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Laurel A. Rockefeller

Empress Wu and Poetry Too: Part One: A glance at the Tang Dynasty

By Laurel A. Rockefeller


The Tang dynasty-talk to any Chinese and you will hear the glories of this golden age for China. Due to space constraints, an entire block of early SCA period from 280 to 960 of the Common Era was glaringly absent in my overview of Chinese Dynasties.

Of all the eras in Chinese history, the 15 kingdoms era (which is what the 3 kingdoms dissolved into) was a period of chaos where feudalism held sway over the peoples of China even as Rome started to crumble. From the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 all the way until 618 with the Tang dynasty, China experienced 400 years of instability that would soon be all to familiar to their European counterparts. Emerging from the Sui dynasty, in 618 the over-hyped Tang dynasty reunited all of China under one emperor once more and a great golden age began where the Han ruled and everyone was happy…right? Well, that's what many Chinese will tell you-much in the same way that Americans will talk about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

After all, this is the era of neo-Confucianism, Japanese trips to China from which almost everything we associate with Japan will originate, and of course the famous Tang dynasty poetry. This is the pinnacle of world history, you might hear. But is it?

Perhaps the most important set of events to modern Chinese history from the Tang dynasty was, in fact, those trips by Japanese to the coasts of China. During the chaos of the 15 kingdoms, Buddhist missionaries had made their way into China. One Buddhist monk in particular took shelter on Shaoshi mountain in its forest (Chinese, lin) and caves and founded a temple called Shaolin-the forest of Shaoshi Shan (shan meaning mountain). The Buddhists at Shaolin practiced a meditative form of their faith called Chan. Chan is one of the distinctly Chinese forms of the religion.

When Japanese fishermen landed on the coasts, they observed Chan practices and the accompanying forms of martial arts blending Daoist principles to Chan practices such as those practiced at Shaolin. When they returned home they transformed Chan into Zen and the "hard work" (gong fu) exercises that were used in part for self defense into such forms as the kara te. The Chinese forms were older, but the Japanese would make them their own and adapt them to island life.

Paired with the writings of Kongzi and contemporary "Neo-Confucian" philosophers in fashion at the courts in Chang An, these travelers had assimilated what would become Japanese culture from China-along with the Chinese writing system and all the products and technologies the relatively primitive islanders could borrow and adapt. Japan was about to transform from matriarchal worshippers of the sun goddess (Shinto religion) into sternly patriarchal Buddhist warriors with a pseudo-Chinese court in Kyoto. Shoguns, samurai, much of the written language and the atrocities of 19th and 20th century Japanese imperialism all can trace their origins to this fundamental shift in Japanese culture. The Japanese woman was about to go from sovereign to slave with the arrival of a few boats of Japanese men returning from accidental visits to China.

Of course the Japanese woman would have her mark by the end of the Tang era. Japanese men had barred their women from becoming literate in the Chinese characters that was now standard Japanese. In response, Japanese women created their own Japanese characters-katakana and hiragana-to write romance novels. These characters, in contrast to the ideographic Chinese characters (called Kanji in Japanese), were phonetic in nature. Japanese has never been the same!

But of course whereas modern China would be shaped by the consequences of these visitors from the islands across the sea, most Chinese were worried about surviving the chaos of transforming from feudal warlordism to stable nation. The road was not easy as a survey of royal succession shows (http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Union/7050/tang.html). The irony: this most Han of all dynasties in China was not actually founded by a true Han-Chinese (http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Tang/tang.htm). Instead, Li Yuan, the Gao Zu emperor was of some sort of central Asian heritage. His break from the Sui dynasty in 618 CE was supported and achieved with help from the non-Han Chinese. The most Han of all dynasties was in fact, at best, a mix-breed of Han and some other heritage.

And yet the Tang is the pinnacle of Han sensibilities-the glories and the defects. Tang dynasty poetry is regarded by most as the absolute best of all literature-as mandatory study in Chinese as Shakespeare is in English. The giants of literature (or so heralded) include Li Bai, Du Fu, Meng Haoran, Bai Juyi, and Li Yu. These writers are the "must reads" the experts tell you to examine. The writings of Kongzi battled with Buddhism for the minds and hearts of the people with Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism winning out in the government while Pure Land, a form of Buddhism most similar to Christianity whose focus is a bodhisattava or saint named Guan Yin, and Chan Buddhism won many of the souls of the people.

And yet, despite these glories-philosophy, literature, religion, and especially the growing cultural influence of the Tang dynasty over most of the Asian continent and beyond (thanks to the Silk Road and its resulting trade of Chinese goods in Europe)-the Tang dynasty was hardly the paradise that it is touted to be! Confucianism was distinctly patriarchal and harsh on women. Fashion shows a decadent and overly sexual treatment of women. This was, after all, when the 1300 year custom of foot binding took hold, a custom that mutilated women's bodies for male sexual pleasure. The gowns were no better. At the Royal Ontario Museum and in books by the ROM of their Chinese collections, I have seen how women dressed: necklines plunging to the nipples without the benefits of European Renaissance corsets and waists to the base of those high Chinese breasts! Nothing was left to the imagination. It's not to be wondered that a girl named Hua Mulan would put aside that garb to save her father's life and become the legendary female general of China and, most likely, a martial arts innovator in the process.

But General Hua Mulan would not be the only great female innovator of the Tang dynasty. Another, a woman who started out at age fourteen as the fifth rank concubine of to Tai Zong, second of the Tang emperors, charmed her way into concubine and later Empress of her step-son, the Gao Zong Emperor. Wu Zetian would declare herself Nu Huang-Sovereign Empress-and rule a "dynasty" in the middle of a dynasty from Luoyang in a story full of murder, intrigue, and political manuveuring.

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