Shan Sa - Empress

IT WAS NOT long before the gods expressed their satisfaction through a number of extraordinary phenomena. Since I began governing the Empire as Supreme Empress, the Officer of Rites in the Palace had already recorded some thirty promising apparitions, atmospheric events, and astral configurations that indicated celestial approval.

These good omens culminated one morning in a fisherman on the River Luo bringing up a stone with cracks on its surface that formed an inscription. During the morning audience, ministers and soothsayers deciphered the oracle and translated these characters: “divine mother on this earth, through her, the emperor’s reign shall be prosperous and everlasting.” For the first time since the world sprang forth from chaos, the gods were identifying a woman as the human sovereign! The news spread throughout the Empire, and letters of congratulation fell around me like snowflakes: “Your Majesty has pursued the former sovereign’s unfinished work. Her endeavor and her humility have touched the gods. That is why this divine writing has been sent to the world for the third time since civilization began… As a representative of the female element in us, Your Majesty is invested with male strength. The union of these two opposites has produced the great harmony now enjoyed by our ten thousand kingdoms. That is why Heaven has appointed her Mistress of all people.”

My past-with its downfalls and resurrections, its opportunities and difficulties-had already convinced me that I bore the mark of a very singular fate on my forehead. I had known suffering and had brushed with death. Every time that I was pushed to the very limits of despair, abandoned by men and gods, I managed to find the strength to triumph within myself, in my own body. That was the stamp, the voice, the music of providence. The oracle had just revealed the hidden truth behind all these trials: The gods were appointing me as their representative on Earth, having forged me with the consuming power of flames and the sudden chill of water.

Why Heavenlight? Why the little girl who loved horses? Why this strange ascension by such a devious route? Even the dead had served me as stepping stones to reach the heights. Why had it taken the deaths of my first master, Emperor Eternal Ancestor; my husband, the Sovereign Lordly Ancestor, my sons Splendor and Wisdom, and my sisters, Purity and Clarity, to reveal me, to accomplish what I was to be? Why did I know how to draw strength from the infirmities of birth? Why had my status as a woman and a commoner, my failings, been turned into triumphs? All the questions that had always tormented me disappeared. The gods had given me their answer at last.

I left it to the Court to award me the pompous and ambiguous title of Divine Mother Sacred Emperor that interwove masculinity and femininity. I left it to my nephews to engrave the three imperial seals with the simple name Sacred Emperor. All this feverish activity that demonstrated the delight of some of my courtiers and subjects provoked only anger in others.

One morning, the audience hall was shaken by a dispatch: In their respective provinces, the King of Yue and the King of the County of Lang Xie -Little Phoenix’s brother and nephew-were rising up and calling on the world to overthrow the “usurper.” I smiled at this grotesque spectacle: a dead husband’s family openly seeking to punish a widow for not knowing “a woman’s place.” There was nothing to fear. The gods who had chosen me would defend me. I replied to their war cries and their furious indignation, which wanted to restore male supremacy, by sending them my faithful armies. Yet again there was a miracle: Only twenty days later the insurrection was quashed and the rebels’ heads hung before the Southern Gate of the Forbidden City. Their supporters within the Court were pursued by the magistrates of Autumnal Duties and the inspectors from the Lodge of Purification. Other plots came to light: kings and princesses received orders to hang themselves in their palaces. During one of the enquiries, I was informed that the Prince Consort Xue Xiao, Lieutenant General of the Guards, and his brothers had also sworn allegiance to the insurgents. My daughter, Moon, wept by my bedside and begged my clemency. Despite her anguish, I decided to make an example of my son-in-law and to demonstrate my merciless repression. I spared him the shame of a public execution and had him starved to death in prison.

An illegitimate authority that knows no respect crumbles at the first signs of uprising. A revolt that dies down in a few days is a disturbance that did not have the people’s approval. The silence in my empire was a tacit recognition of my legitimacy. I had indeed worked tirelessly for the Tang dynasty for nearly thirty years, and everyone recognized that I was the source of its prosperity. Why should I go on reigning behind an incompetent son and reducing him to a puppet emperor? I had already changed banners, renamed ministers, and made Luoyang my capital. I had squashed revolutions and subdued the Tatars. I had allowed poetry and the arts to flourish and had seen justice triumph. The people were well fed. The world had me to thank for its beauty. Why let the hazy title of Divine Mother Sacred Emperor and the shadowy suggestion of usurpation hover over me? Why should I not formally and enthusiastically take up the mandate offered to me by Heaven?

On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month in the fourth year of the Era of Lowered Arms and Joined Hands, two months after the insurrection led by the royal princes, I broke the ancestral law that forbade women to officiate in the rites of celebration. In the name of the Sacred Emperor, I raised the great imperial parade that had once served my husband. Followed by my son, the Emperor, and his heir, by officials and governor delegates, Barbarian kings, foreign ambassadors, and an entire people in a state of feverish, exalted excitement, I traveled to the banks of the River Luo. There I stepped up onto the altar to the strains of ten thousand musicians playing the fourteen verses of Rejoicing and Veneration-, which I had composed. At the top of this great monument, there were a thousand wild birds, a thousand game birds, a thousand sheep and goats, a thousand bulls and cows, a thousand jars of grain, a thousand jugs of wine, and countless rare creatures sent as gifts by vassal kingdoms; these made up my offering to the goddess of the River Luo who had sent me the divine message.

The very next day Scribe of Loyalty announced that the Temple of Clarity had been completed. The Morning Salutation became an audience granted to the Barbarian ministers and kings.

The sacred building was made up of three circular sections, one on top of the other; it was built on a square platform and looked liked a pagoda on a massive scale. Inside, two hundred and forty millennial trees had been used to support a network of horizontal beams that acted as a base for the pillars on the floor above. Beams and rafters painted with powdered gold were interwoven in an increasingly complicated pattern to reach the vaulted ceiling covered in frescoes depicting the marvels of the gods. Its substantial system of curving roofs covered in varnished blue-green tiles unfurled into the sky. The top of the roof looked down on the entire world from a height never before achieved: 280 cubits, which was twice as high as the tallest imperial palace. Upon it, nine seething golden dragons-gods of the seas and symbols of masculine strength-held up a scarlet phoenix, king of birds and the emblem of the Empress Mother of Heaven. The creature’s wings were set with gemstones that caught the sun’s rays and twinkled dazzlingly up to the clouds.

The sanctuary consecrated to Heaven, to the Kings of the Five Directions, and to the spirits of emperor ancestors, was forbidden to profane eyes; I therefore revealed only the front area intended for imperial receptions. There were twenty-four windows on the third floor representing the twenty-four winds of the four seasons, and twelve on the second floor representing the twelve earthly cycles. The beams of light from these converged on a stage consisting of a disc of celestial turquoise laid on a square of earthly yellow. I climbed the steps and sat on the throne, a simple seat low on the ground, draped with a mat of woven, white satin. But the rays of sunlight playing around me were so bright they might have been hideous dragons, fearless warriors, or an entire celestial army begat by the breath of the gods. The ministers and kings were terrified, and they threw themselves to their knees and prostrated themselves, crying: “The Sacred Emperor is truly a divinity!”