Little is written in English concerning the artistic life of Wu, for scholars have put much weight on her ambitious political life. Both Emperor Gaozong and Wu were fond of literature and poems, and helped create a culture of literary pursuits that flourished in Tang China. Even many Tang courtesans were great singers and poetesses.
She began a series of campaigns to uplift the position of women. She advised scholars to write and edit biographies of exemplary women to assist in the attainment of her political objectives.
Wu asserted that the ideal ruler was one who ruled as a mother does over her children. She may have thought that princesses were conducive to reconciling diplomatic conflicts, since she formed marriage alliances to aid her expansionist foreign policy.
Her gravestone was unmarked by any eulogy; it was deliberately left blank upon her request. She expected people of later periods to evaluate her achievements.
Historical evaluations of Wu are mixed. The most favorable assessments highlight her high intelligence and exceptional competence in many areas of governance. As briefly discussed earlier, the biggest critics of Wu focus upon her ambitious character and ruthless actions to gain and keep power. At least in China, it appears based on content in recent history textbooks that Wu is viewed more favorably than in the past.
Controversies and shifting interpretations of her life notwithstanding, Wu did leave some legacies to Chinese history. These successes made it easier for successors, particularly Emperor Xuanzong r.
She was a vivid example; later, Princess Taiping her daughter and Empress Wei her daughter-in-law became involved in Imperial politics as well. Empress Wei perhaps had pretensions of emulating Wu. In , she murdered her husband by poisoning him and then engineered a coup hoping to rule after him.
However, her planned takeover failed and Empress Wei was executed. In , she plotted to overthrow Emperor Xuanzong, but the Emperor and his loyalists discovered the coup and killed Princess Taiping.
At least some women leaders in twentieth-century China looked on Wu as a model. Song Qingling — , the wife of Sun Yatsen, regarded Wu as an effective political leader.
Jiang Qing — , the wife of Mao Zedong, identified with Wu. She may have tried to use the example of Wu as part of a propaganda campaign to claim herself the successor to Mao, but she eventually failed. Wu also made her way into literary works. The fictional Wu issued twelve decrees that were intended to bring benefits to women.
Wu Zhao possibly influenced attitudes about sexuality and women; her reputation for sexual promiscuity occurred during a relatively permissive period of Chinese history. Tang China allowed women some latitude regarding remarriage and sex.
However, attitudes changed considerably after the Song period — He believed that it was better for a woman to starve than be unchaste. The chastity cult survived to Qing China, but in present-day China, Wu receives a more favorable image than before, as Chinese patriarchy has increased its tolerance toward women.
Some television viewers are furious about state censorship because the edited drama has lost its aesthetic values and is not historically accurate. Perhaps there is always a tension between the ruling class and people in their perceptions about sexuality and women, whether in Tang and Song China or in present times.
Samuel Adrian M. Adshead, China in World History, 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan, , Denis Twitchett and Howard J. Fairbank, eds. Translation adopted from Charles P. Fitzgerald, The Empress Wu , 2nd ed. London: Cresset Press, , 4. Charles D. Tang women were assertive, active, and more visible; they rode horses, donned male attire, and participated in politics.
Ceramic female polo player from northern China, Tang Dynasty. At times Empress Wu had to fire officials or had others executed who were believed to be plotting against her, she even had to be wary of his own family members from plotting against her. Because Buddhism because more important than Confucianism during the Tang dynasty, many literary arts, and visual arts became engulfed with Buddhism elements instead of Confucianism. Wu also had many stone caves and temples. Another thing that Empress Wu spent most of her time does was focusing on education, and she got rid undedicated teacher and replaced with dedicated teachers.
Another thing she did to help low class people gain a higher position, was fixing the way the government recruited people, which allowed low-class people to become high-class officials. One of the more influential things Empress Wu did in her Reign was improve agriculture by instituting reforms, and promoting research to agriculture to make the economy of her empire flourish.
A year later, Empress Wu died due to her poor health from the stress of her paranoia. Empress Wu made a long-lasting legacy, and was one of the most important figures in China. No contemporary image of the empress exists. Most nations of note have had at least one great female leader.
These women were rarely chosen by their people. They came to power, mostly, by default or stealth; a king had no sons, or an intelligent queen usurped the powers of her useless husband.
However they rose, though, it has always been harder for a woman to rule effectively than it was for a man—more so in the earlier periods of history, when monarchs were first and foremost military leaders, and power was often seized by force. So queens and empresses regnant were forced to rule like men, and yet roundly criticized when they did so.
Of all these female rulers, though, none has aroused so much controversy, or wielded such great power, as a monarch whose real achievements and character remain obscured behind layers of obloquy. Her name was Wu Zetian, and in the seventh century A. Wu she is always known by her surname has every claim to be considered a great empress. She held power, in one guise or another, for more than half a century, first as consort of the ineffectual Gaozong Emperor , then as the power behind the throne held by her youngest son, and finally from until shortly before her death in as monarch.
Ruthless and decisive, she stabilized and consolidated the Tang dynasty at a time when it appeared to be crumbling—a significant achievement, since the Tang period is reckoned the golden age of Chinese civilization. Yet Wu has had a pretty bad press.
For centuries she was excoriated by Chinese historians as an offender against a way of life. She is hated by gods and men alike. Just how accurate this picture of Wu is remains a matter of debate. One reason, as we have already had cause to note in this blog , is the official nature and lack of diversity among the sources that survive for early Chinese history; another is that imperial history was written to provide lessons for future rulers, and as such tended to be weighted heavily against usurpers which Wu was and anyone who offended the Confucian sensibilities of the scholars who labored over them which Wu did simply by being a woman.
A third problem is that the empress, who was well aware of both these biases, was not averse to tampering with the record herself; a fourth is that some other accounts of her reign were written by relatives who had good cause to loathe her. It is a challenge to recover real people from this morass of bias. Among a raft of other allegations are the suggestions that she ordered the suicides of a grandson and granddaughter who had dared to criticize her and later poisoned her husband, who—very unusually for a Chinese emperor—died unobserved and alone, even though tradition held that the entire family should assemble around the imperial death bed to attest to any last words.
The emperor believed her story, and Wang was demoted and imprisoned in a distant part of the palace, soon to be joined by the Pure Concubine. As if infanticide, torture and murder were not scandalous enough, Wu was also believed to have ended her reign by enjoying a succession of erotic encounters which the historians of the day portrayed as all the more shocking for being the indulgences of a woman of advanced age.
According to Anderson, servants. In her seventies, Wu showered special favor on two smooth-cheeked brothers, the Zhang brothers, former boy singers, the nature of whose private relationship with their imperial mistress has never been precisely determined.
Palace ladies of the Tang dynasty, from a contemporary wall painting in an imperial tomb in Shaanxi.
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