Shan Sa - Empress

Brimming with pride, I announced, “In his lifetime, the previous emperor wanted to raise the Temple of Clarity. On the day of the sanctification on Tai Mountain, that wish received Heaven’s blessing. But the propitious time was a long time coming. Today peace reigns throughout the world, and the people live in plenty. The gods have given me their permission. I have dared to resurrect ancient religion and to turn myth into reality. The Temple of Clarity is a sanctuary intended for Supreme Celebration, a solemn place that shall be venerated by the people. It has been built according to the laws of nature to represent Heaven and Earth, and it drives away demons and absorbs impurities. That is why I shall call it the Sacred Temple of the Ten Thousand Elements. May every man, beast, plant, and mineral on our Earth be protected by it!”

The cheers were still echoing when the year came to an end. Snow fell tender on Luoyang. On New Year’s Day, with my ministers’ approval, I overstepped ancestral law again.

After the purification, I put on the ink-red emperor’s tunics and men’s-style shoes. On my man’s topknot, I wore my husband’s crown decorated with twenty-four tiers of jade pearls. With the jade scepter in my hand and hugging the hopes of an entire people to my breast, I stepped into the heart of the Temple of the Ten Thousand Elements and communed with Heaven and the spirits of the ancestors. After the ceremony, I stood high up by the Gate of Celestial Law to announce the Great Remission of sins and to inaugurate the Era of Eternal Prosperity. Two days later, I gathered my officials in the temple and sat on the sacred throne. In the name of Heaven, I instructed them in the nine virtues. A few days after that, I ordered that the temple be opened to the public and invited my people to visit it. From the top of the Pagoda of Contemplation, I observed with pride a continuous stream of pilgrims form outside the Forbidden City. The previous emperors had all failed. But I, a woman, had been capable of raising the highest temple in history. The rebel princes were right: I was the usurper of men’s dreams.

SCRIBE OF LOYALTY threw himself at my feet: The master monk, Clarity of Law, had just translated the sutra of the Great Cloud in which certain passages justified my position as the master of the earthly world.

“While he was preaching,” Scribe of Loyalty took the scroll from his sleeve and read, “Buddha addressed a celestial daughter named Purity of Heavenlight and said: ”In a former life you once heard the sutra of Great Nirvana. Because of this providential incident, you have taken the form of a celestial being. Now, having heard my teachings, you shall abandon this ethereal body and assume the mortal flesh of a woman. You shall reign over the earth and shall be the bodhisattva who redeems the lowly world.“”

“Sacred Majesty,” my lover cried, “ever since I was called to your service, I have wondered who you were. You are proud yet humble, tormented yet naive. You are deep as the night, limpid as a mirror, ardent as the sun, and icy as the moon. You restore traditions and reinvent codes. You are in the present and navigate through the past while already projecting yourself into the future. You are a woman and a man, one and several, movement and immobility. The better I know you, the more I am amazed by the infinity that lies within you. This sutra of the Great Cloud that has come from India has just revealed your origins: You are that celestial daughter! You are the Savior of the World; you are the bodhisattva of the Future!”

Seeing that I gave no reply, he drew closer on his knees.

“Majesty, do you not remember the distant past when you lived in the kingdom of the skies?”

Images flitted past: I saw myself as a little girl on a big white horse. I was galloping by the banks of the River Long, trying in vain to take off toward the sky in the speed of my mount. With my hands under my chin, I watched the clouds lit up by the setting sun, and then-amid the shadows and flashes of color-I could see palaces with pillars of gold, terraces of mist, and ponds of sapphire. How I longed to be one of those celestial beings clothed in light! I saw myself as a young concubine imprisoned in the gynaeceum with its ten thousand beauties fighting for the favors of just one man. I remembered how ardently I wanted to tear myself away from the earthly world, its pitiful hatred and mediocre frustrations. I saw myself as Empress of China, my topknot crowned with the twenty-four gem-studded golden trees, climbing the steps to the Gate of Serene Loyalty. The officials were cheering, and the sky opened out its expanses of blue above my sovereign head, a pathway to climb toward a world hidden from men and women. I understood my passion for horses, those earthly clouds, and my love of mountains, those staircases toward the gates of Heaven. I understood why I was drawn to heights, why I had the strength to recover when I fell into the abyss, and why I so loved undertaking major constructions: temples, statues, columns, plinths, all reaching toward the zenith. My compassion and my indifference to human misery could now be explained. Throughout this existence, I had been trying to turn my back on Earth to reach Heaven, my homeland, my birthplace.

Scribe of Loyalty withdrew and had the newly translated sutra disclosed. My nephews used the opportunity to instigate my deification. They were impatient to be the imperial household and change my husband’s relations into outsiders. The monasteries of the Great Cloud built in the four corners of the Empire rang their bonze bells, whipping up fervor among the people. As a celestial daughter and bodhisattva who would be Savior of the World, I was hope and happiness and the promise of a better life. From that moment on, the people prayed for my well-being before statues of Buddha Maitreya of the Future who bore my enigmatic smile. They begged me to lead them back to the path of deliverance toward the Heaven of Pure Rejoicing. With this faith, I was ready to defy the ancestors, the deceased, and the living-to become the first woman emperor of all time.

The Tang dynasty, founded by conquerors and sullied by blood and warfare, would be turned like the page of a book. Every form of renewal is a purification. I did away with the calendar of the ancient Xia dynasty and applied the Zhou calendar, used by my glorious ancestors, in which the new year begins in the eleventh moon. I undertook to change the way things were written by publishing a series of new characters including my name, Heavenlight, now represented as the Sun and the Moon carried by the Heavens. My eldest nephew, Piety, had recently been named Great Chancellor of the Left, and while he busied himself trying to alter the course of history, I very quietly suggested my decision to the government: My sacred mission would be accomplished only if I inaugurated a new dynasty based on peace, compassion, and divine justice.

On the morning of the third day of the ninth moon-phase, shouting broke out by the Gate to the Forbidden City and interrupted the morning salutation. The overseeing magistrate, Fu Yu Yi, stepped forward and presented me with a petition signed by the 900 men and women kneeling before the southern entrance. I had the scroll opened; it was covered with signatures, some beautiful, some hideous, others simple thumbprints: “The sky does not have two suns; the earth does not recognize two kings. Your Sacred Majesty must obey the will of the gods who entrust the sovereignty of the Empire to her. Heaven is commanding her to inaugurate a new dynasty, and to gratify her son, her successor, with her name-Wu. So that henceforth her lineage may prosper and illuminate the four seas for eternity.”

Without waiting for a reaction from the high-ranking officials, I dictated my reply: “I, who obey the wishes of the previous emperor; I who am devoted to serving Heaven and who long for peace in the world and joy in the hearts of every people; I am determined to take on my duties without claiming any glory.”