THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES THE RISE and fall of the cult of Wei Huacun 魏華存 (252–334), Lady of the Southern Marchmount (Nanyue furen 南岳夫人), during Wu Zhao’s decades as empress, grand dowager, and emperor. As we have seen, Wu Zhao, possessing surpassing political acumen, was acutely responsive to shifting ideological climes; tempered by political circumstance, her measured patronage of Daoism ebbed and surged. The women who composed her pantheon were not static dramatis personae. At various junctures along the arc of her political career, the particular qualities that emanated from the different divinities and eminent women became more or less desirable, expedient, and efficacious.
As empress and to a lesser extent as grand dowager, Wu Zhao honored Lady Wei alongside a pantheon of other female Daoist divinities. Once emperor, however, even when the perfect opportunity arose, Wu Zhao chose not to publicly magnify the cult of Lady Wei.
LADY OF THE SOUTHERN MARCHMOUNT
Wei Huacun was a signal figure of medieval Daoism. Many hagiographies of this celebrated Daoist divinity have been written: James Robson, drawing on the work of Isabel Robinet, lists no fewer than twenty-five!1 Du Guangting’s biography of the foremost Daoist goddess, the Queen Mother of the West, contains a curious story connecting Lady Wei to the renowned Daoist center Maoshan (Mount Mao, in Jurong County, near Nanjing in modern-day Jiangsu), the seat of Shangqing 上清 (Highest Clarity) Daoism. According to this source, 250 years before her birth, Lady Wei visited mortal Mao Ying (who would emerge as god of Mount Mao and patron deity of Shangqing Daoism), and remained behind as his “divine wife.”2 Isabel Robinet refers to Lady Wei as a master of Daoist liturgical practice, the “first patriarch” of the Shangqing movement.3 Perhaps more aptly, Russell Kirkland and Livia Kohn dub Lady Wei Shangqing’s “first matriarch.”4
The mortal Wei Huacun heralded from Rencheng in Shandong, born to a wealthy office-holding family in the Jin dynasty. Even while married to a local office-holder, as an adept in the Celestial Masters (Tianshi 天師), she served as a libationer (jijiu 祭酒). With the chaos that ended the Western Jin, her family fled to Jianye (near Nanjing). After her two sons rose to become officials, she devoted herself single-mindedly to Daoist wanderings, cultivating the dao near Linchuan (in modern-day Jiangxi), and ultimately attaining it at the Southern Marchmount.5
Hagiographies record that after sloughing off her mortal form in 334, Lady Wei became a female immortal, joining other Daoist divinities like the Queen Mother of the West and revealing scripture to male devotees like mystic Yang Xi (330–386). In Daoist chronicler Tao Hongjing’s (452–536) Declarations of the Perfected (Zhen’gao 真誥), the apotheosized Wei Huacun received the titles of Lady of the Southern Marchmount and Primordial Ruler of the Purple Vacuity (Zixu yuanjun 紫虚元君).6 By the early Tang, she had developed into a major revelatory deity revered locally and nationally.
With the rise of Tang, given the ruling Li family’s fictive kin connection to Daoist sage Laozi, a wide pantheon of Daoist divinities blossomed. As her popular and liturgical reputation broadened in the centuries following her death, Wei Huacun became widely regarded as a cultic figure.
There is strong circumstantial evidence that during the reign of Gaozong, the Two Sages promoted Shangqing Daoism and the cult of Lady Wei.7 Gaozong and Wu Zhao ardently supported the Daoist establishment: they patronized efforts to compile a Daoist canon, oversaw widespread construction of state-sponsored monasteries, bestowed titles upon Daoist divinities, and ordained imperial family members.8 In 662, Gaozong ordered the construction of a Highest Clarity Palace atop Mount Mang near Luoyang. When the palace was completed, a manifestation of divine Laozi appeared.9 In 674, Gaozong took the title Celestial Emperor and Wu Zhao became Celestial Empress, drawing loosely on a tradition of Daoist kingship.10
In Gaozong’s final years, both celestial sovereigns embraced Daoism with a greater fervor, reflected in their support of Wang Xuanhe (fl. late seventh century), a Daoist chronicler whose works focused on “production of encyclopedias and integrative summaries of the religion.”11 At this critical time of the integration and synthesis of Daoist teachings, Wang composed two of the numerous hagiographies celebrating the emergence of Wei Huacun as a cultic divinity: Realities and Categories of Highest Clarity (Shangqing daolei shixiang 上清道類事相), an encyclopedia of Daoist practices and institutions, and A Bag of Pearls from the Three Caverns (Sandong zhunang 三洞珠囊), a miscellany on everything from celebrated Daoist practitioners and cosmology to asceticism and diet.12 Not by chance did Wang Xuanhe compose this pair of biographies for Lady Wei in 683; in Chengdu that same year, he engraved prefaces that Gaozong and Wu Zhao had composed for Yin Wencao’s (622–688) lost 7300-chapter Daoist canon.13
Meanwhile, Wu Zhao and her dying husband Gaozong sought out Shangqing patriarch Pan Shizheng, a master of self-cultivation, breath control, and longevity. The ailing emperor asked the ascetic what the mountain possessed that he needed. The venerable Daoist famously responded, “The mountain has clear springs and pine trees—what is lacking?”14 In his final days, Gaozong changed the reign era name to Amplifying the Dao. He issued a decree establishing Daoist monasteries in every prefecture and bestowed titles on octogenarians and nonagenarians.15
Despite the imperial patronage of Shangqing Daoism, there is little direct evidence of a cult of Lady Wei during Gaozong’s reign. Indeed, although Cui Rong’s stele inscription for the Temple of the Mother of Qi includes references to the Queen Mother of the West and the mother of Laozi (and even mentions obscure female figures from antiquity like the mothers of Fuxi and Shennong), it makes no mention of Lady Wei.16 In the first lunar month of 683, on an outing to their mountain retreat, Fengtian Palace on Mount Song, the celestial sovereigns honored the Queen Mother of the West and the Mother of Qi—they even paid respects at the shrines of oxherd Chao Fu and hermit Xu You—but they did not pay homage to Lady Wei.17
THE CULT IN HUAIZHOU
Despite the absence of clear-cut imperial patronage during the early Tang, a “diffusion of cults to the memory of Lady Wei . . . came to dot the Chinese landscape”: there were shrines exalting this visionary divinity at Southern Marchmount Hengshan, in Huaizhou, and in Fuzhou.18
Wei Huacun was linked to Huaizhou prefecture 30 miles northeast of Wu Zhao’s Divine Capital, centered in present-day Qinyang County in Henan.19 In the Western Jin, Lady Wei accompanied her husband to this area when he served as district magistrate of Xiuwu, a county in northeastern Huaizhou.20 In 289, four divine beings, among them Wang Bao, Perfected One of the Clear Barrens (Qingxu zhenren 清虛真人)—whose name echoes the cavern heaven on Mount Wangwu (on the northwest fringe of the region in present-day Yangcheng, Shaanxi)—descended and initiated twenty-four-year-old Lady Wei, revealing to her cryptic heavenly texts. In 350, immortal Wei Huacun underwent her apotheosis on Mount Wangwu; before assuming full divine duties, she spent two additional months of purification there, culminating with festive music and song among a collection of Daoist divinities.21
Shortly after Gaozong’s death, Lady Wei’s cult in Huaizhou surfaced. The Huaizhou region was invested with rich symbolic significance. Sui Yangdi remarked in a 604 edict that he had considered constructing a “new Luoyang” in Huaizhou.22 In 657, shortly after Wu Zhao became empress, Luoyang was elevated to Eastern Capital. To create a greater metropolitan region worthy of the new capital, Gaozong and his new empress appended to Luoyang’s territory four counties in Huaizhou prefecture—Heyang, Jiyuan, Wen, and Wangwu.23
The Daoist ambience in the area was dense. Renowned poet Bo Juyi (772–846) once versified, “Of the splendid mountains and rivers of Jiyuan, Lord Lao has long known.”24 A sacred mountain associated with the Queen Mother of the West and other divinities, Mount Wangwu was perhaps the most notable feature of the region’s Daoist topography.25 In Shangqing tradition, the Lesser Clear Barrens Grotto (Xiaoyou qingxu 小有清虛) on Wangwu was foremost among the thirty-six Daoist cavern heavens (dongtian 洞天), earthly paradises impervious to pestilence, sickness, and death.26 The main peak of Wangwu, Celestial Altar (Tiantan 天壇), was “a locus for assemblies of transcendent officials of all the mountains and Grotto-Heavens who examine and judge the students of the Dao.”27 In Li Yi’s early ninth-century poem “Climbing the Celestial Altar to View the Sea at Night,” Laozi and the Queen Mother both appear atop Wangwu in full immortal splendor.28 Du Guangting’s one-chapter Records of Traces of Saints on Celestial Altar Peak of Mount Wangwu (Tiantan Wangwushan shengji ji 天壇王屋山聖跡記) contains an account of the Queen Mother of the West presenting the Nine Tripods to the Yellow Emperor before the altar on the mountain’s crown.29 Both the larger region and Mount Wangwu itself were closely connected to Wei Huacun and to a wider lineage of Shangqing worthies.
Twelfth Shangqing patriarch Sima Chengzhen (647–735), who imparted wisdom to a series of Tang emperors including Gaozong, Wu Zhao, and Xuanzong, lived on Mount Wangwu for much of his career.30 When, late in life, the venerable master of the Dao headed southward to Mount Tiantai in Jiangsu, Emperor Xuanzong personally went to Wangwu and saw him off with a poem.31 Upon the Daoist patriarch’s return, Xuanzong ensconced him in an abbey on Mount Wangwu, where Sima Chengzhen remained until his death.32
During Wu Zhao’s years as grand dowager, Huaizhou was abuzz with Daoist activity connected to the cult of Lady Wei. The Commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra, Buddhist propaganda circulated by Wu Zhao on the eve of her establishment of her Zhou dynasty in 690, contains a passage that likely refers to Lady Wei. Among the many events in the narrative mustered as evidence foretelling the ascent of Wu Zhao is the passage: “in the Wenming year [684] at Huaizhou, a cloud of five colors suddenly arose from the Yellow River. On the cloud was a person who proclaimed herself the Mysterious Woman (Xuannü 玄女). She announced that Heaven had delegated her to present the divine cinnabar refined nine times to the grand dowager.”33 That same year Wu Zhao had conferred the title Grand Dowager of Anterior Heaven upon the mother of Laozi. The Mysterious Woman appeared “on the site of Lady Wei’s future shrine.”34 Though the Mysterious Woman was also the name of a separate Daoist goddess, given Lady Wei’s connection to the area, it seems probable that the Mysterious Woman was another name for the apotheosized Lady Wei. While the Commentary represents a subsequent effort by Wu Zhao’s propagandists to resituate this avatar of Lady Wei seamlessly into a Buddhist narrative, the appearance of the Mysterious Woman in 684 was a Daoist event.
The region’s position as a cultic center for the Daoist divinity is also made apparent in an epitaph carved for Lady Wei in Huaizhou at the same juncture. In 688, Lu Jingchun composed a shrine inscription for Lady Wei at Mujian village in Henei County of Huaizhou.35 Lu’s local residency is confirmed in a passage in the “Treatise on the Five Phases” in the New Tang History under “fish abominations” (yu nie 魚孽), explaining that when the rotted beam of a watermill on Lu Jingchun’s Jiyuan estate was being replaced, a live sheatfish was found in the damp, decaying wood.36 Not only does the shrine inscription contain a biography of Lady Wei, but anticipating her role as rain goddess in Song cults, it includes a prayer requesting the Daoist goddess to quench the drought that afflicted the area.37 With local connections and an estate in Jiyuan, Lu Jingchun was both a member of the Huaizhou elite and a literary practitioner of broad learning.38
Though it is impossible to know whether Wu Zhao was familiar with the content of Lu Jingchun’s inscription, she was aware of this talented fellow’s presence in greater metropolitan Luoyang. Within two years after he composed the Mujian inscription on Lady Wei—mere months into her newly minted Zhou dynasty—Wu Zhao appointed him official scholar of the Ministry of Rites (Sili boshi 司禮博士). Furthermore, by imperial edict, she requested that he edit official state histories and compile ceremonial regulations on auspicious and inauspicious events. Always seeking to harness such literary gifts, Wu Zhao attached great importance (shenzhong 深重) to Lu Jingchun.39
Yoshiko Kamitsuka suggests that the amplification of the cult of Lady Wei in Huaizhou a mere two years before Wu Zhao ascended the dragon throne was part of the “preparatory work” for her rise to become emperor.40 Yet the content of the Mujian inscription does not exalt Wu Zhao. Her efforts to bring Lu Jingchun into her Luoyang court, employing him among her growing stable of literary masters, suggest she was monitoring rather than patronizing the cult of the Daoist goddess.
Otagi Hajime has remarked on the emergence of Huaizhou as a center for female Daoists. In addition to the cult of Lady Wei revealed in Lu Jingchun’s inscription, another stele in Runzhou, erected in 677 for Daoist master Wei of Renjing Abbey, lists 134 Daoist nuns and female adepts among the donors. The surname the Daoist abbot shares with Lady Wei may represent a long-standing Wei family kin connection both to the Daoist faith and to the region.41
WU ZHAO, FLOWER MAID, AND THE CULT OF LADY WEI IN FUZHOU
The cult of Lady Wei in Fuzhou (modern-day Jiangxi) has already received close scrutiny from a bevy of scholars. Suzanne Cahill, Yoshikawa Tadao, Edward Schafer, Russell Kirkland, and James Robson, among others, have examined both the rise of the cult of Wei Huacun in Jiangnan and the role in its development of Huang Lingwei 黃靈微 (640–721), also known as Flower Maid (Huagu 花姑), the Daoist priestess who restored Lady Wei’s shrine in the late seventh century.42
Perhaps the best sources for understanding the connection between the changing status of the cult of Lady Wei during the political ascendancy of female ruler Wu Zhao are a pair of commemorative inscriptions composed by Yan Zhenqing (709–785) while serving as a prefect in Fuzhou. While Song Confucians viewed Yan as a moral pillar whose renowned bold calligraphic strokes reflected his unbending rectitude, later Daoists revered him as a lofty transcendent who had partaken of the nectar of immortality. After serving as a high-ranking court official and becoming embroiled in an intense partisan dispute under Daizong (r. 762–779), Yan was demoted to prefect and sent southward, where he served in a succession of offices.43 In Fuzhou, a region rich in Daoist lore of spirits, magic swords, and mysterious grottoes, he refurbished the local altar and shrine of Lady Wei and wrote an inscription honoring her.44 In a second inscription, the prefect commemorated Huang Lingwei, the female adept who had located and restored the same shrine of the Lady Wei seventy-five years earlier.45 Both inscriptions are preserved in the Complete Anthology of Tang Prose.46
While she might be classified as a “medieval renunciant,”47 Huang Lingwei was not an obscure local figure. Works of later Daoist scholars show that like the goddess whose shrine she restored, she also joined the company of Daoist immortals upon her death.48
As in Huaizhou, the cultic site in Fuzhou was connected with a stage of Lady Wei’s mortal existence. At some point, either during her southward flight or her late-life peregrinations, Lady Wei settled in Fuzhou and erected an altar, “an out-of-doors precinct for the performance of sacred rites.”49 Yan Zhenqing’s inscription exalting Lady Wei reveals that like the Southern Marchmount in Hunan, Fuzhou was a sacred site for the Daoist transcendent, a locale where “the Lady attained a significant stage on her spiritual ascent towards self-realization.”50
From the overlapping accounts in Yan Zhenqing’s two inscriptions and Du Guangting’s bibliography, it is possible to reconstruct the efforts of the female Daoist adept Huang Lingwei to locate and restore Lady Wei’s altar. Providing a framework to understand the significance of and motivation behind Huang Lingwei’s endeavors, Suzanne Cahill has observed that practice of “good works” could help a Daoist subject attain transcendence. Restoring a shrine was a “good work” of the highest order, an act that might “constitute the subject’s mature practice and principal contribution to the faith.”51
In the tenth month of 693, three years into Wu Zhao’s Zhou dynasty, with the guidance of a mysterious Daoist master named Hu Chao from neighboring Hongzhou prefecture, Huang Lingwei discovered a lost altar of Wei Huacun in the lush, tangled overgrowth of Dark Tortoise plateau. The altar was located near the remains of a legendary stone tortoise that gave the plateau its name—a chelonian marauder that purportedly had trampled crops until incensed locals lopped off its head. Beneath the altar, Huang Lingwei discovered relics of the Daoist divinity—a votive image, an awl, a knife, an oil vessel, and several dozen lampstands. Thereafter, she repaired the altar.52
Though Dark Tortoise plateau was 700 miles from Luoyang, Wu Zhao, known for her intelligence-gathering network, got wind of the exhumed relics. According to Yan Zhenqing’s inscription, “When the Celestial Empress53 heard this, she gathered the relics into her inner quarters.”54 Russell Kirkland observes that “despite the fact she shared Huang’s apparent disassociation from the patriarchal tradition,” Wu Zhao “neither honored Huang Ling-wei for her achievement, nor favored the shrine with official recognition or economic support.” Kirkland attributes that decision to her “highly limited” interest in the matter.55
While the female sovereign neither officially recognized Huang Lingwei’s restoration of the shrine nor celebrated the cult of Lady Wei, there is another explanation for Wu Zhao’s inaction. In other circumstances, given her penchant for grandiose ceremony, for amplifying her sovereignty with symbols or omens, she might well have parlayed these Daoist relics to her political advantage. That Wu Zhao chose to confiscate and conceal the relics was a matter of timing.
As mentioned earlier, Antonino Forte has convincingly illustrated how the Commentary, propagated on the eve of the inauguration of Wu Zhao’s Zhou dynasty in 690, forwarded evidence that the woman emperor was both a cakravartin and a living bodhisattva.56 In the fourth month of 691, Wu Zhao formally elevated Buddhism over Daoism.57 In the second month of 693, Laozi’s Daodejing was discontinued as an examination text in her court.58 In the ninth month, just a month prior to the discovery of the Daoist relics in Fuzhou, Wu Zhao had the seven Buddhist treasures cast and added to her already grand imperial title the designation “Golden Wheel” (Jinlun 金輪)—thereby broadcasting that she was a cakravartin, a wheel-turning universal monarch.59 Huang Lingwei discovered the relics of Lady Wei in late 693, at the very moment the campaign to project Wu Zhao as a Buddhist sovereign overseeing a far-flung cosmopolitan and international empire reached its crescendo.
While Wu Zhao likely appreciated the potential political utility of this discovery, she downplayed the unearthing of the relics. Ideological machinations, not indifference, underlay her decision to sequester them. Ever the pragmatist, Wu Zhao took the relics into custody, for if the ideological climate changed, she could one day utilize them to her advantage. In addition, her possession of these sacred relics prevented potential rivals and enemies from themselves employing the artifacts as symbols of legitimation.
Had Huang Lingwei unearthed the sacred relics of Lady Wei a decade earlier, Wu Zhao and her opportunistic propagandists might well have, with grand pomp and ceremony, given full play to the latent capacity in Daoism to exalt the female, honoring the Daoist priestess from Fuzhou and elevating Lady Wei still higher among her growing pantheon of Daoist divinities, inviting the Shangqing goddess to share sweet dew with the Queen Mother of the West and Laozi’s mother.
Further evidence of Wu Zhao’s close attention to the events in Fuzhou in 693 is reflected in her subsequent efforts to seek out and employ Huang Lingwei’s mentor, Hu Chao, who had helped reveal Lady Wei’s shrine. Several years after confiscating the relics of Lady Wei from Dark Tortoise plateau in Fuzhou, the septuagenarian ruler hired the esoteric master to brew a longevity potion.60 In 700, he also helped Wu Zhao perform an important Daoist expiatory rite, “tossing the dragons” (tou long 投龍), on Mount Song.61
After discovering the altar, Huang Lingwei uncovered several more sacred sites connected with Lady Wei in the region. However, only after the Tang dynasty was restored in 705 did Fuzhou emerge as a court-sanctioned cultic center of Wei Huacun. Unfortunately for Huang Lingwei, she never received her due recognition in her mortal body. Under Ruizong and Xuanzong, Lady Wei’s shrine was reconsecrated by male Daoist official Ye Fashan (616–720).62 Nonetheless, Flower Maid continued to wander the forests and mountains of the region, locating and restoring holy sites, until she rose to join the host of Daoist transcendents in 721. A century after Yan Zhenqing, in a poem to an official in Jiangnan, Buddhist monk Guanxiu (832–912) evoked the Daoist transcendent once more: “The strains of the Flower Maid’s flute cause jade to rise up and dance.”63
CONCLUSION
As Celestial Empress (her title from 674 until Gaozong’s death in 683), Wu Zhao enthusiastically patronized Daoism. Yet Lady Wei, one of medieval Daoism’s most eminent personages, never seems to have found a niche in Wu Zhao’s burgeoning pantheon of female deities. As she and Gaozong wandered the mountains in the vicinity of Luoyang, they did not accord to the Lady of the Southern Marchmount the reverence offered other Daoist goddesses.
As grand dowager, Wu Zhao’s patronage for Lady Wei and for Daoism itself was also measured. Though the Mysterious Woman who appeared in Huaizhou in 684 desiring to present refined cinnabar to Grand Dowager Wu may have been the incarnation of Lady Wei, there is no decisive evidence of imperial sponsorship for her cult in the region.
Nor as emperor did Wu Zhao sponsor the emergent cult of Lady Wei. Her extensive campaign to define herself as a Buddhist sovereign dictated her apparent apathy toward the potential political and religious significance of the relics revealed by Huang Lingwei. Accordingly, under Wu Zhao, neither the cultic site at Fuzhou nor the sites in Huaizhou devoted to Lady Wei were imperially sanctioned.
However, the female ruler recruited men involved with each locale into her service, and was keenly aware of both sites. Lu Jingchun, the local literatus who had framed the inscription honoring Lady Wei in Henei, came to Luoyang to serve as an official. Daoist master Hu Chao, after helping Huang Lingwei reveal the hidden shrine in Fuzhou, concocted elixirs of longevity and performed rites of expiation for Wu Zhao. This instrumental utilization of mystic and literary talent reveals an important aspect of the female ruler’s renowned political acumen: she was an extraordinary judge of talent.64 Even Song Confucian Sima Guang grudgingly praised her capacity to recruit capable men, remarking: “She possessed keen oversight and was an excellent judge of character. Therefore, at that time talented and virtuous men competed to be employed by her.”65 A few years before Lu Jingchun composed his shrine inscription, when disgruntled poet-scholar Luo Binwang had written a scathing polemic attacking her character and questioning her legitimacy, reviling her “vulpine glamour,” her “ravenous disposition of a jackal or wolf,” and her cold-blooded heart that was “half viper and half chameleon,”66 the grand dowager’s wry response was telling: “Ministers, this is your fault! How is it that a man this talented has been cast out and isn’t serving in office?”67
Rather than allow a literary master like Lu Jingchun to wield the calligraphy brush against her, she sought to employ his talent to armor her authority. Instead of permitting a gifted esoteric mystic like Hu Chao to wander the wilderness revealing sacred shrines and gaining a lofty reputation for his miraculous powers, Wu Zhao sought to bring him into the fold and utilize his unique talents to her own ends.
In sum, there were three major reasons that Lady Wei did not become a major figure in Wu Zhao’s pantheon of female divinities. The most significant reason was poor timing: as empress, Wu Zhao “fully supported the T’ang Taoist ideology,” but once she founded the Zhou, Charles Benn observes, she “abolished the Taoist ideology of the T’ang and inaugurated her own ideology based on Buddhism.68 The emergence of the two local cults of Lady Wei coincided with Wu Zhao’s aggressive campaign to redefine herself as a Buddhist monarch.
Second, the two local cultic centers of Lady Wei in Huaizhou and Fuzhou did not correspond with Wu Zhao’s reorientation of sacred space. As Celestial Empress and Celestial Emperor, Wu Zhao and Gaozong frequently visited Mount Song, not far south of Luoyang. Mount Song emerged as the preeminent marchmount. As grand dowager and emperor, Wu Zhao considered Mount Song an important part of her sacred geography, dwarfing Mount Wangwu to the north. Many imperial clansmen of the Li family who opposed Wu Zhao’s ascendancy were tied to Daoist circles in the Huaizhou region.
And finally, many of the other female divinities Wu Zhao honored were associated with motherhood and creation. Nüwa created the world. The Queen Mother of the West lived on the highest mountain peak and was foremost among female Daoist deities. Mother Li birthed Lord Lao, the Daoist founder and deity. Jiang Yuan begat the Ji clan that founded the Zhou. While she was a divine teacher capable of bestowing esoteric revelations, Wei Huacun was not a creatress.69 She was not a mother goddess. She did not give birth to an ancient line of rulers whose very name resonated with political legitimacy. She was not royalty. Geographically, she was more closely connected with Jiangnan and the Southern Marchmount than the heartland: the Yellow and Luo river valleys. Seemingly, therefore, from the vantage of Wu Zhao, the political value of this outsider was limited.
Her handling of Lady Wei’s relics serves as a powerful reminder that Wu Zhao was not simply a religious and political gadfly, capriciously flitting among Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. She was a pragmatist, a political animal, reading and purposefully adjusting to shifting ideological terrain.
