Did Empress Wu's reign change China?

During the Tong Dynasty, Chinese women were often treated as second-class citizens. This made the rise of Empress Wu even more extraordinary. But did her work have a lasting effect? Learn more about how -- or if -- Empress Wu permanently changed China.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm to blame a chalkerboarding and
this episode is another listener request. We're rolling them out.

(00:21):
I've done a couple of those lately, so we're doing good.
It's on Empress wou Zutien, who is best known for
becoming the first and only Chinese empress to rule the
country in her own name, which she did for fifteen
years during a time when Chinese women really didn't have
very many rights at all. Yeah, but before you start
writing your email to us, it is important to note

(00:44):
that a lot of empresses, or at least some embresses,
did take ruling responsibilities in the name of their husbands
and sons. So if the true emperor were ill or
incapacitated or maybe too young to serve, the empress would
take up place as a sort of regent. But who
was a different story. She ruled in her own right, exactly,

(01:07):
and she did it in a very interesting way to
hers as a story filled with intrigue, murders, secret police,
and kind of a burning question, and that is, did
her reign really have any last scene effect on her country.
And you can look at this question in a couple
different ways. You can look at it from both a
feminist point of view and in light of social and

(01:29):
political reforms that she may have made. Looking back, a
lot of people could argue that she really didn't do
too much for the status of women in China, at
least she really she didn't create opportunities for them to
come into power like she did. In other words, she
didn't transform the country from a patriarchy to a matriarchy,
but she did enact some changes that stuck around even

(01:51):
after her time. Yeah, some major social and political reform,
but we're not going to get into all of that
quite yet. First we need to set the scene and
figure out where she came from and how she managed
to assume this role of sole empress. So when he
story takes places primarily during the years of the Tong dynasty,

(02:12):
which was from about six eighteen a d. To nine
oh seven a D. And during this time, women were
pretty much treated as second class citizens and men held
all the power and prestige through these patriarchal clan systems
and dynasties. In fact, women were kind of considered dispensable.
Almost poor families, for example, would often cast female babies aside.

(02:35):
And another example is after a king or a high
ranking official died, his concubines were often expected to show
their honor to him by committing suicide. Yeah, so pretty
low down on the totem pole here. And in general,
women weren't even educated as men were. And I mean
for a poor woman, she couldn't expect any kind of
career aside from homemaking and child rearing. And for an

(02:59):
aristocratic woman, you know, she might receive some education through tutors,
but still the best career, if you can even call
it that is to become a concubine in the imperial palace.
So the most a concubine could hope for was to
give birth to the king's son and hopefully give birth
to his heir and ultimately marry him. And then finally,

(03:22):
the highest position a woman could attain was that of
empress dowager, and at that point, of course, her son
would be ruler, and she only had real power if
the sun were incapacitated in some way, or maybe if
he was too young to actually rule himself. So that's
as good as it gets. And even if your empress

(03:44):
dowager ruling in the name of your son, you're doing
so behind a screen. I mean literally, they couldn't show themselves.
So definitely not a position of prominence in politics at all.
So this is the kind of culture that Wootsutia and
was born into in a d but she had a
bit of advantage compared to a lot of other women,

(04:06):
and that she was born into a noble family. Her
father was a rich Timber merchant who had fought for
the first Emperor of Tongue, which was lu Yan, and
helped him overthrow the previous Sway dynasty, so he was
awarded a high post in the government, and whose mother
was from a Sway noble family, so she was of
kind of minor nobility, but very influential at the court.

(04:29):
And because of her family's high social position, and because
the Tongue rulers were slightly less rigid in the social
conventions they introduced, uh Will learned how to read and
write and play music, so she was pretty well educated,
and she became known for her intellect and her wit
as well as her great beauty. So it seems like

(04:49):
this girl is on the fast track to becoming an
imperial concubine. If that's the best career aspiration you can
get to. Yep, And she did receive that opportunity and
age fourteen, and she jumped out the chance. She was
taken into the Imperial Palace as a low ranking concubine.
Concubines were ranked according to whether or not they had

(05:10):
given birth to a son, and the birth of a
son could kind of move you up in the ranks.
But when she came in she was pretty low down.
But the Emperor tight sum. He found her so beautiful
that he called her mind Yang, which means the charming lady.
But she was kind of a firecracker too, and that
must have caught attention. I mean, legend has it that

(05:30):
at one point she told the emperor. Legend has it
that at one point she told the Emperor she could
control a wild horse of his if he gave her
a whip, an iron mace, and a dagger. And she
basically said, if the whip didn't bring the horse into obedience,
she'd use the mace to beat its head, and if
that didn't work, she'd cut its throat with the dagger.
So I don't know if that's why what you would

(05:53):
call breaking the horse if you end up killing the horse,
but still kind of a forceful young concubine. It seemed
definitely not a shrinking violet, that's for sure. And I
think that the story you could keep it in mind
almost as we go through her life, because I think
she used a sort of a similar strategy with China
almost thanks during her rule. Yeah, she keeps that mace

(06:15):
and dagger on hand, I think for the rest of
her life, definitely. But while she was working as a
concubine for tight Sung, but she also got points for
being a smarty she was assigned to work in the
Imperial Study, which is where she was exposed to official
documents and learned something about the affairs of state, so
preparing a little bit for her future career in politics.

(06:37):
And she may have met someone of great importance during
this time too, and that was Tetsung's successor, who was
the Crown Prince Lee Chi, and some people say that
she may have even had an affair with him, but
at least we can assume she's making his acquaintance at
this point, which is it turns out to not be

(06:58):
such a bad idea shull because very soon tight Song
dies in sixty nine a d and all the concubines
who hadn't had children with him, they are sent to
a Buddhist convent to become nuns. And this is preferable
fate to what some other concubines had suffered. According to

(07:18):
some stuff that I've read, concubines were occasionally buried alive
with the emperor that they served, so it would be bad,
that would not be very pleasant. So this was kind
of a step up. And we don't know exactly if
Wu became a nun or not, but what we do
know is that while she was there, she received a
visit from her old friend Li Chi Yeah, who of

(07:40):
course now is the new Emperor cal Chung, and he's
starting to visit her regularly, and by six fifty two
he actually brought her back to the palace to be
his concubine. This was a big no no, and that's
because it was considered incestuous because she had served his
father and now she was serving him. It was something

(08:02):
that was definitely frowned upon by the court and not
good at all, but it worked out in her favor.
Within a year, she had a baby boy, which put
her in great position to compete with both Celtsung's Empress
Wong and his other favorite concubine. She'd already won over
the Emperor with her charms and gang his trust, but

(08:24):
she needed something extra, not a shoe in yet um.
So that happens kind of in a roundabout way in
six fifty four when she gives birth to a little
girl and the girl is killed soon after, and Wou
actually accuses the Empress of murdering the baby, even though
a lot of people think that it was we herself

(08:47):
who killed her and actually ended up framing Long for it.
But regardless, the Emperor believes Wo. He's maybe sort of
a simple minded man, or at least easily swayed by
this favorite concubine of his. He believes her, and he
sends both the Empress and his favorite concubine away. So
there she is now a last woman standing. Yeah, all

(09:10):
the chips are kind of falling exactly where she wants
them too. So next step is celt Song promotes Wu
to empress in sixty even though his court is really
die hard against this move. They were against it because
even though Wu was from a noble family. She wasn't
from one of the big aristocratic clans like Empress Wong

(09:30):
had been, so Wu wasted no time in using her
authority to start sort of taking down the people who
had been against her because she I guess she was
always worried about being surplanted because she wasn't supported by them.
She kneeds she had to lock down this position, so
she had the former Empress Wong executed. She had a
lot of the other female rivals executed, and after that

(09:53):
she started exiling their supporters. So over the next few years,
she's like consolidating her our, getting rid of all of
the political rivals, banishing them, executing them, and surrounding herself
by people who she feels like she can trust. And
then in six sixty Sing has a stroke which causes
him to go blind. He hands over all administrative duties

(10:16):
at this point to Empress Wu, and this is a
big moment for her because all the powers in her
hands right now. She rules in his name for the
next twenty three years and behind well, behind the screen,
but she's getting to make all the decisions, so she
keeps ruling with an iron fest. She gets sort of
anyone who opposes her, even people in her own family.

(10:39):
I mean, she's ruthless. She even sets up a secret
police and informer system to help her hunt down and
torture anyone who's perceived as a threat to her rule.
And something else is happening during this time too. Since
a lot of her rivals were members of those aristocratic
plans who didn't think that she should be empress in
the first place, she ended up trying to surround herself

(11:01):
with supporters and officials from outside of these clans, which,
obviously that was a move on her part to support
her own goals, but it worked out in favor of
some people who weren't necessarily part of the top echelance
of society. Yeah, you buy your your favors essentially. So
in six seventy four, she presented the Emperor with something

(11:24):
called the Twelve Suggestions, which were basically proposals for policies
aimed at winning the support of the common people. This
is another tactic of hers to gain support. You surround
yourself with nobles who like you and owe you, and
then try to win over the common folks who are
ultimately going to be the ones who either keep you
there or boot you. Right but as we said, I mean,

(11:47):
this kind of works out in their favor as well.
And this is where we start to see kind of
what we mentioned at the beginning. Some of the social
and political reforms that she made. The twelve suggestions included
everything from policies that encouraged agriculture and silk production, tax reduction,
and a disbandment of armies. She also reformed some aspects

(12:09):
of political life too. Yeah, and there's some social reformation
in there too. The ninth suggestion of these twelve apparently
demanded that a father observed at least three years funeral
right from a mother if he survived her. Up until
that point, you could pretty much move on with your life.
If your wife, who had mothered your children died suddenly,

(12:32):
at this point you had to stop and I guess
pay your respects for a few years exactly. So again
we're seeing not just one for the commoners, but one
for the women too. Women hadn't received this respect before
and now they had it, so putting her influence in
there a little bit for her gender, so she shows

(12:54):
the potential to affect some changes, but her authority is
briefly threatened in six A E. Three when Keltsung dies.
At that point, her first son is already dead and
just an asside to that. Wo is actually believed to
have poisoned him in six seventy five for supporting her enemy.
So she has the blood of two, not one kids
on her hands now. But then at that point, her

(13:17):
second son ascends to the throne as Emperor Chunsung. Yeah,
and she's hoping that the second son will be a
puppet king. She can control him and still rule as
she has for the past twenty three years, but he
shows signs of wanting to be his own emperor, so
she manages to have him ousted. You think he would

(13:38):
have learned from his older brother, and he's replaced by
her fourth son, jueets Song, who finally is the puppet
ruler who she's been hoping for. Um she's not in
the clear even then, though. Soon after tweets Sung takes
the throne, she has to put down a couple of revolts,
and those revolts were brought about by Tong loy lists.

(14:00):
But she manages to do that, and once that's done,
her authority and power are pretty much well established. People see, okay,
she has control of the army, she knows what she's doing,
and she's able to rule for the next few years
without really many major threats. Yeah, and so finally she
decides to ditch the whole puppet emperor charade entirely in

(14:23):
rule outright herself. So she serves the throne in six ninety.
She's sixty five years old at this point. No spring chicken, no,
and no one challenges her. That's what's amazing about it. Yeah,
the first time a woman had ruled in her own
right in China's history, and no one steps up to

(14:43):
the plate to really challenge her. So it's interesting. Part
of that is no one was really alive at this
point to challenge her. She had eliminated anybody who would
pose a serious threat. Yes, clever. And she doesn't stop there,
she doesn't just take the throne, and she officially changes
the name of dynasty to Cho from Tong. And interesting

(15:04):
fact about that tweet, Sung the Imperial air was actually
given her surname Wu. So those of you who are
married women out there, you might find this especially interesting
because then at that point, apparently many other imperial princess
and princesses petition to do the same thing, to take
her surname because they were afraid of her basically, and

(15:24):
it was a good deal though, if you had that surname,
because everybody named Wu and the empire was exempted from taxation. Yeah,
I'd take that. Sign me up. So kind of an
interesting juxtaposition of roles there. Um. But even though Empress
Wu had some pretty cutthroat methods of getting what she wanted,

(15:45):
she was still considered to be a pretty competent ruler. Yeah.
She really continued working on those twelve suggestions she had
started out with, and doing that definitely added security to
her position, you know, because it gets the support of
the common people. And some of the things she did
for agriculture, she ordered the construction of irrigation systems and

(16:06):
encouraged people to cultivate new farmland. She also had textbooks
on agriculture written and compiled and reduced taxes, so encouraging
growth there. She also made a difference in politics as well.
One of the most significant things she did there is
set up an examination system for selecting talented candidates to

(16:26):
fill political posts rather than just people who were from
the aristocracy. And this was this went for even the
highest offices, so that Chinese society moved from being more
of a political aristocracy to more of a scholarly bureaucracy,
and that system stuck around even after her role And
Delia you were telling me earlier, I think that part

(16:46):
of why she had to do that is she had
wiped out so many people she had to figure out
a way to fill this position. Yeah, I mean that
was part of it. She a lot of the people
who had been in those official posts were against her
because they were part of the Tongue dynasty and kind
of opposed her being in power in the first place.
And earlier in our story, as you may recall, she
got rid of the people who opposed her. So there

(17:09):
were some open positions in the empire at that point,
and she filled them in her own way, and in
a more fair way, actually we would consider more fair
exam essentially, um. And she also did a lot to
develop Buddhism and established it as the state religion, had
a lot of temples built, probably another thing that helped

(17:29):
win over the common people from what you and helped
the position of women a little bit, I think too.
So like many of our stories, we now come to
the dubious question of secession and Empress Wu's reign. As
we got older, the question of who would succeed her
became even more urgent because she started, as we mentioned,
at sixty five, so she wasn't getting any younger, and

(17:51):
since she had changed the name of the dynasty, her
Wu nephews now hoped that she'd displaced the Tongue heirs
of the Lee family and make one of them her air.
Even among people who liked Wou, though apparently popular opinion
was that the Tongue line should stay intact, no one
really wanted these wayward nephews to become heirs to the throne.
Stick with the tradition. In the end, Woo does decide

(18:15):
to go along with it, partly because the Woo nephews
aren't much to speak of. They don't seem particularly qualified
for the job. But instead of going with the heir
who had been emperor before her youngest son, Dui Chung,
she brings back the exiled son, Chung chung uh in
six eight nine and names him the Crown Prince. And

(18:37):
I wonder if maybe she was partly impressed by his
unwillingness to be ruled by her when he was emperor.
I wondered the same thing. I thought, maybe since she realized, okay,
she wouldn't be able to rule much longer, she wanted
someone with a mind of their own to take over.
But when she was finally forced to give up the
throne in seven oh five, the same year that she

(18:58):
died at a j D two, Chinsung became emperor and
restored the Tong dynasty, so no more child dynasty. And
you know, from a feminist point of view, this may
seem kind of like a questionable move on woos part
if you look at the members of her family who
were alive at that point, because she did have a
favorite daughter named Taiping who she could have passed the
throne too. But it seems that although we really wanted

(19:23):
to rule and attain power for herself, she really had
no interest in creating those same opportunities for other women
in her family or otherwise. Yeah, it was definitely all
about her. Was about her, and after her death, women
were pretty unsuccessful in attempting to follow in his footsteps.
Her daughter in law tried. She even tried to get

(19:45):
Chung Chung's daughter named as heir apparent, but didn't work
out no, which is kind of surprising. I think um,
but it went back to patriarchal secession and that was
the way it was for the rest of the dynasty
and throughout China's history. Interesting random fact though about Empress Wu.

(20:07):
She was buried with her husband after she died in
the shame Ling tomb, but according to her wishes, the
tombstone was left blank, and some think that maybe she
left it blank for it to be a symbol of
her absolute power which went beyond words. But others wonder
if she just wanted future generations to decide for themselves,
kind of like we're doing right now, how she should

(20:29):
have been evaluated or judged. So we're writing the words
on those two this very podcast. We are, and you
can too if you have your own opinions about whether
you think and pers Wu affected change, if you thought
that she was a feminist or not. We'd love to
hear what you think of her in her life, and
you can write us at our email, which is History

(20:52):
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can
look us up on Facebook or on Twitter at Miston History. Yeah,
and if you want to learn a little bit more
about some of these feminist ideas behind Loose Reign, we
have an article called howth feminism Works. You can find
it by searching on the homepage at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands

(21:18):
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