Confucian minister who frequently butted heads with Wu Zhao’s “cruel officials.” Wu, clan name of Wu Zhao and her kin. Wu Chengsi, nephew of Wu Zhao; worked to elevate the lot of Wu family; harbored lofty imperial ambitions. (O 183.4727, N 206.5837) Wu Sansi, nephew of Wu Zhao. (O 183.4734, N 206.5840) Wu Shiyue, Wu Zhao’s father. (O 58.2316, N 206.5835) Wu Yanxiu, Wu Zhao’s grandnephew; son of Wu Chengsi; sent by Wu Zhao to marry the daughter of Mochuo. (O 183.4733) Wu Yuanqing, half-brother of Wu Zhao. Wu Yuanshuang, half-brother of Wu Zhao. Wu Zetian, see Wu Zhao.

Wu Zhao, China’s only female Emperor, (regency 684-690, r. 690-705) (O Basic Annals chapter 6, N Basic Annals chapter 4 and 76.3474-85) X i’an, modern-day name for Tang dynasty capital Chang’an. xianhe, immortal crane. X u Jingye, ringleader of 684 Yangzhou revolt against Wu Zhao. (O 67.2490, N 93.3822) X u Jingzong, chief minister, 657-670; loyal to Wu Zhao. (O 82.2761, N 223.6335) Xuanzang, legendary Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who traveled to India to fetch Buddhist scriptures. Xue Aocao, Wu Zhao’s lover in Ming dynasty novella The Lord o f Perfect Satisfaction. Xue Huaiyi, monk-lover of Wu Zhao; architect, propagandist, and general. Yang Zaisi a sycophantic minister known by others in Wu Zhao’s court as the “Two-footed Fox.” (O 90.2918, N 109.4098) Yao Shou, pro-Buddhist chief minister during Wu Z hao’s Zhou dynasty. (O 89.2902) zai xiang, chief minister. Zhang Changzong, one of Wu Zhao’s male favorites in her final years. (O 78.2706) Zhang Jianzhi, primary conspirator in coup to oust Wu Zhao in 705. (O 91.2936, N 120.4321) Zhang Yizhi, Zhang Changzong’s brother, a male favorite of Wu Zhao. (O 78.2706) zhi ge, “ stop halberds” ; rebus for the Wu of Wu Zhao’s family name. Zhou, Wu Z hao’s dynasty (690-705) or Zhou dynasty of an­ tiquity (1045-221 B.C.). Zong Chuke, a relative of Wu Z hao’s who presents her with new characters in 689. (N 109.4101) Zong Jinqing, a greedy relative of Wu Z hao’s who became a minister during her Zhou dynasty; briefly a chief minister. (O 92.2971, N 109.4101)

Admonitions for 'Women, 7 Admonitions on Maternal Relatives, 4 6,54 Amaterasu, 14 Amithabha, 138 Anjincang, 132 Analects, 8,106 Anle Princess, 167, 185, 206, 223 Art o f War, 163 Ascended Immortal Prince (see Jin, Prince) Asoka, 149-150 Avalokitesvara (see Guanyin) Ban Zhao, 7 Biographies o f Filial Sons, 73-74 Biographies o f Women, 1 “Birdsong for 10,000 Years,” 177 Blacktooth, General, 88, 225 Blank Stele, 212-213 Bodhidharma, 143 Bodhiruci, 141, 223 Book o f Changes, 4 Book o f Documents, 108,115,124 Book o f Songs, 5, 9, 114 Bright Hall, 112-114, 222-223 destruction of, 151-152 rebuilding of, 178-179 see also Communing with Heaven Palace; Divine Palace of Myriad Images Buddhism, 15-16, 137-143 after Wu Zhao, 205, 207 under Wu Zhao, 10,145-150, 154-156 Cakravartin, 145-146,149-150, 155, 222-223 calendar, 120-121,152, 222

cats, 38-39 Chan (Zen), 143 Changsun, Empress, 23, 46 Changsun Wuji, 32, 42-44, 64, 223 Chen Shuozhen, 14, 224 Chen Zi’ang, 112,114,160, 211, 224 Cheng Tang, 63 Cheng Wuting, 90, 224 Chindok, 14 Chu Suiliang, 33-35, 42, 204, 224 Chuigong, 103 Civil reform, 45, 86-87 Cixi, 206 Coiling Dragon Terrace Stele, 9 Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra, 146-147, 222 Communing with Heaven Palace, 178-179, 222 see also Bright Hall Confucianism, 137 assessment of Wu Zhao in, x-xi, 207-210 compared to Buddhism, 137 female role in, 4-8, 45-47, 71-72, 86 rituals, 6, 67 sagehood, 115-116 Confucius, 8 Country of Women, 15 Cui Rong, 155, 204, 224 Cui Shu, 153 Cui Xuanwei, 198-200, 202, 224 Daodejing, 66, 202 Daoism, 10, 65-66 under Wu Zhao, 145, 147-148, 154,185 Devaputra, 147

Di Renjie, 132-133,154-155, 224 after Wu Zhao’s death, 207 and imperial succession, 183 service under Wu Zhao, 166, 173-174 Divine Palace of Myriad Images, 1 1 2 -1 16,119,123,176 destruction of, 151-152 see also Bright Hall Du Yi, 148 Empress Lii, 39, 47, 84, 86, 94,170 Essential Occupation o f the Good Masses, 172 Eunuchs, 24 Fazang, 141-142,199-200, 224 Feng and shan sacrifices, 59-63, 177-178, 221, 224 “Fifth Girl,” 26 Five Dynasties period (907-960), 21, 207 Flower Garland Sutra, 141-142,225 Four Beauties (see Xi Shi) Fu Youyi, 157-158,168, 225 Fuqiu, Lord, 189 Ganye Convent, 28-29 Gaozong, 3, 32-38, 160, 221, 225 childhood and early life, 27 death and burial, 81, 85-86 as emperor, 53, 55 Celestial Sovereign, 65-80 Manifest Felicity, 41-43, 47 Two Sages, 49-64 health issues, 49-50, 67, 80,140 and succession, 73, 76-77 personality, 49, 96-97 rise to emperor, 28-29 sacrifices at Mount Tai, 59-63 and Wu Zhao marriage, 3 relationship with, 28-31, 49-50, 98 Gaozu, 18-19, 22, 160, 221, 225 gu (poison), 97, 225 Guangwu, 119

Guanyin, 138,141-142, 225 Guo, Empress Dowager, 207 Guo Xingzhen, 51-52 Guo Yuanzhen, 164 Han dynasty, 6 Han Yuan, 42, 225 Heavenly Pivot, 153-154, 222 Heaven’s Ford Bridge, 75,131 Helan Minzhi, 56-57, 225 Hou Sezhi, 127,133 Hu Chao, 186-187, 225 Hu Seluo, 164 Huan Yanfan, 198-199, 201-202, 225 Huang Lingwei, 3 ,186 India, 11,15, 25,140-14 1 ,1 6 2 infrastructure development, 173 Japan, 14-15,167 Ji Xu, 135 Jin dynasty (317-420), 109 Jin, Prince, 189-192, 223 Jing Hui, 199, 226 Jito, 14 Kangxi, 101 Khitan, 142,164-165, 226 Korea, 14, 51,162 Lai Junchen, 129,132-135,202,226 Lai Qi, 42, 226 Laozi, 31, 62, 65-66, 226 Leizu, 46, 226 Li Chong, 118, 226 Li Dan, 8, 128, 221, 226 birth and childhood, 40-41, 51, 79 demoted to Imperial Heir, 161, 181, 184 as nominal emperor, 83-86,107, 119, 157-158 resistance against Wu Zhao, 131-132 as Wu Dan, 182 Li Duozuo, 200

Li Er (see Laozi) 139-142, 156-160,177-178, Li Hong, 67-68, 221, 226 180,186,187, 222, 224, 227 birth and childhood, 31,40-41,50 Divine Capital, 87, 90 ,113, 116, death, 69, 76 118,161-162,176,1 9 3 , 202, Li Hsien, x, xv, 31, 69-7S, 82, 84, 222 89, 161 Eastern Capital, 41, 49, 202 birth and childhood, 31 as Crown Prince, 73-76 Maitreya, 138,145,152 suicide, 84 Mandate of Heaven, 59, 76-77, Li Ji, 34, 5 3,226 179,198 Lijinzhong, 164-165 Manual o f Entrapment, 129 Li Mi, 20 Master Ding, 169-170 Li Qiao, 9 ,1 5 3 ,2 1 1 ,2 2 6 Master Xue (see Xue Huaiyi) Li Shan’gan, 76 Mencius, 7 Li Shimin (see Taizong) Ming Chongyan, 74-75 Li Shunfeng, 26-27, 51 Mochuo, 165-167, 183, 211, 222, Li Wa, 13 227 Li Xian, 40,131,166,221-222,226 Mount Felicity, 108, 151, 227 considered as successor^ 182-184 Mysterious Jade Woman, 78 coup against Wu Zhao, 200-202 as Crown Prince, 76, 81-83, 185 names as Emperor, 175, 202-204, 206 analysis of “Wu,” 118-119 recalled from exile, 183 given to enemies, 39, 118 Li Xiaoyi, 111, 226 historical significance of, 1-10 Li Yifu, 44, 227 power in China, 8-9 Li Yuan (see Gaozu) 1 women, 4 Li Zhaode, 182, 227 nomenclature, xv-xvi Li Zhi (see Gaozong) new characters, 121-123, 222 Li Zhong, 31,41, 52-53, 227 Newly Opened Prison, 129-130 Ling, King, 189 Linyi, 14 Ocean o f Characters, 72 Liu Bei, 159 omens, 108-110,115,118,125,159 Liu Rengui, 86, 90, 104, 227 Ouyang Xiu, x, 108, 208-209, 227 Liu Sili, 136 Liu Weizhi, 84, 105-106,128-129, Pan Shizheng, 77, 227 22 7 Pansavarsika, 149-151,219,222,228 Liu Xu, x, 207-208, 227 Pearls and Blossoms o f the Three The Lord o f Perfect Satisfaction, Faiths, 192 93-95 Pei Yan, 81-82, 88-90,104 Lii, Empress, 6, 88, 224 Peng Zu, 187 Lu Yuanfang, 172 Ping, King, 159 Luo Binwang, 98, 227 Precious Diagram, 115-116,119,222 Luo Heihei, 99 Precious Rain Sutra, 147 Luo River, 76,109, 115-116, 119, Pure Radiance, 169 150, 153,177, 227 Luoyang, xii, xiv, 2 ,1 3 , 20, 41, Qi, 78 49-50, 68, 75, 84-85,116-119, Qianjin Princess, 99, 118, 228

Qin, First Emperor of, 8 Qing dynasty (1644-1911), 206 Quan Xiancheng, 163-164, 228 Qianling, 84, 209 Record of Secrets, 26-27 Record o f Surnames and Clans, 44 Regulations for Ministers, 105-107, 128 on agriculture, 172 on the military, 163 on rulers, 120,126 as text for civil service exams, 202,

222 Reign Eras Eternal Prosperity, 120 Great Footprint, 156 Heaven Bestowed, 158 Manifest Felicity, 41-43, 47 Origin of Records, 120-121 Phoenix Regulator, 70 Protracted Longevity, 176 Verification of Sagehood, 150 Rong, Lady of (see Yang, Madame) sages, 7, 8, 31, 40, 62, 66,115-116, 145,160,171,176, 191,213, 214 Sakyamuni, 138 Shan, Mrs., 56 Shang dynasty (1766-1045 B.C.), 5, 178 Shangguan Wan’ei, 52,174-175, 206, 228 Shangguan Yi, 52-53, 97, 228 Shen Nanqiu, 100, 228 Shenxiu, 101,143, 228 Shunling, 58 Siksananda, 141, 228 silk industry, 46 Silk Road, 15,141, 163 Sima Guang, x, 209,228 Sima Qian, 177, 228 Sondok, 14 Song dynasty Northern (960-1125), 208 Southern (1127-1279), 210

Song Jing, 198-199, 229 Song Zhiwen, 211, 229 source materials, ix-xiv, 215-220 reliability of, xii Steppe culture, 11-14 Su Anheng, 193-195, 229 Su Liangsi, 144 Sui dynasty (589-618), 18-19 Sui Wendi, 13, 229 Sui Yangdi, 229 Suiko, 14 SunWanrong, 164-165 Sunzi, 163 Suzong, 68 Ta Ji, 5 Taiping Princess, 206,221,229 childhood and early life, 51, 57, 79 and death of Xue Huaiyi, 152 physical appearance, 101 Taizong, xiii, 3,15 ,1 9 , 20-28, 32, 40,44-45,51, 60,104,112, 207,221,229 Talent Wu (see Wu Zhao) The Tang Code, 24 Tang dynasty (618-690, 705-907), 1,16, 221, 229 abolished by Wu Zhao, 157 historical development, 11-14’ restoration under Li Xian, 202-203 sources, 217 and women, 7 Tang, House of (genealogy), xvii Three Obediences, 7 titles (of Wu Zhao) Celestial Empress, 3, 65, 221, 223 Compassionate Bodhisattva, 150 Conforming to Heaven (Zetian), 2, 203 Enchanting Miss Wu, 3, 21, 25 Golden Wheel, 4,149,155,170, 222 Grand Dowager, 3, 81-91 Great Saint August Emperor, 203 Heaven Appointed, 4 Lady of Luminous Deportment, 3, 30, 46, 54, 221

Merciful Bodhisattva, 4,153 Queen Mother of the West, 191 Sage and Divine August Emperor, 159 Sage Mother, xiii, 17,115-116, 138,170 Divine Sovereign, 115, 222 Saintly and Divine August Emperor, 4 Saintly Mother, Divine and August, 4 Transcending Antiquity, 4,153,170 Zheti, 3 torture, 129-130 Twelve Decrees, 66, 221 “Two-footed Fox” (see Yang Zaisi) “Two Sages,” 50-51, 59-61, 63 (see also Gaozong; Wu Zhao) Vairocana, 10,138,140 Wan Guojun, 129-131,229 Wang, Empress, 29-39, 204, 221, 224 Wang Jishan, 190 Wang Mang, 44, 229 Wang Xiaojie, 163-164,222 Warring States period (481-221 B.C.), 7 Wei dynasty (386-534), 137 Wei, Empress, 81, 83, 206, 209, 224 Wei, Lady, 55-56, 186 Wei Shifang, 169 Wei Xuanzhen, 81, 83 Wei Yuanzhong, 133,194-196, 229 Weichi Yi, 141, 211 Wen, King, 159-160 women, role of, 4-7 and Buddhism, 16 influence from Korea and Japan, 14 under Tang dynasty, 12-14 Wu Chengsi, 111, 115, 229 considered as successor, 182-184 honored as prince, 127,131, 160 service under Wu Zhao, 84, 87, 170-171

Wu Chongxun, 185 Wu, House of (genealogy), xvii Wu, King, 5-6,159-160 Wu Sansi, 83,182, 229 honored as prince, 127,160 service under Li Xian, 184-185, 206 support for Zhang Changzong, 190 Wu Shi (see Wu Zhao) Wu Shiyue, 1, 9,17-18, 31, 40, 221, 229 death of, 22 honors after death, 120,160, 182-183 service under Gaozu, 18-20 service under Taizong, 20-21 Wu Yanhui, 185 Wu Yanji, 185,193 Wu Yanxiu, 166-167, 229 Wu Yizong, 136 Wu Youji, 184 Wu Yuanqing, 229 Wu Yuanshuang, 229 Wu Zetian (see Wu Zhao) Wu Zhao, 221-222, 230 and Buddhism, 138-142, 145-150,153-156 after her death, 205, 207 change of calendar, 120-121 childhood and early life, 21 birth, 17,19-20 Huagu (“Flower Girl” ), 3 choosing her name, 8-9 and Daoism, 145-148,154, 185-187, 189 death and burial, 204 education, 21-23 as empress, 35-48, 53-54, 103-124 Celestial Empress, 65-80 deposed by Li Xian, 203 Grand Dowager, 81-91 later years, 181-204 naming a successor, 181-183 rebellion against, 88-91, 117-118,198-200

Wu Zhao, continued wielding power, 125-136 extravagant behaviors, 66-67 and Gaozong lovers after, 99-102 marriage, 3 relationship with, 28-30, 49-50, 98 historical view of, 205-214 modern historians, 211-212 later life, 186-188, 192-194, 197-199 legacy of, 212-214 as mother, 40-41 personality, 16 physical appearance, 21,101, 176, 203 political style domestic, 125-136,171 international, 163-167 military, 172 rise to power, 23-36 under Gaozong, 3 as royal concubine, 3, 23-34 sacrifices as empress at Mount Song, 177-178 at Mount Tai, 60-63 sexuality, 95-102 superstitions, 51-52,108-111, 168-169 and women’s rights, 205-206 and the Zhou dynasty, 157-180 see also Titles Xi Shi, 5-6 Xia dynasty, 78 Xiao, Pure Consort, 30-31, 35, 37-39, 204, 228 Xindu Princess, 185 Xu Jingye, 88,126-127, 222, 230 Xu Jingzong, 32, 64, 230 service under Gaozong, 35, 41-44, 52, 60 Xuanzang, 24, 40, 230 Xuanzong, 154, 211 Xue Aocao, 93-95, 230

Xue Huaiyi, 222, 230 designing the Bright Hall, 112-113 persecution of Daoists, 145-147 relationship with Wu Zhao, 99-100,144, 150-152 Yan Chaoyin, 187 Yan Zhiwei, 166 Yang, Madame, 19-22, 32, 54—58,

221 honors after death, 160 Yang Yuandan, 200 Yang Zaisi, 194, 197, 230 Yao Shou, 148,151, 230 Yijing, 141 Ying, Duke of (see Wu Shiyue) Yongtai Princess, 185,193 Yu the Great, 78,178 Yuan Shi, 210 Zen (see Chan) Zhang, 19 Zhang Changzong, 188, 230 challenge for power, 198-199,

201 in the royal court, 100, 190-197 Zhang Jianzhi, 199-200, 230 Zhang Yizhi, 188, 201, 230 in the royal court, 100, 190-192,196-198 Zhang Yue, 195 Zhenguan Manual o f Rites, 24 Zhishen, 143 Zhou, Duke of (see Helan Minzhi; Wu Shiyue) Zhou dynasty of antiquity (1045-221 B .C .), 40, 178, 230 Eastern (771-221 B .C .), 159-160 reestablished under Wu Zhao (690-705), 138,153, 157-162, 202,222 Zhuge Liang, 159 Zong Chuke, 121, 170, 230 Zong Jinqing, 170, 230

Lmrary op wcria mcgrapny Each interpretive biography in the Library o f World Biography series focuses on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of world history, relating the life of its subjects to the broader themes and developments of the times. This new biography offers the compelling story of Wu Zhao, the first and only woman to be emperor of China. It traces her unlikely and remarkable ascent to the apex of political power in the patriarchal society of traditional China and serves as a lens into vibrant, multi­ ethnic Tang China.

The story chronicles W u Zhao's humble beginnings as the daughter of a provincial official and follows her path to the inner palace, where she improbably rose from a fifth-ranked concubine to emperor. Using clever Buddhist rhetoric, grandiose architecture, elegant court rituals, and a network of "cruel officials" to cow her many opponents in court, W u Zhao inaugurat­ ed a new dynasty in 690, the Zhou. She ruled as emperor for fifteen years, proving eminently competent in the art of governance, deftly balancing factions in court, staving off the encroachment of Turks and Tibetans, and fostering the state's economic growth.

FEATURES • A focus on gender politics gives students a nuanced perspective of the traditional roles of women in Chinese society as well as the untraditional path of W u Zhao.

• An inside look at the imperial court provides details on the machinations of the government and the role of the emperor as well as life within the inner palace, the domain of eunuchs and concubines.

• A focus on religion examines the political effects of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism during W u Zhao's reign.

Please visit cur website a t www.abtcngman.ccm/history n/his ti

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111 PEARSON