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Contents, Volume XXVII, Southeast Review of Asian Studies
NORMAN HARRY
ROTHSCHILD
UNIVERSITY
OF NORTH FLORIDA
Introduction
Wu Zhao 武曌[1]
(624-705), the
only female emperor in Chinese history, was a pragmatist, painfully aware that
to establish her sovereignty she needed to marshal every tool, symbolic or
real, at her disposal. She emerged in the right place at the right time.
Multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan and open, the early Tang dynasty (618-907) featured
a lively commingling of nomadic, Central Asian steppe culture and traditional
Confucian mores. Merchant caravans of laden Bactrian camels filled the Silk
Road that linked Tang China to Central Asia and India, traveling to and from
Chang’an and Luoyang, the grand twin capitals. Rather than being strictly
confined to the inner quarters, women of this era were more visible, riding
horses and donning male attire. Islamic mosques, Zoroastrian churches, Daoist
abbeys and Buddhist monasteries all welcomed believers. Throngs heralding from
all walks of life cheered at polo matches. Markets spilled over with Malayan
patchouli, pepper from India, aromatic woods from Java, and Korean pine seeds,
while in street stalls, Persians sold pilaf, figs and pistachios, and Turks
hawked sesame buns and nang-bread.[2]
Despite these fertile
pre-conditions, the biological fact that Wu Zhao was a woman presented serious
problems in her effort to assume the dragon throne. Even in these open times,
the Confucian bureaucracy held great political sway just as patriarchal values,
which held to the principle that “the male is venerated and the female is
denigrated” (nan zun nu bei 男尊女卑), still exerted tremendous
social influence. Thus, as Grand Dowager and during her first years as Emperor,
Wu Zhao meticulously amassed 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 unprecedented ascent to the apex of political power. With a
political virtuosity born of three decades of experience in court politics and
a brilliant, penetrating mind, she cleverly melded archaic and contemporary
symbols into distinctive signets of her own authority.
Among this vast repertoire of
symbols, apocrypha and auspicious omens, an array of wildfowl played a
significant role. In the wit of the parrot, the immortal aura of the crane, the
traditions of majesty vested in the phoenix, and the mythic brilliance of the
sunbird, she sought colorful and flamboyant sanction for her unique authority.
The birds that appear in
the official annals of the Tang dynasty--in the Old Tang History 舊唐書, the New Tang History 新唐書, or the Comprehensive Mirror 資治通監 --are never mere crows, roosters, parrots or ducks. In records
preoccupied with larger concerns of state--with elegant petitions and forceful
edicts, with emerging factions and subtle court maneuverings, with ministers’
brave remonstrance or honey-tongued sycophancy, with diplomacy, tribute
missions and war--the appearance of a bird is never serendipitous. These birds,
like apocryphal stones, unlucky comets, earthquakes, auspicious clouds, or misbegotten
animal offspring, are intended to be read as political commentary, as omens
rife with symbolic currency.
Birds, of course, appeared in many other mediums outside the pages
of dynastic annals. To examine the symbolic valences of each species in the
colorful aviary of Wu Zhao, China’s first and only female emperor, I have drawn
not only upon the staple dynastic histories, but upon the lyrics in the Complete Poetry of the Tang 全唐書, the designs carved on the walls of Tang tombs,
and the strange folk tales of the Taiping
guangji 太平廣記.
The Phoenix
The fenghuang 鳳凰, the mythological emperor among birds, is generally translated as
“phoenix.” It is both an auspicious symbol and a symbol of power. The presence
of the phoenix betokened the issuing forth of the River Chart (he tu 河圖), the cryptic numerical code to sage administration. The phoenix
was also associated with harmony, having a voice that sounded like a flute.[3]
Wu Zhao utilized phoenix symbolism far more widely than previous make
rulers. During her reign, the fenghuang was a frequently recurring
theme found in titles, architecture, and as an auspicious omen.
Like Mount Song among the five marchmounts, like the emperor among
men, as the avian sovereign the phoenix set a pattern for other birds to
follow. In the “Canon of Yao” chapter of the Book of Documents 書經,
a passage ends: “when pipes and the yong
bell are used in timely fashion, birds and beasts come rapidly; when the flute
harmonizes the nine achievements, the phoenix comes and regulates 笙鏞以間. 鳥獸蹌蹌. 蕭韶九成. 鳳凰來儀.”[4]
Here the phoenix is a regulator, a symbol for order and harmony.
The idea of the phoenix as a “regulator” also appears in several
passages story in Li
Fang’s Taiping guangji, a collection of miscellany compiled in
the Taiping (976-983) reign era of Song Taizong. One passage tells of the
renowned Daoist goddess, the Queen Mother of the West presenting a white guan 琯 ritual tube to Emperor Shun. Later, in the Han dynasty (206
BC-8AD, 24-220 AD), the white jade guan
ritual tube was found, along with a set of sheng
笙 pipes, under Shun’s shrine. Ritual specialists
learned how the ancients used these ceremonial instruments to harmonize men and
spirits. The technique was called “regulation of the phoenix” 鳳凰儀.[5]
A second passage in the first chapter of
Li Fang’s section on avians explains that, “Sometimes phoenixes come to
regulate. Afterwards, if one digs deep at the site where they have sung, they
can discover a pure white egg-shaped stone” 鳳有時來儀,
候其所止處, 掘深三尺, 有圓石如卵,
正白.[6] The phoenix can strike a
perfect harmonious cadence, one that all desire to follow. Innately auspicious,
the phoenix leaves behind an augural stone when it departs.
The male phoenix is called the feng
鳳. The female phoenix is called huang 凰. At some juncture in early imperial China, however, this initial
distinction became blurred. Fenghuang,
feng, or fengniao 鳳鳥 became a female imperial
symbol to complement the male dragon. The huang
of the female phoenix can either be written as 凰 or 皇, the latter meaning
“imperial” or “august”. This imperial element is built into the former. Thus
the phoenix was particularly well suited as a symbol of female imperial power.
Tellingly, another female regent, Empress Xuande (454-512), who controlled the
court at the end of the Southern Qi (479-502) and the beginning of the Liang
(502-557), referred to the appearance of a
phoenix, a presence whose presence betokened Heaven’s sanction of her
authority, as a “beautiful auspicious portent” 美符瑞.[7]
It is in this spirit that one must apprehend the phoenix sighted
in Chenzhou in 676 – the very year Wu Zhao’s husband Tang Gaozong ( r. 650-683)
offered to abdicate to her—that occasioned the inauguration of a new reign era,
Pheonix (儀鳳,)[8] There is little doubt toward
whom the auspicious power of the phoenix was directed. Crown Prince Li Hong (d.
675) died shortly after falling out of favor with Wu Zhao. In 675, Gaozong,
suffering another stroke, drafted an edict arrogating her powers of regulating
the court, though staunch remonstrance from the Confucian court prevented it
from being issued. She formed a private band of brilliant literary and poetic
minds, Scholars of the Northern Gate. In short, during a time when she was
exploring vehicles to express her authority, she could manipulate the phoenix
to serve as an auspicious portent, an omen of her political ascendancy.
After Gaozong’s death, with Wu Zhao as Grand Dowager and regent,
in 684 the Secretariat became known as Phoenix Pavilion (feng ge 鳳閣).[9]
Phoenix Pavilion was both part of the title of prime ministers and the name of
the building that housed them. Given Wu Zhao’s flair for ornamental
architecture, one can surmise that this building was adorned with phoenix
paraphernalia. Phoenix Pavilion was complemented by the Simurgh Terrace 鸞臺, the Chancellery. Officials
donned new robes, lending a colorful air to her court. An integral part of this
festive aviary, the phoenix was an important symbol of her regency, helping to
impress her stamp on the court.
As the date for inaugurating her own dynasty, the Zhou (690-705),
approached, the presence of phoenix symbolism intensified. In 686, when Mount
Felicity emerged from the earth, dragon and phoenix shapes were purportedly
seen in a pool.[10] But it was
only with the erection of her first Bright Hall complex in 688 that political
symbolism of the phoenix under Wu Zhao reached its maturity. When the Bright
Hall, her Divine Palace of Myriad Images, was completed, its crowning ornament
was a ten-foot tall gilded iron phoenix poised for flight. To fix the phoenix
300 feet above ground was an awe-inspiring aesthetic endeavor and a staggering
engineering feat. The symbolic moment of this lofty monument can be seen in
different ways. First, as mentioned before, it was a very visible and public
symbol of sovereignty with roots in the earliest Confucian texts. Second, it
was a female symbol. Third, the phoenix was a symbol for the rise of the Zhou
dynasty. According to the “Treatise on Rites” in the Old Tang History,
her phoenix was a young phoenix known as a yuezhuo.[11]
In the “Book of Zhou” in the Guoyu 國語, it was the call of the yuezhuo
from Mount Qishan that announced the
advent of the original Zhou dynasty (1045-221 BC). A stele from the Northern
Zhou (557-589) reads, “When the phoenix calls from Qishan it truly marks the
mandate’s renewal” 鳳鳴崎山, 維新之命.[12]
Like the Northern Zhou rulers, Wu Zhao consciously evoked the original Zhou
dynasty: The phoenix atop her Bright Hall was a clear emblem of the dawning of
a new Golden Age, the resuscitation of the epoch of Kings Wen and Wu, the Duke
of Zhou and Confucius. Wu Zhao drew moral warrant from her fictive kinship and
symbolic affiliation with the Zhou.[13]
The second Bright Hall, completed in 696, also featured a phoenix taking
flight, twice as large as the first. However, when it was damaged by strong
winds it was replaced by a fire pearl.[14]
In Chinese history and myth, the phoenix is often followed by
hundreds of thousands of flocking sparrows, lesser birds magnetized by its
splendor and grace. Only four days before Wu Zhao took the decisive step and
severed the Tang mandate in 690, officials reported “a phoenix had flown from
the Hall of Light to Shangyang Palace before returning to roost on a pauwlonia
tree by the Censorate. It stayed for a while then flew southeast. Then, a flock
of tens of thousands of vermilion sparrows roosted on the Audience Hall” 有鳳皇自明堂飛入上陽宮. 還集左臺梧桐之上. 久之飛東南去. 及赤雀數萬集朝堂.[15]
This is a
classic illustration of omen manipulation. Just as 60,000 officials, Li family
kinsmen, Buddhists, Daoists, barbarian chieftains and common folk petitioned to
urge her to accede, so the vermilion sparrows gathered, gravitating to the
phoenix. Circulation of such a story lent a popular credence, a sense of
inevitability, to her ascent.
These events were elegantly commemorated by Chen Zi’ang 陳子昂 (658-699), one of the foremost
cultural and literary luminaries of the epoch and, at this juncture, still an
ardent proponent of Wu Zhao’s political ascent,[16]
in two flowery memorials praising the inauguration of the Zhou dynasty,
“Panegyric for the Great Zhou Receiving the Mandate” 大周受命頌 and “Petition to Present the
Panegyric for the Great Zhou Receiving the Mandate” 上大周受命頌表.[17]
In the former, he wrote, “Heaven has sent a divine phoenix to descend and bless
our Zhou” 天命神鳳降祚我周.[18]
In his memorial he made direct reference to the recently sighted phoenix whose
appearance had coincided with the inauguration of her Zhou dynasty. And to
explain further the auspicious presence
of the phoenix, he reasoned, “If it were not Heaven’s mandate, then who brought
forth the phoenix?” 匪天之命, 鳳鳥誰歸.[19]
In his “Petition to Present the
Panegyric for the Great Zhou Receiving the Mandate,” Chen Zi’ang cites one of
Confucius’ famous quotes from the Analects:
“If the phoenix does not arrive, the Yellow River will not disgorge its design,
and I am finished.”[20]
If the absence of the Yellow River Chart and the phoenix is cause for despair,
Confucian logic dictates the converse must be true: the presence of chart and
phoenix must give rise to great joy and harmony. To set the dawning glory of Wu
Zhao’s new Zhou dynasty in clear contrast to the chaotic age of the decadent
Eastern Zhou that surrounded Confucius, Chen Zi’ang went on to assert, “Now the
phoenix has arrived!” He also announced the promulgation of his four stanza
“Divine Phoenix Panegyric” 神鳳頌 to celebrate her Zhou
receiving the mandate.[21]
The site of her accession, Zetian Gate, on the southern wall of
the Palatine City, has yielded several tiles dating to Wu Zhao’s period. These
tiles feature a soaring phoenix with a spirit fungus (ling zhi 靈芝), another auspicious symbol,
held in its beak. A ji 吉 character for good luck is set above the phoenix’s back.[22] Another tile dated to her era, currently on
exhibit at the Luoyang Museum, depicts not the familiar motif of “two dragons
playing with a pearl” (shuang long xi zhu
雙龍戲珠), but “two phoenixes playing
with a pearl.”[23]
The channeling of aesthetics into power was also apparent in
music. When her Zhou dynasty was inaugurated in 690, the ritual choreography
included dancers clad in phoenix crests. She also renovated a song from the
Southern Dynasties, “pure music” 清樂 without lyrics, called “The
Phoenix Leads Her Chicks” 鳳將雛.[24]
Thus, in her ornate style, court music and dance elegantly displayed for the
entire court her loving rapport with the common people: Wu Zhao was a nurturing
mother bird to whom fledgling chicks instinctively flocked for warmth and
protection.
In poetry, Wu Zhao frequently was represented in tandem with the
phoenix. During a poetry competition she sponsored during a spring outing, Song
Zhiwen’s (656-712) image “through the dispersing fog, congregated officials
gazed up at the ascendant phoenix,” evoked the iron phoenix atop the Bright Hall.[25]
A poem by nephew Wu Sansi referred to her imperial chariot not as a “dragon
carriage” (long yü 龍輿), but as a “phoenix chariot”
(feng jia 鳳駕).[26] It is
unclear whether the “phoenix chariot” is a vehicle unique to her reign, or just
a reference to the “Great Phoenix Carriage” 大鳳輦, one of the ten designated
imperial vehicles during the Tang.[27]
Recently excavated in Wu Zhao’s Divine Capital Luoyang was a
Phoenix-headed ewer dating to her era, the bird’s crest curving backward to
form the vessel’s handle.[28]
Evoking both the Golden Age and female imperial power, the phoenix
symbolized Wu Zhao’s new Zhou dynasty taking flight. The presence of the
phoenix served as a visual, aesthetic and musical reinforcement of her
propaganda. The concept of the ascendant phoenix had traditional and
mythological grounding as an auspicious symbol, a harbinger of the Zhou and a
token of imperial power complementing a dragon. Her use of multiple media
suggests both the contemporary resonance and the political importance of the
phoenix image.
The Crane
The crane is a tall and elegant bird. As Madeline Spring, in Animal Allegories in T’ang China
remarks, “the crane’s natural grace and imposing stature, coupled with its
ability to soar to the heavens, have made it a ready metaphor for individuals
with lofty aspirations either mundane or spiritual.”[29]
In Chinese myth and history, Cranes are closely associated with Daoism and
immortality. Not surprisingly, it was only in her late seventies, during the
waning years of her Zhou dynasty, as Wu Zhao keenly sensed her own mortality,
and sought a cure to this essentially human condition in Daoist elixirs and
rites, that the crane emerged in a prominent role in her aviary.
In her later years, even the presence of the crane in a place name
held great appeal for Wu Zhao. One Daoist who helped her, at great expense,
decoct a potion of longevity, heralded from White Crane Mountain.[30]
When Wu Zhao and Gaozong traveled to Mount Tai to perform the feng and shan sacrifices, they named the feng
altar at the apex Platform of the Dancing Cranes 舞鶴臺.[31]
In 697, two beautiful youths, Zhang Changzong and Zhang Yizhi,
entered the court and became Wu Zhao’s favorites. They established the Reining
Cranes Institute 控鶴監.[32]
In 699, Wu Zhao, while traveling to Mount Song, her designated Central
Marchmount 中岳,[33]
passed Mount Goushi 緱氏山 and visited the Temple of the Ascended Immortal Prince 升仙太子廟, which she had established three years earlier while
performing the sacrosanct feng and shan sacrifices.[34]
It is noteworthy that three of the peaks on the Greater Ridge of Mount Song are
called Zijin 子晉, after Prince Jin, Fuqiu 浮丘, after
Prince Jin’s Daoist immortal instructor, and Three Cranes 三鶴.[35]
The temple was established to honor Prince Jin,[36]
the legendary son of King Ling in the Eastern Zhou dynasty (r. 571-545 BC), who
rejected wealth and station to become a mountain ascetic.[37]
The strokes of the title characters on the Stele to Honor the Ascended Immortal
Prince 升仙太子碑, attributed to Wu Zhao herself, are a series of beautiful,
ornate birds.[38]
In 700,
following a petition by Wu Zhao’s sycophantic nephew Wu Sansi, Zhang Changzong
was identified as the reincarnation of Prince Jin.[39]
When the Zhangs
became Wu Zhao’s favorites in 697, he waited on them like a servant, slavishly
helping them saddle their horses, mount and dismount.[40]
It was likely at this time that, in his effort
to flatter and exalt Zhang Changzong further, Wu Sansi wrote the “Verse of the
Immortal Cranes,” which appears in the Complete
Book of Tang Poetry. The opening includes the lines:
Whither
soars the immortal crane ascending on high?
From
Mount Goushi in the seventh month it flies into the distance...
From
Mount Goushi it mysteriously ascends into the boundless emptiness.[41]
To make manifest the connection to
Prince Jin, the immortal crane flies to the heavens from Mount Goushi. Thus,
Zhang Changzong donned a feathered cloak, played a flute, and, to simulate
Prince Jin’s ascent to immortality, reined and rode a wooden crane around Wu
Zhao’s court.[42] Perhaps the
colorful garment was the extraordinarily dazzling “Flock of Kingfishers Cloak” 集翠裘
presented to Wu Zhao as tribute by emissaries from Nanhai Commandery 南海郡
(Canton), a garment she subsequently gifted Zhang Changzong.[43]
Wu Zhao was by no means the first or only ruler to celebrate the cult of Prince
Jin. Marianne Bujard, in an article on the cult of Prince Jin, shows numerous
examples of imperial patronage during the Han, the Period of Disunity
(220-581), and the Tang.[44]
Interestingly, in the catalogue of Tang
literature, there is a one chapter text called the Canon on Cranes 相鶴經, purportedly written by the Duke of Fuqiu, the wandering
immortal who taught Prince Jin back in the 6th century BC.[45]
The growing symbolic import of the crane in the later years of Wu Zhao’s court
is evident in the emergence of the cult of Prince Jin and the ascendancy of the Zhangs and their
Reining Cranes Institute.
Sunbird.
One of the new characters Wu Zhao implemented in 689, the sun (ri 日), featured a circumscribed
sunbird,[46]
the mythical three-legged crow, a solar symbol dating back to the Eastern Yi
culture in the 3rd millennium BC.[47] To complement and balance her sunbird, her new character for
“moon” featured mythological lunar denizens--the toad or hare.[48]
In Chinese mythology, the sun is associated with yang, male essence and
with the emperor. Her strategic appropriation of the sunbird can be seen as an
effort to intertwine her being and authority with pre-existing myths, and to
incorporate male emblems into her repertoire.
The Taiping guangji
includes the story of a three-legged crow fortuitously discovered in 690. The
text reads as follows:
In the time of the Heavenly Empress, someone offered a
three-legged bird as tribute. Among
those assembled, someone remarked, “One of the legs is fake.” The Heavenly Empress smiled and said, “Let the
Court Historian record this event in
his annals. What does it matter if it is real or fake?” In the Tang History it is recorded, “In the first year of Tianshou
(690), someone presented a
three-legged bird. The Heavenly Empress
took it to be an auspicious omen of the house of Zhou. Ruizong remarked, “The foremost leg is not real.” The
Heavenly Empress was not
pleased. Soon thereafter, the foremost leg fell off.[49]
In this account, Wu Zhao is depicted as a charlatan who
shamelessly manipulated omens. Well aware that the sunbird was a
clumsily-wrought fraud, she nonetheless ordered the event catalogued as an
auspicious omen in her court records.
Wu Zhao’s fondness for auspicious omens was widely known.[50]
She actively sought them, calling for an empire-wide search for portents,
symbols that might be celebrated as illustrations of her legitimacy. The timing
of the sunbird’s arrival was fortuitous: having just formally assumed the role
of Emperor, she was still in the process of collecting a wide repertoire of
symbols, omens and prophecies to sanction her authority. The announcement of
the appearance of such an auspicious creature in her court, a creature she had
so recently exalted--and tied to her imperial persona--by framing it in her new
character for sun, provided to the wider empire evidence that Heaven endorsed
her political authority.
Speaking Birds: Parrots and
Mynahs
During the Tang, parrots were considered exceptional among avian
species. In the Taiping guangji it is
recorded that the claws of parrots have two front toes and two rear toes while
all other birds have three front and one rear; and parrots alone possessed eyes
that were not fixed, but “moved like the eyes of men.”[51]
Exotic mynahs and various colorful species of parrots were prized as tribute
items. The Tang histories are full of accounts of five-colored parrots arriving
from Southern India,[52]
Persia,[53]
Heling[54]
and Lingnan;[55] white
parrots from Tuoheng[56]
and Huanwang[57]; and mynahs
and ji liao 吉了, literally “lucky and clever” birds, who were slightly larger
than parrots.[58]
The Taiping guangji provides an example of an emissary from the
southern hinterlands of her empire presenting, albeit reluctantly, a pair of
parrots to Wu Zhao:
Liu Jingyang was sent as an emissary
to Lingnan and obtained a pair of auspicious,
intelligent birds capable of speaking the tongue of men. When he arrived at the capital, he kept the
female and presented the male to the Heavenly Empress.
The male became vexed and depressed, and did not eat. Asked “Why do you seem so out of sorts?” the bird
replied, “My mate has been kept by the ambassador
and now I miss her greatly.” Jingyang was summoned and asked why he had concealed one bird. He kowtowed,
confessed, and presented the bird. Zetian
did not punish him.[59]
This
is not the only story that illustrates the presence of parrots in Wu Zhao’s
court. In 692, presumably to show the harmony that existed in under her
sovereignty, she trained a cat to live together with a parrot. When she took
them to display to the court, the cat, becoming hungry, pounced on the parrot
and devoured it, deeply humiliating Wu Zhao.[60]
Parrots even appeared to Wu Zhao in
her dreams. In 697, she dreamed of a giant parrot with two broken wings, and
related it to her favorite prime minister of the time, the famous Di Renjie.
The clever minister, a Tang loyalist at heart, availed himself of the
opportunity: “The wu of parrot is
Your Majesty’s surname. The two wings are your two sons. If you elevate them,
the two wings will flap again.” 武者, 陛下之姓. 兩翼, 二子也. 陛下起二子, 則二翼振矣.[61] Sure enough, shortly thereafter,
influenced by Di Renjie’s persuasive arguments, she recalled her son, the once
and future Zhongzong (r. 684, 705-710) from exile and established him as Crown
Prince rather than her nephew Wu Sansi.
The most common Chinese term for
parrot is the compound ying wu 鸚鵡. The phonetic left hand component in the latter character is the
same as the Wu 武 in Wu Zhao’s surname.[62]
Therefore, Wu Zhao naturally felt a certain affinity with parrots. In the
famous Commentary on the Great Cloud
Sutra, a carefully crafted piece of political propaganda circulated in 690
just months before she established the Zhou, a work chock full of apocrypha
geared toward proving that she was a bodhisattva and a Cakravartin, a Buddhist
universal wheel-turning monarch, there is a passage where Wu Zhao’s connection
to the parrot is made manifest. The text cites a cryptic Prophecy of Master Ma of the Central Peak which includes a section
on a parrot, from which the Buddhist compilers of the Commentary deduce that “parrot” refers to the Wu clan; “crowned
parrot” refers to Divine Sovereign Wu Zhao; and that the “beating wings” that
bear the parrot aloft were associated with the title of Heavenly Empress that
Wu Zhao received in 674. There is also a passage in the apocryphal Prophecy that claims the parrot will
come to the aid of the decaying branches of the Longtou plum tree about to be
felled by a windstorm, which the clever framers of the Commentary interpreted as meaning that Wu Zhao would, on behalf of
the decadent imperial Li (this li 李 also means plum) family, save the crumbling empire.[63]
In the “Music” section of the Tongdian, Wu Zhao is credited for
several of the six Tang seated compositions (zuo bu座部), including a piece called “Birdsong for Ten
Thousand Years” (niaoge wansui yue 鳥歌萬歲樂). Concerning this
composition, it is recorded that:
At that time birds who spoke the
tongue of men were raised in the palace. They frequently
chanted “Long Live the Emperor!” so this music imitated them. There were three dancers wearing avian crests and
dark red silken sleeves, jointly, with their
motions, drew mynah birds (qu yu 鴝鵒).[64]
Clearly,
parrots and mynahs added a certain panache, a colorful southern flair to her
court dances and music. Given Wu Zhao’s deep preoccupation with language and
symbolism, it is not surprising that her avian namesake was an important
presence in her propaganda, in court ceremony and even in her dreams.
Hens and Roosters
Not all avian images from Wu Zhao’s
era were symbols geared toward legitimizing her political authority and
exalting her person. It is a widely accepted fact that the Confucian tradition
of historiography has taken great pains to demonize Wu Zhao, to depict her as a
corrupt and lascivious usurper. Long before Wu Zhao, the image of the crowing
hen betokened decadence and dynastic decline. Citing the Zhou dynasty’s loss of
the mandate, the Book of Documents warned
that “the hen does not herald the dawn; when the hen crows to announce the dawn,
it only means that the family is doomed” 牝雞無晨. 牝雞為晨,
惟家之索.[65]
It is with this passage in mind that we must view the repeated accounts in
dynastic histories of hens transforming into roosters between 684 and 690.
In Ouyang Xiu’s New Tang History, in the “Chicken Disasters” 雞禍 subsection of the “Treatise on Five Elements” 五行志, it is recorded that in the
7th month of 687, the hens of Jizhou transformed into roosters; in the first
month of 689 the hens of Mingzhou turned into roosters; and in the 8th month of
689, the hens of Songzhou changed into roosters.[66]
In the same chapter, in the section on “Avian and Insect Abominations” 羽蟲之孽, it is recorded that “from
684 on, several regions sent memorials announcing that hens had changed into
roosters, or half-changed.”[67]
In the Taiping guangji, not only are
claims of these abominations corroborated, they are linked directly to the
political ascent of Wu Zhao: “After the Wenming reign era (684), throughout the
empire in every prefecture hens changed into roosters, or half-changed. This
was an omen of Zetian’s formal accession.”[68] Wu Zhao’s “Basic Annals” in the New Tang History also records the
transformations in Jizhou during the seventh month of 687,[69]
a prefecture where she had recently changed a city name to Wuxing, or “Wu
Rising, and in Langzhou in the first month of 689.[70]
Chickens do not, as a rule of thumb,
spontaneously change or half-change sexes. Between 684 and 689, Wu Zhao
eclipsed the Emperor, her feckless son Ruizong, presiding over court and
issuing edicts (lin chao cheng zhi 臨朝稱治), preparing for her
accession in 690. Historians noted these transformations not simply because
they were curious aberrations of nature, but because these aberrations
corresponded with Wu Zhao’s political ascent. There is no evidence concerning
how Wu Zhao received the news of these transformations, or for that matter,
that she was even aware of them. On the other hand, not surprisingly,
Confucians historians, consciously evoking the hen whose masculine crow
heralded doom in the Book of Documents,
include these transformations in their records as abominations of nature, clear
signs that the five elements are out of kilter. They are, in Confucian eyes,
messages of Heaven’s disapprobation.
It seems more likely, from a modern
vantage, that these omens were not sent by Heaven, but placed by Northern Song
historians as vehicles to cast their own negative judgment upon Wu Zhao’s
reign. There is little reason to believe the presence of these gender-confused
fowl in historical records reflect anything but conscious Confucian revisionism.
It is worthy to note that none of these “avian abominations” are recorded in
Liu Xu’s Old Tang History. Only in
Northern Song sources do these aberrations proliferate. The political
implications are less that subtle: through the chickens, Ouyang Xiu and other
Confucians render their judgment that a woman in a position of paramount power
was something monstrous, a convulsive aberration of natural and human order.
There is, perhaps, an alternative
interpretation: the purported mass transformations of these domestic fowl might
be understood as an admission on the part of Song (960-1279) Confucian
historians that ultimate political decision-making had rested Wu Zhao’s hands.
To rationalize the immutable fact of her sovereignty, the Confucian establishment
transformed her into something other than a woman. She was either male, like a
rooster, or half-male and half-female, transcending standard constructions of
gender.
Other Miscellaneous Birds
In 773, a pair of magpies carries
twigs and mud in their beaks to repair cracks and fissures in the Greater
Immortal Observatory at Qianling, the tomb where Wu Zhao and her husband, Tang
Gaozong, are jointly buried. The Prime Minister wrote a formal memorial to
offer his congratulations.[71]
This is likely why one of the observatories flanking the spirit path is known
as Magpie Terrace 鵲台. Also, a pair of ostriches
is included among the statuary ensemble along Qianling’s spirit path.[72]
It has previously been noted that
the themes and costumes in Wu Zhao’s court music bore a strong avian influence.
Several other “pure music” court songs played in her era also contain avian
content such as “The White Dove” 白鳩, “The Bird’s Night Cry” 鳥夜啼, and “The Nocturnal Flight of the Bird from the
Tower” 樓鳥夜飛.[73]
Birds were not always venerated in Wu Zhao’s court. The following
passage in the Taiping guangji
depicts a scene of unbearable cruelty involving Wu Zhao’s favorites in her last
years, the flamboyant Zhang brothers:
In the time of the Zhou, Zhang Yizhi was made Director of
the Reining Cranes Institute, Zhang
Changzong Vice Director and Zhang Changyi Luoyang Head. They competed in extravagance and excess. Yizhi made
a huge iron cage into which he
put many ducks and geese. There was a charcoal fire-pit set in the bottom and a bronze basin filled with
five-flavored juice. The geese and ducks walked
around the fire. When thirsty, they drank juice from the bronze basin. Meanwhile, they were slow roasted alive as
they painfully revolved around the fire,
until outside and inside they were cooked through and their feathers all dropped out. When the meat was roasted to a
deep red, the fowl died.
Changzong bound a donkey
alive in a small room similarly equipped with a
charcoal fire and a bronze basin full of five-flavored juice. He also set up a
post which he nailed to the ground. He
bound the four feet of dogs together and suspended
them from the pole. Then he released kestrels and falcons who rent them alive. When much of the flesh was
torn off, the dogs were still alive. This was
called “Sour Grief and Sadness” 酸楚.[74]
On
the steppe of Central Asia or an imperial hunt, Tang falconry was a practical
and noble art. Indeed, some of Wu Zhao’s companies of Imperial Guards bore the
names of goshawks or falcons.[75]
Within the enclosure of the court, however, such use of birds of prey can only
strike one as horrific and sadistic. Clearly, though, given the elegant name
assigned to the latter “dish,” the Zhang brothers attempted to flavor their
cruelty with an aesthetic sauce. This is similar to the practice of the
notorious Lai Junchen and other cruel officials giving elegant names to the
tortures they devised, such as calling a torment in which a prisoner was lashed
to a pillar while his arms and legs were progressively stretched backwards “The
Phoenix Spreads its Wings” 鳳凰曬翅.[76]
Associated, from the Confucian
perspective, with maladministration and chaos, women did not belong in the
political arena. From one of the earliest texts in the classical canon, the Book of Songs, comes the following
oft-quoted ode:
Clever men build cities,
clever women topple them.
Beautiful, these clever women may
be;
but they are owls and kites.
Women have long tongues
That lead to ruin.
Disorder does not come down from
Heaven;
It is wrought by women.[77]
Owls
and kites were associated with a woman’s incapacity for public administration.
This is just one example--the transformation of hens into roosters is
another--in which, through poetry or history, avian images were utilized to
illustrate that in the natural order of things women were unfit for politics
and government.
Therefore, as Wu Zhao sought to
establish authority, she needed to subvert conventions and rearticulate symbols
to suit her political needs. She needed to mold the unnatural crowing hens and
cacophony of long-tongued kites into a series of new, positive avian images
that supported rather than undermined her imperial ambitions.
Certainly, it is possible to
overstate the significance of avian symbolism in Wu Zhao’s court. By no means
would I maintain that Wu Zhao’s ascent hinged on marshalling avian symbolism to
support her political cause. In the construction of her political authority,
there were, of course, more important measures than co-optation of avian
symbolism--for instance, the circulation of the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra and the dissemination of new
characters that served as distinctive signets of her rule. Still, the role of
avians in Wu Zhao’s court was more than superficial. Within her vast symbolic
repertory, birds played a distinct, colorful role. It is important to recall
that as the only female emperor in Chinese history, her political authority was
an invention: it was absolutely vital for her to utilize every resource at her
disposal to buttress her legitimacy.
With thirty-five years of political
seasoning and court involvement, Wu Zhao developed a keen awareness that
tradition was not a static entity--it could be reshaped, re-invented to fit
immediate political circumstances. A colorful avian pageant provided Wu Zhao’s
court with a distinctive aesthetic flair: in verse, song, propaganda, and
ceremony august phoenixes added luster to her imperial majesty; featured in the
new character she created for the sun and presented at court as an auspicious
token of Heaven’s sanction, the three-legged crow emerged from antiquity to
augur her rise; particularly in her later years, as she sought means of
immortality, the elegant crane helped her favorites simulate a Daoist utopia;
rainbow-colored parrots presented as tribute were presented at court and
emulated in dance performances. Given Wu Zhao’s political acumen and virtuosity
in manipulating symbols, the very creatures that had once symbolized a woman’s
lack of political fitness became decorative icons of her political authority.
Endnotes:
1. In this paper I use Wu Zhao, the name she chose in 689 on the eve
of becoming emperor. The Zhao from her name was a newly invented character
featuring a sun and moon set over a void. See Rothschild, unpublished paper,
“The New Characters of Wu Zhao,” Southeast Early China Roundtable, University
of Florida, October 2004.
2. Some
good sources for the texture of the early Tang material culture are Edward Schafer’s The Golden Peaches of
Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics, (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1963) and Charles Benn’s Daily
Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty, (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2002).
4. Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏, Shangshu zhengyi 尚書正義, (Beijing University Press,
1999), chapter 5, 127. Yi 儀 can mean “to regulate” or “regulator,” a kind of ritual instrument
yi qi 儀器 —see Antonino Forte, Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the History of the Astronomical Clock:
The Tower, the Statue and the Armillary Sphere Constructed by Empress Wu,
(Rome, 1988), 16-18.
5. Taiping Guangji 太平廣記 (hereafter TPGJ), Li Fang 李昉, (Beijing:
Zhonghua, 1996), 203.1530. The guan is a ritual tube akin to the cong 琮, an instrument used by shamans in communicating with spirits, with
Heaven. See K.C. Chang, Art, Myth
and Ritual, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 36-37.
7. Li Yanshou 李延壽,
Nan shi 南史, (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997),
6.181 and Yao Cha 姚察, Liang
shu 梁書(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 1.15. Her biography can be found in the
Xiao Zixian 蕭子顯, Nan Qi shu 南齊書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 20.392.
8. Jiu Tang Shu 舊唐書 (hereafter JTS), Liu Xu 劉煦 comp.,
(Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997), 5.102. In Dengfang xian zhi 登封縣志, the 1803 edition, (Henan:
Dengfang County Office, 1984), 1.11, it indicates that during Gaozong’s reign a
phoenix roosted near to Song Peak Temple on Mount Song.
11. JTS 22.862 is the only source that calls the phoenix a yuezhuo. The phoenix is also mentioned
in Tang Huiyao 唐會要, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1998), 11.277; Sima Guang 司馬光, Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑒 (hereafter
ZZTJ), (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1995), 204. 6454; Forte,
Antonino, Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias
in the History of the Astronomical Clock: The Tower, the Statue and the
Armillary Sphere Constructed by Empress Wu, (Rome, 1988), 156-158.
12. Yu Xin, Zhou shang shu guo Qi wang
shen tui bei, 庾信,
周上柱國齊王 神退碑, (Beijing: Guoxue baodian, 2000).
13. See Rothschild, Rhetoric,
Ritual and Support Constituencies in the Political Authority of Wu Zhao, Woman
Emperor of China, doctoral dissertation, Brown University, (Ann Arbor,
2003), Chapters Two and Three.
14. Du You 杜佑,
Tongdian 通典, (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988),
44.254; JTS 22.867; ZZTJ 205.6505; Tang Huiyao 11.279;
16. See Rothschild, Rhetoric,
Ritual and Support Constituencies in the Political Authority of Wu Zhao, Woman
Emperor of China, doctoral dissertation, Brown University, (Ann Arbor,
2003), 220-221.
20. Quan Tangwen 209.2113-2114, taken from Analects IX.9. I have translated the passage, drawing on Confucius,
D.C. Lau trans, The Analects, (New
York: Penguin, 1979), 97.
21. Quan Tang wen 209.2114. It is important to note that in 688 Wu Zhao had
“discovered” a Precious Diagram 寶圖 in the Luo River. For some
initial references to the Precious Diagram, Wu Zhao’s “Yellow River Chart,” see
Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修, Xin Tang shu 新唐書, (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1997), 4.87; JTS 6.119; ZZTJ
204.6449.
22. Tile found in Duke of Zhou Temple and Yingtian Gate Ruins
Exhibit Hall, next to Dingding Road in Luoyang.
29. Spring, Madeline, Animal
Allegories in T’ang China, (New Haven: American Oriental Society, Volume
36, 1993), 11.
34. ZZTJ 205.6503-6504. Another
element that made Mount Goushi appeal to Wu Zhao was the fact that according to
legend not only Prince Jin, but the Queen Mother of the West herself was
associated with the mountain. See Kang Weimin 康為民, “Wu Zetian yuanhe xing Goushan” 武則天緣何幸緱山, in Zhao Wenrun and Liu
Zhiqing 劉志清, Chief Eds., Wu Zetian yu Yanshi 武則天与偃師, (Yanshi: Lishi jiaoxue
Press, 1997), 219-227.
37. ZZTJ 206.6539, Hu Sanxing
commentary. See also Lie xianzhuan 1.14a,
which gives a different account in which Prince Jin, thirty years after leaving
his royal family, through an intermediary he encounters, asks them to meet him
on Mount Goushi 緱氏山 on the seventh day of the seventh month to take final leave of
the mortal world. Riding atop his signature white crane, he met them as
promised. Edward Schafer, “Cranes of Mao Shan,” 373 and Spring, Madeline, Animal Allegories in T’ang China, (New
Haven: American Oriental Society, Volume 36, 1993), 16-17 refer to the role of
the crane in the cult of Prince Jin.
Mount Goushi is located about
60km to the southeast of Luoyang. According to the most prevalent legend, as
recorded in He-Luo shi hua河落史話, (Zhong Zhou Antiquities
Press: Zhengzhou, 1995), 425-428 (among primary sources see TPGJ 4.24), King Ling was a debauched
and wicked ruler inured to drink and women. His son, Qiao (Prince Jin), loved
to read and by the time he was a young man had a deep appreciation of
literature and history. Seeing his father’s maladministration, he began to
remonstrate, stridently advising his incompetent father on how to quell floods
and diminish the suffering of the common people. His pleas fell on deaf ears.
Eventually, his remonstrance grated on his father, who stripped him of his
title Heir Apparent. With only his jade flute, Prince Jin left to comfort the
common people of the Yi and Luo valleys. When he played his flute, people took
solace and felt great joy; phoenixes appeared and cavorted in the air. Even
when his father sent an emissary to bring him back, Prince Jin refused, citing
his father’s lack of compassion for the commonfolk. Eventually, he met the
immortal Fuqiu Gong, who taught him the wisdom contained in the mysterious Xianhe Jing 相鶴經 (Madeline Spring, Animal Allegories in T’ang China,13 fn7,
has identified some extant sources which contain fragments of this text) , a
manual that teaches the art of crane-riding, a graceful art usually reserved
for immortals. Later he encountered Heng Liang, one of his father’s emissaries,
on Mount Song and bade him relay that he would return to earth for one last
time at Mount Goushi on the seventh day of the seventh month to take leave of
his father King Ling. His father, who had finally mended his ways, brought a
huge entourage of Zhou subjects to see off Prince Jin. On the site where Prince
Jin ascended to the heavens, they erected an Ascended Immortal Observatory 升仙觀 in his honor. There, on the seventh day of the seventh month each
year, the common folk throng to offer a libationary sacrifice.
According to another legend,
he played his sheng 笙 pan-pipe in such a melodious and lovely fashion that it beguiled
the immortal Jade Chrysanthemum Maiden. On the seventh day of the seventh
month, riding a magnificent red-capped crane, she descended from the cloud and
mist shrouded Land of the Immortals. Prince Jin reined his own crane and
ascended to become an immortal.
There is another legend I
have found in Wang Hongjun’s 王鴻鈞, Legends of Mount Song 嵩山傳說, (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou
Publishing, 1983, p. 20-24), in which an Immortal Chrysanthemum Maiden of Mount
Song, drawn to Prince Jin by his lovely flute-playing, invites him to join her
as an immortal. When, following her instructions, he plays one of his songs at
dawn, a red-capped white crane descended and bore him to the heavens.
38. Kegasawa Yasunori, Sokuten
buko 則天武后, (Tokyo, 1995), 318 has an
illustration of the characters. The stele still exists. Also see, Wang Zhendong
王振東 and Xu Yingxian 徐英賢, “Wu Zetian ‘Shengxiantaizibei’ de shufa yishu”武則天升仙太子碑的書法藝術, in Zhao Wenrun and Liu
Zhiqing 劉志清, Chief Eds., Wu Zetian yu Yanshi 武則天 与偃師, (Yanshi: Lishi jiaoxue
Press, 1997), 240-244.
43. TPGJ 405.3267. Also see Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1963), 114, 307 fn 87.
44. Marianne Bujard, “Le culte de Wangzi Qiao ou la longue carriere
d’un immortel,” Etudes Chinois 19.1-2
(2000), 115-155. While Bujard notes Prince Jin “retrouvait un patronage
imperial” under Wu Zhao, she only draws on the JTS (6.128 and 23.891), and therefore never mentions the Zhang
brothers, who were at the very heart of the cult of Prince Jin in Wu Zhao’s
court (Bujard, 146).
46. Tang epigraphy, much more clearly than confused historical
sources, illustrates the sunbird in Wu Zhao’s new characters. See Rothschild,
“New Characters of Wu Zhao”; Dong Zuobin 董作賓and Wang Hengyu 王恆餘, “Tang Wu-hou gaizi kao” 唐武后改字考, Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology Academia
Sinica 34
(1963): 447-476; Kuranaka Susumu 葴中進, Sokuten buko no monji no kenkyu 則天武后の文字の研究, (Tokyo, 1995); Shi Anchang,
“Guanyu Wu Zetian zaozi de yishi yu jiegou” 關于武則天造字的意識与結构, Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 古宮博物院院刊 (1984): 84-90; andTokiwa
Daijo 常盤大定, “Bushu no ichi kenkyu” 武周新字的の一研究, (Tokyo, 1936).
47. Wu Hong, “Bird Motifs in Eastern Yi Art,” Orientations 14.10 (1985), 30-32. For more on the role of the
three-legged crow, the “sunbird” in Chinese mythology, see Anne Birrell, Chinese
Mythology, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993), 38, 234 and 255.
48. See 46 above. Strictly speaking, neither of these
characters was new. Both were ornamental zhuan characters that appear in
the Han dictionary Shuo wen.
49. TPGJ 462.3796. The Taiping yulan
920.4083 contains a passage almost identical to the second part of the quote.
50. For
instance, the Comprehensive Mirror indicates
“The Grand Dowager liked auspicious omens” 太后好祥瑞 (ZZTJ 205.6484).
Similarly, a passage in the Old Tang
History reads “When Zetian initially severed the mandate, she especially
loved to use prophecies and omens” 則天初革命, 尤好符瑞 (JTS 70.2539). Another passage, found in both sources
reads, “When Wu Zhao controlled the court, those from the Four Directions
undertook to fulfill an imperial decree and many presented auspicious omens” 及臨朝, 四方承旨,
多獻符瑞 (JTS 185.4800. ZZTJ 203.6421).
51. TPGJ 460.3768. For more on
parrots in Tang China, see Schafer, The
Golden Peaches of Samarkand, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1963), 99-102.
62. See Forte, Political
Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century,
(Naples, 1977), 224 fn 220.
63. See Forte, Political
Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century,
(Naples, 1977), 223 224. Forte has translated the Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra on Dunhuang document S6502.
64. Tongdian 146.3721. An almost identical
passage appears in the “Treatise on Music” in the JTS 29.1061-1062.
68. TPGJ 463.3785. In Taiping guangji 361.2866-2867, appended
at the end of a passage about Zhang Yizhi’s mother and an ill-omened fox is a
similar passage: “After 685, in every prefecture there were many reports of
hens turning into roosters. This was in response to Zetian.”
72. Schafer, in The Golden
Peaches of Samarkand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963, p.
102), has noted that ostriches were presented as tribute to Tang rulers both in
620, by emissaries from the Western Turks, and in 650 emissaries of the
Tukharians.