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Laurel A. Rockefeller

Empress Wu and Poetry Too: Part Two: Empress Wu and Meritocracy

By Laurel A. Rockefeller

In part one of Empress Wu and Poetry Too, I provided an overview of the Tang Dynasty and its significance to modern history. Most of Japanese history and culture was strongly shaped by the accidental journeys of Japanese fisherman to the Chinese mainland and the technologies and ideas they came back with. Japan turned from matriarchy to patriarchy. In China, Buddhism had arrived and distinctly Chinese versions of the faith emerged, including Pure Land and Chan Buddhism. Emerging out of feudalism, China rediscovered Confucianism and its harshly patriarchal "glories" that took away most of women's rights. Foot binding came into fashion along with gowns so revealing of the breasts that even Renaissance Europeans would blush!

But the Tang Dynasty was also the period where two very strong women would take center stage. General Hua Mulan was already discussed in part one. Hua Mulan achieved her greatness by concealing her femininity until after she retired. But concealing her womanhood was not the road to power for Wu Zetian. She alone would claim the title "Nu Huang," sovereign queen. Even Empress Dowager Cixi of the late Qing dynasty never assumed a title so lofty!

Wu Zetian began her infamous career as first a fifth concubine of the Tai Zong emperor (Li Shimin) and later second concubine to his son, the Gao Zong emperor (Li Zhi). As her willingness to marry both father and son suggest, Wu was ambitious and unafraid to seize power-by any means necessary (http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Tang/tang.htm). Her story is filled with murder, political intrigue, competent rulership, and sexual seduction. Yet for all her tactics, they were not uncommon for her time: her male counterparts routinely used both violence and political maneuvering to gain power-especially in the Tang dynasty. The sexual seduction part has likewise been a tactic of most women rulers, especially those aiming for sovereignty in an otherwise male dominated system. History is filled with stories of women willing to use their charms and sexuality to obtain power, status, and personal goals. But Empress Wu was more than your typical ambitious seductress. During her reign major cornerstones of Chinese government were laid down that carry through to modern times, including a tradition so dominant in the culture that thousands of Chinese every year journey to the United States to fulfill.

What tradition could that be? Plain and simple: EDUCATION. Prior to Empress Wu, there was an emphasis on education, but it extended only to the wealthy who could easily afford to employ tutors and teachers for their children. The poor and middle class were excluded and largely not educated in a situation no different than in most other corners of the world prior and contemporary. But Wu Zetian, reigning from her city of Luoyang (the same Luoyang as the love song you heard me sing at coronation), changed all that. Prior to her reign, it was lawfully forbidden for a man of lowly birth to take the requisite civil service exams used for all government positions-from the lowliest clerk or teacher to the highest official in court. Without the exam, no one could serve in any government position. In China, the way out of poverty was a government job, especially as Confucianism took hold. Empress Wu changed the law to guarantee that any man who wished to take the exams were admitted and given the tests. This in turn led to the practice of lineage associations (a type of organized extended clan group) taxing all families with the proceeds going to scholarships sponsering poor by highly talented clan members. Sponsership meant poor children showing promise to do well on the exams would be given an equal education as those of the wealthy. Given that wealth through commerce was as discouraged in China as it was in Europe, this reform was critical to creating social mobility.

In addition to reforming the examination system, Empress Wu began a policy of personally interviewing candidates for high government positions. No longer could a person bribe an official into a higher official. Empress Wu herself decided if a candidate possessed the right qualities for each upper level job. To that end, she engaged in huge talent searches to find the best and brightest of men for her government-regardless of social standing or wealth. That idea of meritocracy has carried through the centuries and has bolstered the Chinese impetus for the highest possible education. With such limited space available in schools in China today, many who aren't able to make the top grade come to the United States in search of that all important college degree. Thanks to Empress Wu, this Chinese emphasis on universal education to the highest possible level became the cultural norm and a tradition that no amount of social, economic, or political upheaval could change. Even the 20th century reign of Mao Zedong and the destruction of educational institutions during the Wenhua Da Geming (Cultural Revolution) could only last a short time. Empress Wu's educational reforms have proven the stronger legacy.

Beyond education, Empress Wu was an agrarian innovator, commissioning the study of agriculture as a formal educational discipline. For the first time, actual textbooks were written to advance the agricultural sciences and farmers were formally taught the most advanced methods of their craft. Advanced Chinese irrigation methods were developed and previously unproductive lands were brought into successful cultivation managed by local officials Wu put in charge to oversee the process. Wu was the first Chinese sovereign to emphasize agricultural policies and to recognize the importance of successful agricultural production.

Beyond education and agriculture, Wu proved to be a patron of many scholarly projects, allowing critics freedom of speech to write about her as they wish-almost unheard of among sovereigns of any time and place. Her military policies secured Chinese borders from invasion and tightened national defense. She encouraged Buddhism and made it the state religion over Daoism. She emphasized women's history by employing scholars to write biographies of women and their achievements, giving evidence to the reality that women lack none of the talent associated with their male counterparts. She even refused a written inscription on her tomb so that history, not herself, made the ultimate judgement on her legacy.

And so we have seen in Wu Zetian, the "Supreme Empress" of China a woman of great complexity and ability, of courage, and of tenacity to do whatever it took to achieve her goals. Empress Wu was a wise and farsighted woman who saw the big picture and understood the value of universal education, freedom in scholarship, agriculture, and securing a nation's borders against invasion. And though the clothing and foot binding custom of the Tang dynasty demeaned and disenfranchised women, Wu herself worked tirelessly to improve the status of women by showing through example and commissioned records of the deeds of women that gender is irrelevant in assessing the abilities of a person.

In many ways, Wu was a role model in a world that was increasingly losing touch of the importance of women in society. She was unafraid to use the same ruthless methods of her male counterparts and for that, history has often scorned her. Yet she was a woman of her time in action and ahead of her time in innovations. Because of Wu Zetian, China became the world power which rivaled and exceeded all the achievements glorified in the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome-and did so without a foundation of warfare and conquest. We owe so many technologies and ideas that we take for granted in the modern world to Wu's foresight.

And so, though history may glorify the poetry of Meng Haoran or Li Bai as the greatest achievement of the Tang dynasty or look to Neo-Confucian writers as the cornerstones of Asian culture, we can see clearly that without Wu Zetian our world today would be greatly different.

For what sort of world would we live in had China not prospered from her guidance? Would Marco Polo have had a reason to seek China? Would any culture value education and scholarship had Wu not set the example? So much we owe to her, the monarch whose legacy is stained because she was…a woman.

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