THIS LABOR OF LOVE HAS CONSUMED the better part of a decade. I first mentioned it, in its barest outline, to the late Antonino Forte (1940–2006), my academic idol, when he was a visiting scholar at Harvard in early 2005. I remain ever grateful for his generosity of spirit and encouragement that helped give direction to this monograph. This work also owes a profound debt to the wisdom and the ongoing guidance of Wang Shuanghuai, chair of the Wu Zetian Research Association and professor of Tang history at Shaanxi Normal University, and to his teacher and mentor, Zhao Wenrun, an emeritus professor at Shaanxi Normal. Both have been extremely generous with their time and resources.
Without access to archives and resources, this project might never have been brought to fruition. Thanks to Jiang Sheng at Sichuan University for all his kindness and help during my sabbatical year; to Liang Yongtao from Huangze Temple in Guangyuan; to the staff of the Harvard-Yenching Library; to Smathers Library at the University of Florida; to Qingyang Temple in Chengdu; and to the Research Institute for Middle Antiquity at Beijing University.
Gracious thanks to the University of North Florida for the summer research grant in 2012. I would also like to offer my gratitude to colleagues from the Department of History at the University of North Florida: Charles Closmann for his help in securing my sabbatical and David Courtwright, Theo Prousis, and Alison Bruey for suggestions that helped shape and improve the book proposal. Thanks are also due the university president, John Delaney, for his ongoing support and generosity of spirit. I am indebted to the associates of the Center for Instructional Research Technology at the University of North Florida, particularly to the capable tandem of David Wilson and Michael Boyles, whose digital genius proved exceedingly valuable with formatting images.
My peers and friends from the Southeast Early China Roundtable (SEECR) have patiently and consistently offered thoughts, criticisms, and guidance that has helped further this undertaking—so a duly warm offering of gratitude goes out to Keith Knapp, Jeff Richey, Eric Henry, Andrew Chittick, Cynthia Chennault, Paul Fischer, and all of the other members of SEECR who cheerfully put up with five consecutive conference papers from my seemingly endless “Wu Zhao and ____” series. No more, I promise!
Thanks to my colleague, friend, and brother, Wang Hongjie, as well, who has an uncanny knack for unearthing difficult-to-find sources and seemingly always has an answer to even the most difficult questions. I am grateful, too, for the generous help offered by Dorothy Wong and Anne Kinney. And reverent thanks to Victor Mair for his sage guidance and sound advice.
Thanks, also, to Cambria Press for granting permission to print the chapter on the mother of Laozi, an earlier iteration of which appeared in China and Beyond in the Medieval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-regional Connections. I wish to thank Livia Kohn for allowing me to publish chapter 10, an evolved version of an essay that appeared in the Journal of Daoist Studies. Acknowledgments are also due to Henry Livingston for designing the original artwork that appears in the conclusion and Kelly Carlton, for allowing me to use her photograph of the statue of Wu Zhao in Huangze Temple.
Finally, I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude for Suzanne Cahill’s unrelenting friendship, mentorship, and support. Profound thanks are also due Kyle Fortenberry for his unswerving loyalty and insistent belief. And a profound debt is owed to a wonderful teacher and a great man who had a massive impact upon me: the late K.C. Chang, whose fierce love of myth and lore, of bronze and bone, opened the gates to me a quarter of a century ago.