VARIOUSLY KNOWN AS A DIVINE CREATOR, a savior of mankind, and a mother goddess worthy of an enduring fertility cult, Nüwa 女媧 had gained a mythic repute long before Wu Zhao’s time. Suggesting a close connection to the essential female element of water, the cognate forms of wa or gua indicate a probable linkage to the snail or frog, bespeaking the primordial origins of this deity.1 One contemporary scholar described this ur-mother, often depicted as half snake and half human (a fertile, marshy, and generative matrix that begat mankind), as a “were-snake Daoist goddess.”2 Another commentary tells of a “prestigious lamia” who “outlived the suppression and secularization of the archaic serpent women.”3 Not surprisingly, Wu Zhao discovered a valuable political immediacy in this female sovereign of hoary antiquity; by connecting herself to this mythic avatar, she gained leverage and legitimacy.
Dynamic and mutable, Nüwa played various parts in early texts. One scholar sees her as an evolution of a directional goddess who appeared on oracle bones in the Shang, a deified shamaness, rainmaker, and fertility spirit.4 Though textual evidence intimates much earlier origins, Nüwa first appears by name in Elegies of Chu (Chuci 楚 辞), a Warring States–era text attributed to poet-official, Qu Yuan (343–278 B.C.), wherein the author poses the question: “How was Nü Wa’s body made? How did she ascend when she rose on High and became empress?”5 Andrew Plaks provides a provocative alternative translation—“Who created Nü-kua if she created mankind?”6—stating explicitly the challenge posed by a female creator divinity to patriarchal currents in later eras. Acknowledging the goddess’s archaic reputation as a prolific mother-creator, annotator Wang Yi (A.D. 89–158) remarks, “It was said that Nüwa had the head of a human being and the body of a snake and she gave birth to seventy offspring each day.”7
In the Daoist Liezi 列子, a text whose dating is problematic but whose origins stem from early in the Warring States era, Nüwa is said to have “harbored the virtues of the great sages,” though she lacked human form. She was cast as a savior of mankind, known for “smelting the five-colored stones to fill the holes in heaven, and breaking the legs of a turtle to support the four corners of the earth.”8 Not only was she recognized for restoring the equilibrium of a world out of kilter, but she was also known for taming the flood, stanching the inundating waters with ash and burned reeds.9
Compiled by Liu An (179–122 B.C.), the Huainanzi 淮南子 contains the passage, “Huangdi gave birth to yin and yang; Shang Pian to ears and eyes, and Sang Lin to arms and hands—events which were among the seventy transformations of Nü Wa.”10 Contemporary scholar Cai Junsheng reasonably points out that this transformation indicates that Nüwa not only predated but helped fashion the Yellow Emperor.11 Dating from roughly a century later, the Classic of Mountains and Seas describes ten gods born from the guts of Nüwa.12 In Ying Shao’s (140–206) Eastern Han text, Comprehensive Commentary on Popular Customs (Fengsu tongyi 風俗通議), Nüwa was a creatrix, fashioning human beings from yellow earth.13 These myths make clear that by the end of the Han dynasty, Nüwa was revered as a creator goddess. Schafer compares her to Nabatean Atargatis, “a cosmic mother goddess, with power over the fertility of living things.”14
In Han mortuary iconography, this primeval goddess is often paired with a male divinity, her brother-husband Fuxi, their serpentine tails intertwined. As in the relief mural in the famous Wu Liang shrine in Shandong, Fuxi frequently holds a carpenter’s square and Nüwa a compass, tools to fashion a world for infant humanity.15 Painted on funerary banners and graven in relief on sarcophagi from the Han through the Tang, Nüwa and Fuxi were worshipped as primordial creators, guardian spirits and “tutelary genii of the dead.”16 Lee Irwin observes that Nüwa’s signature compass serves as a symbol of social organization, marking her not only as a creator goddess, but also as “a goddess of proportion and measurement,” vital to both architecture and hydro-engineering.17
Still, Anne Birrell, Edward Schafer, and others have noted that the autonomy and power she had possessed as a primeval goddess was diminished by the rise of the Confucian state.18 Cai Junsheng echoes a similar argument, opining, “At the time of the patriarchal clan in China, Nü Wa’s activities seem to cease, and she ‘died.’”19 Once yoked to male figures, powerful female divinities like Nüwa and the Queen Mother of the West were forced to fit into a yin-yang schema during the Han and thereby were domesticated, diminished by emergent patriarchal mores.
Between the third and sixth centuries, the cult of Nüwa became virtually obsolete. In Ancient China, Edward Schafer contends that after the fall of the Han, Nüwa “faded to become a mere fairy tale being, neglected by the upper classes and ignored in state religion.”20 Yet rumors of her demise may have been exaggerated. When Cai Junsheng claims that Nüwa had “died,” or Schafer asserts that “by Tang times she [Nüwa] was little remembered except by the poets, sometimes as a phantom in folktales and as a minor figure in local cults,”21 they understate the goddess’s enduring cultural resonance.
In Tang China, a powerful aura surrounding this archaic figure lingered. In an underground tomb from Wu Zhao’s era, 1,600 miles west of her capital Luoyang, a painted silken funerary banner depicts Nüwa and Fuxi intertwined, with the goddess holding a compass, an instrument of celestial observation and symbol of the heavens.22 A barrow mound next to the Yellow River bearing the name Tumulus of Nüwa that temporarily disappeared in 752 during the decadent late reign of Wu Zhao’s grandson Xuanzong (r. 712–756), reemerged during the An Lushan Rebellion, prompting a diviner to observe ominously, “When graves and tombs move of themselves, the terrestrial realm will be shattered.”23 In contrast, transcendent poet Li Bo still recalled Nüwa as a creatress:
Nüwa played with the yellow earth,
Patting it into ignorant, inferior man.24
During the Tang dynasty, myth and history, legend and fact were frequently conflated. Whether to lavish praise upon an imperial patron or to cast seraphic radiance on a courtesan-lover, effusive Tang poets liberally sprinkled the names of Nüwa or other female divinities in their verse.25
Naturally, Wu Zhao availed herself of the numinous remnants of this powerful mother divinity. Literary masters vied to draw elegant associations between the goddess of antiquity and the female ruler, reviving the moribund cult of Nüwa in the process.
“REPAIRING THE SKY” WITH THE HELP OF A PAIR OF LITERARY MASTERS
In the Huainanzi, amid an apocalyptic age when the barriers separating men and spirits had broken, Nüwa smelted five-colored stones to suture the sky (bu tian 補天). She severed the feet of a giant sea turtle to serve as pillars separating the earthly and heavenly realms, overwhelming a roiling, man-devouring dragon, and mounded ash to dam a churning freshet, delivering countless millions.26 Her single-handed efforts to “mend the sky” helped shape Nüwa’s image as a culture hero and savior of mankind.
To exalt their patron and sovereign, Wu Zhao’s rhetoricians alluded to the primordial divinity’s endeavors. Sundered by a string of catastrophes that struck the heart of the empire in the late 670s and early 680s, the metaphorical sky was in drastic need of mending. Gaozong, Wu Zhao’s husband and coruler, was dying. In 679, an empire-wide cattle pestilence contributed to widespread famine.27 On the fringes of the empire, Tibetans, Khitan, and Tujue Turks instigated a series of disturbances. In 681, there were widespread reports of earthquakes, floods, and droughts. During succeeding springs, in several prefectures on the northern fringe of the realm, millions of rabbits devoured seedlings before disappearing into thin air.28 In the heart of the realm, a plague of locusts descended upon the crops, causing grain prices to skyrocket. As famine swept across the Yellow River, “the dead pillowed on each other in the streets of the two capitals [Chang’an and Luoyang],” and people resorted to cannibalism.29
In early 684, shortly after Gaozong’s death, master rhetorician Cui Rong (653–706) delivered an encomium on behalf of the officials in Chang’an. Framing Grand Dowager Wu Zhao’s regency as an auspicious new era foreshadowed by a long parade of sage monarchs, he wrote:
Your official has heard that when the ruler acts with absolute virtue, auspicious tokens appear announcing the presence of a sage. When the ruler accords with the great dao, all of the numina respond. Therefore, with the actions of Yao and Shun, the Five Elders roamed the shoals of the Yellow River. With the ascendancy of King Wu of Zhou, the Four Divinities wandered the settlements of the Luo. Humbly considering your great achievement in mending the sky, Your Majesty, august Grand Dowager, has matched the earth in respectful eminence. In administering the empire, Your Majesty has devised and established a new foundation. As a result of obeying the will of heaven and acting in harmony with the people, Your Majesty has obtained extraordinary accomplishments.30
Cui Rong’s effusive terms depict Wu Zhao as a sage possessing virtue akin to the female element earth, and merit matching savior-goddess Nüwa, the divinity evoked indirectly by his mention of “sky-mending.” Tellingly, Cui also surrounds Nüwa with a complement of worthies from the familiar set of male political ancestors—Yao, Shun, and King Wu of Zhou. In 684, Wu Zhao had just become grand dowager, and a sudden, radical departure from the familiar procession of culture heroes would have compromised rather than enhanced her authority.
Cui Rong became one of Wu Zhao’s most important propagandists, rarely missing an opportunity to elegantly evoke the connection between his patron and members of her pantheon of female political ancestors. One of the aesthetic masters in a group that became known as the “literary quartet of friends” (wenzhang si you 文章四友), Cui Rong was discovered by Wu Zhao (then empress) when but a young prodigy excelling in the examinations.31 Late in her reign, Wu Zhao asked Cui Rong to compile and edit a national history (guoshi 國史),32 clearly demonstrating her trust in and esteem for him. After her death, Cui Rong wrote Wu Zhao’s eulogy along with the “veritable records” (shi lu 實錄) for her reign.33
When Wu Zhao’s authority as grand dowager had solidified several years later, Li Qiao (644–713)—another member of the literary quartet who emerged as an important rhetorician—compared her to Nüwa in a congratulatory memorial. His lavish panegyric reads: “her imperium is more exalted than the mending of the sky; her motherly virtue matches that of the earth.”34 By grandiose analogy, Wu Zhao’s rule as grand dowager had brought about peace and stability, a remedy to the turmoil and calamities that beset the realm during Gaozong’s final years. As with Cui Rong, Wu Zhao held Li Qiao in the highest esteem, specially ordering him to draft the most important compositions in court.35 Eventually, he rose to chief minister in the later stages of her Zhou dynasty.36
When Wu Zhao was emperor, Li Qiao wrote the inscription for the stele of the Buddhist Great Cloud Monastery in Xuanzhou (in modern-day Anhui), which included the following lines: “She entered riding a mare, but now pilots flying dragons. From the scattered sands of dynastic decline she has forged the stones of Nüwa to repair Heaven.”37 Here, Li Qiao deftly employs the metaphor of repairing heaven to depict Wu Zhao as a latter-day Nüwa, a redeemer/heroine who remedied the ills of a chaotic, decadent time.
In conjunction with Wu Zhao’s political ascendancy, Cui Rong and Li Qiao’s references to “mending the sky” helped rhetorically merge divinity and earthly ruler. Like Nüwa before her, Wu Zhao delivered mankind from primeval chaos. Nüwa’s name and achievements are no longer safely ensconced among the deeds of storied male political ancestors. By the later stages of her tenure as grand dowager, Wu Zhao’s gender as a ruler was no longer concealed: instead, Nüwa was rhetorically employed to celebrate and amplify Wu Zhao’s status as a female ruler.
NÜWA AS EMPRESS AND DOWAGER: AN INTERMEDIATE DANCE STEP
After Gaozong was interred at Qianling in late 684, libations were presented to the recently deceased emperor, set to a musical score entitled “Harmonizing with Heaven” (Juntian 鈞天).38 Nüwa appears in the lyrics for the ritual dance that accompanied the music. This score was written at an extremely sensitive political juncture. In the second month of 684, with the support of a group of chief ministers, acting regent Grand Dowager Wu Zhao had removed her son, Li Xiǎn 李顯 (Zhongzong 中宗, r. 684 and 705–710), from the throne after just seven weeks as emperor. His nominal replacement, her youngest son Ruizong 睿宗 (r. 684–690 and 710–712), was sent to the Eastern Palace, usually the apartments of the crown prince. Wu Zhao presided over the court. She made decisions of state. In the fourth month, she exiled the deposed Zhongzong, Li Xiǎn, to Fangzhou (modern-day Hubei). In the ninth month, she launched a series of reforms to assay the temper of the court and the wider empire beyond. She changed the colors of court robes and banners to golden to match the Zhou dynasty of antiquity, altered names of offices to echo archaic designations, and declared Luoyang her Divine Capital (Shendu 神都).39 Richard Guisso terms such measures “closely akin to those usually preceding a new dynasty,”40 intimating Wu Zhao’s future intent to assume the throne. These steps set many in court and country on edge; a spate of rebellions broke out, though they were quickly quashed.41
These tensions made it all the more vital to broadcast an aura of ritual tranquility and stability. Recalling Gaozong’s rule with purposeful, fond nostalgia, the lyrics to the “Dance to Harmonize with Heaven” are recorded in the “Treatise of Music” in the Old Tang History:
The Exalted Sovereign marches in synchronicity with the dao;
in ceremonial garb, hands folded, he governs with effortless action.
He transformed and embraced the wild steppe tribes;42
his armies conquered the Korean peninsula.43
In ceremony, he reverently performed the feng and shan rites;44
in music, his splendid performances were regulated congregations of harmony.
Jointly enthroned with Empress Wa 娲后,
he might well be called Fuxi.
Gaozong is categorically identified with Fuxi. Grand dowager Wu Zhao was cast as his consort and coruler, Nüwa. The ceremonial dance expressly remarks that they were “jointly enthroned” (he wei 合位), sharing the position of ruler. And yet, not wanting to alienate Li-Tang loyalists in the court or undermine her position as dowager-regent by a rash and sudden claim to emperorship, Wu Zhao/Nüwa is still presented as an empress (hou 后) rather than as a sovereign (huang 皇). Perhaps to assuage fears, Wu Zhao/Nüwa is not yet independent, but remains partnered with a Gaozong/Fuxi. Political and military highlights of Gaozong’s career are recalled, though these events also redounded to the merit of living de facto ruler Wu Zhao. She, too, had played a starring role in the feng and shan rites at Mount Tai.
The lyric “regulated congregations of harmony” (laiyi 來儀) is connected with the phoenix (fenghuang 鳳凰), a symbol of female imperial power that Wu Zhao utilized extensively.45
SAGELY AND DIVINE
Emphasizing the deity’s role as a fertility goddess and creatress, the Shuowen jiezi, an etymological dictionary from the Western Han, defines Nüwa as the “Divine and Sagely (shen sheng 神聖) woman who gave birth to all living things on earth”46—an additional facet of the divinity Wu Zhao sought to emulate. In the years leading up to her establishment of the Zhou, she cast herself in the image of a sagacious mother-creator.
According to Sima Guang’s Comprehensive Mirror for the Advancement of Governance (Zizhi tongjian), in 572 an official of Qi attempted to persuade the court to install Lu Lingxuan as grand dowager–regent with the argument, “Though Lu is a woman, she is nonetheless both puissant and outstanding. Since Nüwa, there has been no such woman.” In Hu Sanxing’s (1230–1302) Yuan-era commentary on the text, he cites a remark of Sima Zhen (679–732), a contemporary of Wu Zhao who served primarily under her grandson Xuanzong: “Nüwa was her customary name. In virtue, she was divine and sagely. She replaced Fuxi on the throne. She was also called Nüxi.”47 For Sima Zhen, “sagely” and “divine”—Nüwa’s traits in the Shuowen jiezi—remained attributes of the goddess. It is no surprise they had a familiar ring: The female emperor of his own time had borne the same terms in several of her titles.
In Wu Zhao’s progressively grander titles, both shen 神 (divine) and sheng 聖 (sagely, saintly) played central conceptual roles. On the summer solstice in 688, presiding over the court as grand dowager Wu Zhao adopted the title Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign (Shengmu shenhuang 聖母神皇), a vital intermediate step on her path to emperorship.48 On behalf of the court ministers, Cui Rong presented a commemoration urging her to assume this honorific designation. In this memorial, he accentuated the “mother” in her new title, framing Wu Zhao’s maternity in broad, inclusive strokes. He both styled her a mother of empire and couched her authority as Sage Mother in a longer lineage of female worthies who had administered or shared in the governance of the state. At the start, Cui cites the initial passage of Laozi’s Daodejing—“the named was the mother of the myriad creatures.”49 The petition continues:
Without the mother (mu 母), compassionate love cannot fill the boundaries,
Without the Sovereign (huang 皇), there is no one to lead and transform the empire.50
With this new title, Wu Zhao played two complementary roles: all-embracing, compassionate mother and capable, potent sovereign-father. In traditional China, the terse phrase “stern father and compassionate mother” (yanfu cimu 嚴父慈母) is often used to delineate respective parental roles.
In a subsequent passage in this same peroration, Cui Rong once again makes manifest these twinned aspects—the sagely and the divine—remarking:
Examining into antiquity, the Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign:
Where yin and yang harmonize, where perspicacious virtue is born;
Where sun and moon are conjoined, where the wandering spirits descend:
This is her home.
The Turquoise Terrace of the Woman of Yusong:
This is her rightful place.51
Based on the phrase “examining into antiquity” (ji gu 稽古), the first part of this passage appears to refer not to Wu Zhao herself but to her namesake Sage Mother, Nüwa. Strikingly, there is no Fuxi. This primordial ur-mother occupied a space that contained—and implicitly contained within herself—both sun and moon and both male and female essences. Naturally, this role of androgynous creator, of hermaphroditic god, extended to Wu Zhao. The manifest purpose of Cui Rong’s rhetoric was to exalt her person. The Woman of Yusong is Jiandi, who, after eating the egg of a dark bird, gave birth to Shang founder Xie.52 The first ancestor of every dynasty had to be born of divine means: if produced by union of man and woman, he would not be first ancestor. Male political ancestors—Fuxi, Di Ku (Jiandi’s husband), and Xie—are conspicuously absent. Light irradiates only the female progenitor.
Subsequently, Nüwa appears again in Cui Rong’s memorial:
Nüwa was a manifestation of divinity,
And still she administered as emperor in distant antiquity.
Taisi had a spotless reputation,
And still she alone took it upon herself to mother the exalted Zhou.53
Once again, Nüwa was the first link in a chain of “mothers of antiquity,” a divine woman who generously deigned to descend and preside over mankind. This time, rather than the first Shang ancestress Jiandi, Nüwa followed Taisi, consort of legendary King Wen.54 Eminently sensitive to the fluctuating political tides, lyric by lyric, verse by verse, Cui Rong helped assemble—one might even argue, create—Wu Zhao’s lineage of female political ancestors.
EMPEROR WA AND THE INAUGURATION OF THE ZHOU
Yang Lien-sheng once remarked that there were only two instances in which women became emperors in Chinese history: the first being Nüwa, who “lived in such remote antiquity that her story does not seem to be reliable,” and the latter Wu Zhao, “the Empress Zetian of the Tang dynasty.”55
Nüwa’s elevation to emperor seems to be fairly late. Many early texts enumerate the legendary Three Sovereigns (Sanhuang 三皇) of antiquity, culture heroes who founded Chinese civilization and ruled men. There is some contention over their identity. Most often, these three were Fuxi, Suiren (the creator of fire), and Shennong, the Divine Farmer.56 Beginning in the late Eastern Han, however, Nüwa often replaced Suiren or Shennong. In the opening chapter of Ying Shao’s Comprehensive Commentary on Popular Customs, “On Emperors and Rulers,” he relates that “Fuxi, Nüwa, and Shennong were the Three Emperors.”57
Nüwa’s paramount position as sovereign was still recognized in the early Tang. A temple stele inscription composed by Zhu Zizhu (d. 640), an official in the late Sui and early Tang, contains the passage “mending stones in the time of Emperor Wa 媧皇.”58 The first reference in the standard histories to Nüwa as Emperor Wa appears in editorial (579–648) comments at the end of a biography in the History of Jin (Jin shu), completed in 648, during the reign of Taizong.59 In an imperial edict that same year proposing to perform the feng and shan rites on Mount Tai, the celebrated Taizong, the Tang paragon of masculinity and political authority, addressed Nüwa as Emperor Wa, apparently with neither compunction nor qualms. The emperor declared:
We have heard that heaven is high and earth is vast. The first to disseminate the myriad peoples were Emperor Wa and Suiren. They commenced to reverently deliberate on the Mysterious Register.60
Unabashedly, Taizong acknowledged Nüwa’s emperorship in a public declaration to the court, not hesitating to evoke her position as a woman sovereign and her mystic role as a benevolent, generative force. For Taizong and his court, there was nothing anti-Confucian or emasculating about Nüwa’s preeminent role. As a Talent (Cairen 才人), a fifth-ranked concubine, in Taizong’s vast seraglio at the time, Wu Zhao perhaps gleaned an important lesson about the rhetorical force of language. If the inclusion of Nüwa could make the ceremonial plea of a male ruler more compelling, then surely the mother goddess might amplify her authority and sovereignty.
Three decades later, Taizong’s son Gaozong rose from his deathbed and, unable to ride his horse to Zetian Gate to make a public announcement, took the unorthodox measure of gathering a group of commoners before the imperial basilica to promulgate an edict on 27 December 683 that changed the reign name to Amplifying the Dao.61 The edict situates Nüwa as the originating link in the familiar lineage of male culture heroes:
Revering the Dao, the ruler dwells in the Purple Tenuity, letting his robes hang loose.62 Cultivating virtue, the minister exhaustively uses his loyal heart as a grindstone. When the higher maintains proper conduct, the lower respects ritual protocol—this is called edification. Only when one deviates from the path of purity, loyalty, and trustworthiness do things gradually deteriorate. In remote antiquity, though Nüwa, Suiren, and Fuxi ruled without active governance the realm was transformed. Later, the Yellow Emperor, Zhuanxu, Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang the Successful, King Wen, and King Wu all acted with absolute public-mindedness and great benevolence.63
Nüwa was not just one of the Three Sovereigns of distant antiquity: she was the first, foremost among a lineage of political ancestors including both sexes. In the inaugural address for this new era, Nüwa was not only independent from Fuxi—she preceded him as an independent ruler, the first of the Three Sovereigns of antiquity. She therefore becomes the first link in the proud concatenation of subsequent male rulers. Given that Gaozong died the night the new reign era was announced, it seems likely that Wu Zhao, acting as regent during her husband’s convalescence, was behind this document. While this edict anticipated Wu Zhao’s ascent to the imperial throne by more than six years, it served as a pointed and timely reminder that a woman had occupied the dragon throne once, and a woman could occupy it again.
It has previously been noted that in a memorial congratulating Grand Dowager Wu Zhao on her elevation to Sage Mother in 688, literary master Cui Rong pointedly remarked, Nüwa had “administered as emperor in distant antiquity.”64 Not surprisingly, once she formally ascended the throne as emperor in 690, her talented coterie of propagandists echoed with greater frequency, in edict and verse, the mythic name of Nüwa, the female ruler from the remote past. In “Panegyric for the Great Zhou Receiving the Mandate,” Chen Zi’ang (661–702) praised her inauguration of the Zhou dynasty in 690, comparing Wu Zhao to Nüwa, writing: “Great indeed was the divine merit of Nüxi [Nüwa], but nothing is grander than this day!”
One of the foremost literary and poetic practitioners of Wu Zhao’s era, Chen Zi’ang (like Cui Rong and Li Qiao) played an important role in fashioning a distinctive political vocabulary for his sovereign. In a series of memorials and panegyrics, he floridly celebrated prominent markers of her political ascendancy like the establishment of her Divine Capital Luoyang65 and her construction of the Bright Hall (Mingtang 明堂),66 in the process singing the praises of her new Zhou dynasty.
In the same panegyric extolling the inauguration of the Zhou, Chen Zi’ang later invoked Nüwa:
Heaven has ordered the Divine Phoenix
to descend and bless my Zhou.
Its color and appearance inspire reverence;
Surpassingly auspicious, its graceful deportment.
Only we have the Zhou
That so truly preserves the virtue of heaven.
When the former emperor [Gaozong] was on the verge of death,
He bequeathed [to her] the Imperium.
And the people said, “Heaven has blessed us
that we have this Emperor Nüxi [Nüwa]!
She has created the firmament and fixed the distant boundaries [of empire];
To distantly resound her glorious reputation.
Majestic our August Emperor,
The foremost, so admirable!
If not for heaven’s mandate,
Then toward whom would the phoenix gravitate?”67
The association between Wu Zhao and Nüwa, according to Chen Zi’ang in this ornate tribute, is announced in the joyful collective exclamation of the populace. In Chen’s vision, Wu Zhao, like Nüwa before her, was not merely founding a new dynasty, but forging a new world.
EVOKING THE NAME OF NÜWA
An essay of Li Shangyin (813–858) from the late Tang contains a conversation in which the fictitious Wife of Yidu admonishes Wu Zhao to recall the proper respective positions of female yin and male yang. Li Shangyin’s fictional woman poses the rhetorical question, “My ruler knows that in the past the female was inferior to the male?” The female ruler rejoins, “Yes, I know.” “In antiquity Nüwa did not formally become Son of Heaven, she only assisted Fuxi in administering the Nine Provinces,” the Wife of Yidu continues. At this juncture, her line of reasoning unexpectedly swerves. Rather than conforming to Confucian boilerplate by indicating that Wu Zhao, like Nüwa in the past, should accommodate the principles of yin and yang and occupy a proper, lesser position, she asserts that unlike Nüwa, Wu Zhao is a “true Son of Heaven”—an emperor. She advises her to get rid of her male concubines, who will drain her of her yin energies. If Wu Zhao heeds her, Li Shangyin’s Wife of Yidu contends, “Male [power] will be progressively pared down and women will increasingly monopolize authority. This is my wish.”68 Just as a stalwart Confucian minister concerned with the well-being of the state might stridently attempt to dissuade a male ruler from being drawn into the sensual inner quarters of women, where he would compromise his sociopolitical vigor, so this female advisor urged Wu Zhao not to enfeeble herself—politically or sexually—by excessive contact with her male harem.69
DRAGONSPAWN: A TANTALIZING TALE FROM GUANGYUAN
Wu Zetian was reputedly born in Lizhou, a prefecture based in modern-day Guangyuan, a city tucked in the rugged mountains of northeastern Sichuan. She is still honored there today with an annual 1 September Empress Day (Nü’er jie 女兒節, lit. Daughters’ Day) celebration featuring colorful phoenix boat competitions with all-women crews on the Jialing River. In Guangyuan’s Buddhist Huangze Temple stands an image of the apotheosized Wu Zhao crafted in the Later Shu 後蜀 (934–965).70
Local legend claims that one day Wu Zhao’s father Wu Shiyue (577–635) was boating with his wife, née Yang (579–670), on the Jialing River, when a black dragon surged out of the waters and implanted itself in the shocked woman’s womb. Falling into a semiconscious swoon, Yang dreamed that she was entangled in intercourse with the river dragon. Soon, she discovered that she was pregnant. The resulting child was Wu Zhao, a demi-dragon descended to earth. Just as Nüwa, the female emperor from ancient lore, was often depicted as half snake (or half dragon), so this legend framed Wu Zhao as a supernal being, a “true dragon, Son of Heaven” (zhenlong tianzi 真龍天子).71
Not only does this legend illustrate a connection between Wu Zhao, Nüwa, and the totemic dragon, but it also situates the medieval female sovereign within a symbolic line of Chinese dragon-rulers. The Yellow Emperor of antiquity had a draconian aspect72 and Han founder Gaozu was the reputed issue of a similar union.73 Routinely, Chinese rulers donned dragon robes to drive home their connection to this culturally resonant totemic beast.
When a direct confrontation with Wu Zhao was dangerous or inadvisable, ideological opponents could denigrate her proxy, Nüwa. Accordingly, a rhetorical dismissal of the creator goddess often served as a pointed, thinly veiled criticism of Wu Zhao herself. In 685, Li Shenji, a member of a lesser branch of the imperial family serving as assistant magistrate of Jiyuan County (in modern-day Henan province), composed a stele inscription that exalted recently deceased Gaozong while omitting all praise for the grand dowager. The work represents a clear effort to connect the Li family donors both to the Daoist geography of the region and Gaozong. The sacrosanct Daoist landscape of Henei is presented as follows: “Mountains are connected to Mount Wangwu, via the Clear Barrens (Grotto) Heaven; settlements are belted to the Blissful Garden, much like the grounds of Laixiang.”74 Later, amplifying Gaozong, Li Shenji remarks: “The Grand Emperor’s divine merit is without flaw.” 75 Laozi and Gaozong are the dual recipients of the inscription, while Wu Zhao and female political ancestors are conspicuously absent.
The aforementioned inscription was written in the immediate aftermath of the revolt of Li princes in late 684. More than 250 members of the Tang imperial family contributed to the project. The Li family members specifically mentioned in the inscription—Li Deyi, Li Ruyi, and Li Gongxie—appear nowhere else in historical records. Perhaps this is because Wu Zhao, as grand dowager and in her first years as emperor, targeted them in her extensive purge of the Li family. Disgruntled members of the Tang imperial family, especially those so close to the capital during this precarious period of incubation, posed a threat.
The tone of this stele inscription from Fengxian Observatory in Jiyuan exalted the Li family, rallying its scattered members in the aftermath of the failed uprising and recalling their glorious descent from Laozi. In addition, the inscription lauds Zhongzong, deposed in 684, while disparaging Wu Zhao:
The Emperor’s heir has protected the grand foundation of state,
Illumining the perspicacious path of Wu Ding;76
In mending rent heavens and smelting colored stones,
He overwhelms and quells Emperor Wa.
Passing the remote corners of the earth, he contributes precious jasper;
He overtakes and captures Empress Ji 姬后.77
The emperor celebrated in the inscription is Gaozong. His rightful heir, in the eyes of Li family and Tang loyalists, was the recently deposed Li Xiǎn, Zhongzong. These lines sing the demoted emperor’s praises, pointedly framing him as one who outstrips these eminent women, past and present, in virtue and capability. Rather than an incompetent and pathetic exile languishing in Fangzhou, the powerful champion of Li Shenji’s imagination rivals Wu Ding, the ruler who restored the Shang dynasty; he is a potent hero capable of galvanizing the fragmented Li clan, one who might best Nüwa at her own game of “mending the heavens,” stabilizing a realm rent by chaos. For good measure, this fantasy of a strong male emperor then excels Empress Ji, the consort of King Wen, founder of the Zhou dynasty of antiquity. The triumph over Nüwa and capture of King Wen’s consort in the inscription reflect Li Shenji’s powerful wish to overwhelm and crush the grand dowager and regent Wu Zhao, restoring his Li kinsmen to what he construed as their rightful position. The collective wishes of the Li clansmen, though graven in stone, did not come true; feckless Li Xiǎn remained in exile while Wu Zhao rose to power.
Once again, nearly two decades later, Wu Zhao’s political antagonists deployed the ancient ur-mother Nüwa to undermine her modern-day avatar. And, as twenty years before, the underlying intent was the same: to restore Zhongzong and bring about the end of Wu Zhao’s political prominence. Su Anheng aggressively remonstrated on several occasions to pressure Wu Zhao to abdicate.78 In 701, in his mild “First Petition to Reinstall the Crown Prince as Emperor,” Su Anheng writes: “Humbly observing the time of Nüwa, it was an era when customs were simple and straightforward. People were honest and easily administered. The ruler might simply sit with robes hanging and hands folded, and nothing needed to be said.”79 By framing Nüwa’s sovereignty as rule over a simple, pastoral state in a primitive time, Su Anheng tacitly downplayed the efficacy of both Nüwa and Wu Zhao. The implication was that the complex, cosmopolitan empire of the early eighth century required the steady, strong hand of a male ruler.
Su Anheng argued by historical analogy that whereas Wu Zhao had served as regent and emperor for two decades, even Empress Lü (241–180 B.C.) of the Western Han had acted as dowager-regent for but eight years when Emperor Hui (r. 195–188 B.C.) was young and infirm, before ceding power back to him. Gently yet firmly, the petition claimed that the time had come for Wu Zhao to retire, to voluntarily abdicate the throne to her mature and worthy son.80 A series of increasingly strident memorials ensued in an effort to oust the septuagenarian ruler from her throne.81 Emboldened, the cheeky minister had the temerity to suggest that Wu Zhao “occupied the position of Yao and Shun, but did not follow the moral path of Yao and Shun,” that “coveting her son’s precious throne,” she had “forgotten the deep kindness of a mother.”82
CONCLUSION
Nüwa’s presence in Wu Zhao’s political rhetoric can be understood as a part of a wider strategy to include female paragons from antiquity, the illustrious repertoire of women who collectively helped legitimate and magnify her imperial authority. After all, versatile Nüwa numbered among the company of what Mark Lewis terms the “potent, wonder-working rulers at the heart of imposing order and definition on a world that otherwise collapsed into chaos.”83 Indeed, Nüwa—with the arguable exception of the Queen Mother of the West—was the only female ruler-divinity in Chinese tradition of whom such a claim might be made. In the capable hands of Wu Zhao and her propagandists, Nüwa, no longer paired with Fuxi, was largely liberated from restrictive brackets of dualistic Han Confucianism. So freed, this woman emperor and creator from shadowy antiquity now became a political ancestress of her latter-day heir and avatar, Wu Zhao. Framed with flamboyant elegance by Wu Zhao’s most capable propagandists—aesthetic masters like Cui Rong, Li Qiao, and Chen Zi’ang—the affiliation of goddess and ruler was broadcast widely: carved on monumental stelae, announced to the court via memorials, and reiterated time and again in Wu Zhao’s majestic imperial titles.
Alternatively, for men like Su Anheng, belittling Nüwa was part of an aggressive rhetorical campaign to undermine Wu Zhao’s potency as a sovereign, to persuade the embattled woman emperor to relinquish the throne.
