A Concise History of China-Pangu to Puyi - Part 9

Laszlo Montgomery (0:00)

Welcome back, everyone. Laszlo Montgomery here with another episode of The China History Podcast. This is part nine of the remake of the Pangu to Puyi overview. We made it to the seventh century last time, and if all goes well, we'll witness a patented CHP rush to the finish to the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907 The big stories for this time will feature Empress Wu Zetian, her grandson Emperor Xuanzong, and the Ān Lùshān rebellion that tore the Tang Dynasty apart in the mid-eighth century. And we'll finish the story with the decline in central authority and the long, sad, and violent end of the dynasty, with the Huang Cháo rebellion delivering the Sunday Punch, the Knockout Blow. So we'll try and sail through all that. High Tang, Late Tang. So get yourself comfortable. Have that steaming hot or ice cold beverage ready and a bag of shrimp crackers. You're in for a treat.

By the time Tang Gāozōng died in 683, his wife and empress had been sitting in for him and making all the important decisions and rearranging all the palace furniture and personnel such that there was no ambiguity about who was the most powerful person in the empire and who called all the shots.

The 29 years in between the death of Gāozōng to the accession of Xuanzong to the emperorship, 683 to 712, gets quite messy and the body is stacked up rather fast. There are about half a dozen or so historical characters who were front and center and these are all relatives of the Lǐ royal family and others too.

The very fertile Empress Wu had not one but four sons and two daughters with Emperor Gāozōng. If you remember last time, she presumptuously named her first son Lǐ Hóng, which caused a lot of tongs to wag at the palace. But he wasn't fated to be emperor. He died suddenly in 675 at the age of 23 And his death got filed under the suspicious circumstances category. But you probably already assumed that. This opened the door for the number two son of Gāozōng and Empress Wu to become Crown Prince. And this was Lǐ Xián. He too never got to sit on the throne. He got himself all caught up in an act of treason in 680, a few years before Gāozōng passed away. So he was deposed as Crown Prince, made a commoner and then exiled. And in 684, thanks to his mum, he was forced to commit suicide.

So with these two out of the way, that opened the door for another brother, also named Lǐ Xián, different character, Xián, and using the third tone rather than the second. Not to make matters worse or anything, but all of these figures from the Tang that I've named, and this is also true of other dynasties as well. People change their names sometimes, more than once, and their titles too. And this third tone, Lǐ Xián, he's also known as Lǐ Zhé.

And finally with this Lǐ Zhé, we have a son who gets to sit on the throne, though not for long. Here's where his mom Empress Wu pushed him aside. By the time her husband, the Gāozōng Emperor, died. She had already accumulated a bunch of titles and honorifics. I mentioned last time her name changed along with her political situation. And you remember how she stepped over a few corpses to become Huáng Cháo, or Empress, in 655

Then in 674 her status got bumped up to Tiān Cháo, or Heavenly Empress. And in 683, after Gāozōng died, she began ruling as a regent and became an Empress Dowager, a Tai Cháo. And it didn't end there. After becoming an Empress Dowager in 683, she still had plenty of honorific titles yet to be showered on her. And all that stuff is what we're going to look at first.

So many characters involved in this royal drama that lasted from 683 to 705, it's almost as if they knew back in the 7th century that this would one day make a great TV serial drama. The death of Táng Gāozōng began a period of high volatility in the Tang Empire. This son, Lǐ Zhé, became the Zhōngzhōng Emperor and was such a force of nature as his mother wielding ultimate power, he probably should have known better than to challenge her authority. I'm sure she had her reasons but Empress Dowager Wu deposed Zhōngzhōng less than two months on the job. He got demoted in rank and shipped out to the provinces to go stew for a while. And his younger brother, Lǐ Xùlún, took over. He too had a handful of different names and titles, but we remember him as Emperor Rèizōng. Not to spoil the ending, but his mother is going to depose him as well. These two brothers, Lǐ Zhé and Lǐ Xùlún, the scion of Liyuan and Lí Shìrmín, they'd remain in limbo as long as their mother held on to power. But like the Ming Zhengtong Emperor later on, they'll end up reigning twice with an interregnum in between. And that's what this part of the program is all about.