Emperor of China

8/3/2019 Emperor of China

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Emperor of China

The role of the emperor in Chinese society is an ancient and tradition-bound one,

but also a role that is bound up with myth, since the earliest Chinese rulers are

at least half if not wholly mythical. In addition, as will be seen in the following,

there are constraints by the people upon the emperor the "divinity" of the

Chinese emperor, unlike a European sovereign, for example, was not invested in

the office; a Chinese emperor had to make himself worthy of that office as well

as the more customary situation, where the role of the emperor acts as a

constraint upon the people.

Moreover, according to Chinese tradition, the Chinese people, being of a highly

civilized culture surrounded by, by comparison, considerably more primitive

cultures, saw itself as superior to the rest of the cultures on earth; if Heaven was

at the top of this pyramid, with the primitive cultures at the bottom, then China,

with its superior culture, saw its placement as being somewhere in between,

hence the self-styled title for China: the Middle Kingdom, implying that the

Chinese culture was a mediator between Heaven and Earth. This view of itself

was also reinforced by both Taoist cosmology and Confucianism, as will be seen

in the following.

The assumption of China as the Middle Kingdom belongs to all of Chinese

tradition but never posed much of a problem for China until Westerners arrived

in China in large numbers, after the Portuguese the astute navigators,

shipbuilders, sailors and merchants that they were arrived in China by sea. The

Ming (CE 1368-1644) and the Qing (CE 1644-1911) Dynasties would make much

ado about China's position as the Middle Kingdom, and this would lead to

strained relations with the Europeans and eventually to violent conflict between

China and the Europeans, though that story has already been told in another,

soon to appear, context here at China Travel (its title, when it appears, will be

the Maritime History of China).

On a more mundane level, as will be seen in the following, certain aspects of

everyday life from the color yellow to the number nine to that mythical animal,

the dragon belonged strictly to the realm of the emperor. There were other

customs, such as the forms of address that were appropriate when speaking to

or even of, the emperor, that singled out the emperor as the Son of Heaven


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(Tianzi []) from ordinary mortals, even constraining the manner in which

the emperor's own mother addressed him.

In addition, there were a long list of offical rites and duties that the emperor of

China had to observe in order to "legitimize" his role as the Son of Heaven, and,

as will be seen in the following, thesw rites and duties were part and parcel of an

orderly social structure that carved out a role for every member of Chinese

society, from the highest station to the most lowly, for if ancient Chinese society

could be described by a single word, that word would have to be "structured".

Not surprisingly, even present-day Chinese society is highly structured, for a

people do not shrug off a way of life their deep-rooted culture even in the

face of radical political change.

TOPAncient China's Supreme Rulers: Three Sovereigns and Five

Emperors

The foundations of Chinese society are linked to the mythical Three Sovereigns

(San Huang []) aka the Three August Ones and the semi-mythical Five

Emperors (Wu Di []) who ruled China during the period immediately prior to

the first historically recorded dynasty, the Xia (BCE ca.2000-1500) Dynasty, i.e.,

in the period roughly BCE ca.2852-ca.2205.

The Three Sovereigns are mythical demi-gods who are credited with having

introduced all of the elements of culture on which ancient Chinese life was

dependent, such as hunting and fishing, agriculture, herbal medicine (Chinese

Traditional Medicine), the discovery of tea (and how to drink it) and even the art

of writing (as in the so-called Oracle Bone script) and how writing could be used

in divination, or the art and science of seeing into the future on the basis of

burning animal bones (i.e., shoulder blades or tortoise shells) onto which had

been written pointed questions addressed to Heaven. The Three August Ones

are: Fuxi, The Heavenly Sovereign []; Nwa, The Earthly Sovereign [];

and Shennong, The Human Sovereign [].

These three were all siblings of the first gods who were born of the yin and the

yang. Fuxi wed his sister, Nwa, and thus the yin and the yang were again in

balance (it had been perturbed because the first man, P'an Ku (alternatively,

Pangu []), had died). Nwa made male and female human figures out of

yellow clay, but life was hard for them. Fuxi's and Nwa's brother Shennong,


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who was also the god of agriculture, invented the plow and taught the humans

whom Nwa had made how to farm. He also taught them how to make use of

medicinal herbs, one of which, one might say, was tea leaves. But 'all work and

no play' makes for dull children, therefore Shennong and his brother Fuxi

fashioned a musical instrument for them, the guqin, a stringed instrument thatbelongs, roughly, to the same family of musical instruments as does the

European zither.

The Five Emperors are semi-mythical figures who were the first sages to rule

over Earth after the Three Sovereigns. They were considered to be morally

perfect. According to the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (BCE

ca.140-86), the Five Emperors are: Huang Di ("Yellow Emperor" []);

Zhuanxu [], aka Gaoyang, the grandson of Huang Di; Emperor Ku [], the

great grandson of Huang Di; Emperor Yao [], the second son of Emperor Ku;

and Emperor Shun [], born Yao Chonghua [], who was chosen by

Emperor Yao to be his successor over his own son, ostensibly due to the

outstanding virtures, especially filial piety, exhibited by Yao Chonghua.

The Yellow Emperor has a special place in Chinese folklore, for he is considered

the father of all Han Chinese [] people. The Yellow Emperor drove all of the

other non-Han tribes out of what was then central China, corresponding to

present-day northwestern China. Though Shennong, the Human Sovereign, iscredited with having introduced Chinese Traditional Medicine to the first people

(created by his sister, Nwa), the Yellow Emperor is credited with having taught

the Han Chinese people its uses. The Yellow Emperor's wife, Luo Zu, taught the

Han Chinese people how to raise silkworms and to weave the harvested silk into

fabric.

Zhuanxu led the Han Chinese people, called at this time the Shi (the tribes, or

clans), eastward to the coast (present-day Shandong Province). There they

intermarried with the indigenous Dongyi people, absorbing many of the Dongyiinto the Shi and in the process absorbing many of the Dongyi cultural particulars

into the Han Chinese culture. Zhuanxu is credited with having forbidden marriage

between close relatives, he transformed the Han Chinese from a matriarchial

society to a patriarchial one, and he contributed to the unification of the

calendar. He also helped to make advances in astrology.


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Emperor Ku is something of an enigma, apart from the fact that he was the great

grandson of the Yellow Emperor; little is recorded about Emperor Ku's exploits, in

contrast to the other of the Five Emperors.

Emperor Yao, aka Tang Yao [], is considered as a model sage-king, along

with the Yellow Emperor and Yu the Great, founder of the Xia Dynasty, the first

Chinese system of rule to be recorded by later historians. Emperor Yao is best

known for his having wisely bequeathed his throne not to his own son (for

reasons that will soon be obvious!), but to the aforementioned brilliant and

virtuous Yao Chonghua, the son of another man (despite his father and brother

having sought his life, Yao Chonghua continued to love and show devotion to

them, proving himself something of a Biblical Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel,

who was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, but who forgave them their

wrongdoing... Joseph, the reader will recall, went on to become an importantfigure in the pharaoh's court and was eventually reunited with his parents and

brothers). Yao Chonghua would become Emperor Shun, the last of the Five

Emperors.

The second thing that Emperor Yao is known for is the board game, weiqi (aka

"Go"; its pieces, called stones, look unmistakably like black and white versions of

M&Ms, the well-known, 'melt in your mouth, not in your hands' candy-coated

chocolate loved by kids everywhere). Emperor Yao came up with Go as an

amusement for his dim-witted son, which also explains why the good emperorwisely chose someone else's son as his successor!

TOPThe First Verifiable Non-Mythical Chinese Emperor

China's first verifiable emperor, who only served a short stint as emperor, though

he had served as the sovereign, or king (wang []) of the Qin State (BCE 9th

Century-221) for several years prior to that (from BCE 247-21), was King Zheng

of Qin cum Emperor Qin of the Qin (BCE 221-207) Dynasty. This was the first

instance of a Chinese sovereign, in the post-Shang (BCE ) Dynasty era, who

gave himself a title which signified that the sovereign was the ruler over all of

China.

During the Xia-Shang period, which was characterized by slavery, the sovereign

was the supreme and only ruler, while during the Zhou (BCE 1027-221) Dynasty,


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which spanned the Western Zhou (1027-771) Dynasty and the Eastern Zhou

(BCE 770-221) Dynasty the latter of which, in turn, comprised the Spring and

Autumn (BCE 770-476) Period and the Warring States (BCE 475-221) Period

there were numerous kings, princes and dukes, etc., who shared power,

sometimes peacefully, sometimes not so peacefully, as the title of the secondperiod of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty suggests.

The end of the Warring States Period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was the

culmination of a long process of the consolidation of numerous warring states,

with gradually fewer and fewer but larger states emerging, as lesser (not

necessarily smaller, just less powerful) states were absorbed by more powerful

states, until, in the end, the 'last state standing' was the Qin State. It is

therefore not surprising that the victor of this game of hegemony would wish to

give himself a more supreme title than that of a mere king.

At the same time, King Zheng, whose clan name was Zhao and whose ancestral

name was Ying (in ancient China, one's "family" name was composed of clan and

ancestral elements, while one's given name generally corresponded to the name

of the Lunar month in which one was born, though one might be given a more

colorful, descriptive name, figuratively speaking think of the highly descriptive

names of, for example, American Indian warrior chiefs such as Sitting Bull, Little

Raven, Standing Bear, etc. depending on the circumstances), wished to give

himself a title that would place him in the ranks of China's ancient mythical andsemi-mythical sovereigns.

Therefore King Zheng harked back to the much revered Yellow Emperor, whose

title, when he lived, was not Huang Di (alternatively, Huangdi), but simply Huang

("Sovereign" []), which is in fact the same word as "yellow", since the color

yellow was reserved, in the pre-Zhou era, strictly for the emperor (and even in

the post-Zhou era, even if mortals were allowed to wear yellow, the color would

forever be associated with the Emperor, and I am quite certain that no one was

ever given an audience with a Chinese emperor while dressed in yellow!).

The "Di" [] add-on comes to us thanks precisely to King Zheng, who, harking

back to the era of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, wished to choose a

title that signified more than simply "emperor"/ "yellow", therefore King Zheng

added on a suffix that signified "god-king", or Di [], yielding the following new

title for Zheng, King of Qin State cum sovereign of all of China: Qin Shi Huang Di


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[], where Shi [] means "Originator" (or "First"). All emperors

subsequent to Emperor Qin would have Huangdi [] added to their title, even

if, much later, this was shortened simply to "Di" (think of the renowned and

long-lived (and with a correspondingly long rule) Emperor Wu Di of the Western

Han (BCE 206 CE 009) Dynasty). Of course today, most references to theemperors of the post-Qin period make do with the shortened "Di" suffix, even

though in older texts, one sees the longer "Huangdi" suffix.

Emperor Qin, in an effort to elevate himself in relation to the many kings, princes

and dukes who had come before him, did not stop with merely adorning himself

with a fancy title, he also had an entire army of soldiers, some in chariots pulled

by steeds, accompany him in death, namely the famous Terracotta Army that

was unearthed in the ancient capital city of Chang'an, or the present-day city of

Xi'an in Shaanxi Province.

TOPImperial Symbols: The Color Yellow, The Number 9 and The

Dragon

As indicated, the color yellow was reserved exclusively for the emperor in ancient

times, though in later, less autocratic times, mere mortals could also use the

color yellow, though, as indicated, not likely in the presence of the emperor!

There were other symbols associated with the emperor such as that of the

dragon and the number 9. The use of the image of a dragon on one's clothing,

for example, was initially reserved exclusively for the emperor, but, like the color

yellow and the number 9, this dictate would eventually be weakened, though,

again, with the caveat that their use not be too much in the face of the emperor

(moreover, there was a specific number (9!) of dragon images and a specific

placement of these figures on an emperor's robe, and no mere mortal was foolish

enough to mimic the emperor in this if, indeed, one could find a haberdasher

suicidal enough to sew it!).

The Color Yellow

According to Chinese cosmology (mainly Taoist and even pre-Taoist concepts,

such as the yin and the yang and the concept of the Five Elements), the color

yellow was associated with the earth. Each of these five "elements" Fire, Earth,


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Metal, Water, and Wood has their own color. For example, Fire has, not

surprisingly, the color red; Earth has, as indicated, the color yellow; Metal has

the color white; Water has the color black; and Wood has the color green. In

Chinese cosmology, these elements are not fixed, but ever-changing, in dual

cycles. the Cycle of Birth and the Cycle of Destruction, both of which continuallyrepeat themselves.

The Cycle of Birth Fire gives rise to Earth, Earth gives rise to Metal, Metal gives

Rise to Water, Water produces Wood, and thus one turn of the Cycle of Birth is

complete see the image immediately below.

The Cycle of Destruction Fire destroys Metal, Metal destroys Wood, Wood

destroys Earth, Earth destroys Water, Water destroys Fire, and one turn of the

Cycle of Destruction is thus complete see the image immediately below (and

note the pentagon, another important Taoist cosmological symbol, created by the

'direction of destruction'):


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The importance of the color yellow for the emperor is linked to its association to

Earth, for the Chinese emperor, as the ruler of the Middle Kingdom, is, in terms

of God-versus-Human status, situated between Heaven and Humanity (recall the

respective realms of the Three August Ones: Fuxi (The Heavenly Sovereign),

Nwa (The Earthly Sovereign) and Shennong (The Human Sovereign)). Thus

Earth lies in the middle of the universe (Middle Earth) according to Chinese

cosmology, which is why the Chinese emperor, as the supreme earthlysovereign, is by definition the ruler of the Middle Kingdom.

Other mythological and philosophical concepts strengthen the God-versus-

Human position of the Chinese emperor. Since the Han Chinese people were

consolidated by Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, who drove out the "alien" tribes of

the then heartland China (i.e., the northwestern part of present-day China),

creating a pure, or orthodox, Han Chinese race, the color yellow (according to

later, Confucian thought), being linked to Middle Earth, to Huangdi and, via

Huangdi, to an orthodox Han Chinese race (note that the term "Han" arose firstwith the emergence of the Han Dynasty, but the term as a descriptor of the

pure or orthodox Chinese race that descended from Huangdi surely existed

since time immemorial, or since the beginning of the Xia Dynasty at a minimum),

signifies not only "imperial" (as in "Middle Kingdom") but also "rationality" and

"order".


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Therefore, the Chinese emperor, as the Son of Heaven, was the glue that held

the world together, as it were. Additionally, the color yellow is linked to the

dragon, which in turn is linked to the emperor, as will be seen in the following.

The Dragon

The dragon, or rather, its symbolism (dragons at least the fire-spewing ones

are, not unlike unicorns, rarely sighted in the real world : ) ), was particularly

suited to the image of the emperor, or so felt emperors, since the dragon is

considered a creature that is auspicious and essentially benevolent, even though,

if provoked to anger, it is the most formidable among all creatures; while

everyone strived to be on the good side of the dragon, no one wished to have

the dragon as a dedicated enemy! The dragon is also associated with the coloryelow, for there is an old Chinese saying that goes "Long zhan yu ye, qi xue xuan

huang" ("When the dragon fights, its blood turns yellow" [,

]). The emperor's robe yellow, of course was adorned with 9

dragons and they all had 5 claws on each foot, whereas the decorative dragons

on the clothing of ordinary mortals had only 4 claws on each foot, yet another

instance of the strong link of the number 5 to the royal court.

The Number Nine

The number 9, via its symbolism if nothing else, is linked to the Chinese

emperor. The Chinese people, like most other peoples, tend to group things in

multiples (in the West, for example, one says that bad luck comes in sets of 3,

that the third try 'does the trick' (succeeds), etc., and when one cites examples

or instances of this or that, one almost invariably unless one is a very poor

speaker offers three of them, for thrice has a rhythm all its own... and note the

three examples listed here!), but, unlike most other peoples, the Chinese people

have an ancient tradition of grouping things into not only 3s, but 4s, 5s, 8s, etc.

For example, there are the Three August Ones with their three realms, or

kingdoms; when one offers incense at the temple, one bows three times; and of

course "three times" (and "nine times") figures prominently in kowtowing, as will

be seen in the section on Imperial Rites and Duties below (note again the three

examples it comes naturally to a Westerner!). There are the Four Great


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Beauties, the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains (and correspondingly, in Taoism,

the Five Sacred Taoist Mountains), the Five Elements, the Eight Immortals, etc.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), there were exhortations to the Red

Guard to launch an "Eight Anti" campaign against intellectuals (earlier there had

been a "Three Anti" campaign i.e., a campaign against corruption, waste and

red tape/ bureaucracy and a "Five Anti" campaign directed at bourgeous

business elements) and exhortations to to stamp out the "Four Olds" (Old

Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas), just as earlier, there had been

a campaign to eliminate the "Three Differences" (the difference between workers

and peasants, the difference between manual labor and mental labor, the

difference between urban and rural).

Afterwards, Deng Xiaoping promoted the the "Four Beauties" (Beautiful

Language, Beautiful Behavior, Beautiful Heart and Beautiful Environment) and

the "Five Talks" (Politeness, Civil Behavior, Morality, Attention to Social

Relations, and Practice of Good Hygiene).

The symbolism of the number 9 vis--vis the Chinese emperor hardly needs

explaining, since it is the highest single-digit number (think: 0 to 9, though in

ancient times, one did not have a concept of zero, therefore the single-digit

numbers were 1-9). In ancient Chiona, there existed something near a mania in

the use of the number 9, including all of its multiples, in connection with all

things imperial. According to the Legend of the Nine Tripod Cauldrons (Jiuding

[]), Yu the Great, founder of the Xia Dynasty, used the tribute metal (tin

and copper) delivered to him from the Nine Provinces to smelt a tripod cauldron

for each province. By the time of the subsequent dynasty, the Shang (CE 1700-

1027) Dynasty, the Nine Tripod Cauldrons of the Nine Provinces had become a

symbol of the sovereign's power and authority.

Everyone or maybe almost everyone used the tripod cauldron in food

preparation, but there were limitations on how many tripod cauldrons each

household might own, depending on one's rank, of course. Only the emperor's

household could have 9 tripod cauldrons, the rulers of vassal states could have 7,

high-ranking government ministers (of which there were 9!) could have 5,

members of the gentry-scholarly class (since this was prior to the time of

Confucius, no one could be a scholar on intellectual merits alone) could have

either 3 or 1, depending on one's station in the gentry-scholarly hierarchy.


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Odinary folk used more simple arrangements perhaps pails with handles that

were suspended over fires, or perhaps pots without handles that were placed

directly on embers.

There were 9 different ranks among the staff at the imperial palace, which has 9

gates; Tiananmen Rostrum (Tiananmen Dias), located at one end of Tiananmen

Square, has 9 rooms; the gates and doors of the Forbidden City, the Imperial

Gardens and the various summer palaces, are all made/ adorned with 9-inch

nails, in rows of 9 and columns of 9; tributes paid to the emperor always came in

multiples of 9 (8 x 9, 9 x 9, 12 x 9, etc.); gold Buddha figures in Chinese temples

come in weights in multiples of 9 (72 grams, 81 grams, 108 grams, etc.); during

the Qing Dynasty, 99 different kinds of fruits, candied fruits and other snacks

were served at the Imperial Palace on festival days; and, as well, there would be

81 (or 9 x 9) performances of acrobatic and lantern shows on festival days,prompting the expression, "Nine and Nine Celebratory Banquet"; and finally, the

throne on which the emperor sat on official occasions was called Jiu Wu, or "Nine

Five", since the number 9 was of course "imperial" as was the number 5, the

latter of which requires some explaining, though we have already encountered an

instance of "imperial 5", namely, in connection with the number of claws on

dragons.

Just as the color yellow signifies Earth, which, in turn, is the Middle Kingdom,

with Heaven above the Middle Kingdom and Humanity below it, meaning thatEarth and, by extension, the emperor is at the center of everything, the

number 5 also signifies the middle, or center position, of the ancient Chinese

single-digit numbering system upon which all other numbers were believed to be

built (as indicated, the world had not yet discovered the existence of the number

0): 1 - - - 5 - - - 9. Thus, the number 5, like the color yellow, inherently

"belongs" to the ruler of the Middle Kingdom.

Then there are the famous Five Elements and the Five Lineages (the latter being:

Youchao-shi [], or the You-chao clan of tree-dwellers; Suiren-shi [],or the Sui-ren clan of fire-makers*; Shennong; Nwa; and Fuxi (the latter three

being of course the Three August Ones)), whose mention stems from the Book of

Rites alternately known as the Classic of Rites, the Record of Rites and the

Book of Customs one of the Five Classics of the Confucian canon, written

originally by Confucius himself, and which describes the various ceremonial rites

of the Zhou Dynasty.


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* Note that the Pao-xi clan of hunters superceded the You-chao clan of tree-

dwellers who superceded the Sui-ren clan of fire-makers (I know, I know, this

last sounds a bit inverse, but... anyway, think of the Evolution of Mankind

(toward Homo sapiens) catwalk depicted below, modified to suit our purposes).

The above evolution of Homo sapiens should not be confused with the Evolution

of Homersapiens below [ : )]:

I guess I forgot to mention that Tiananmen Gate, or the main entrance to the no

longer so Forbidden City, has 5 arches? (No, they were not intended for the 5

Homer clans!)


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TOPImperial Succession, Forms ofAddress and Official Imperial

Rites and Duties

Imperial Succession The Chinese dynasties were not called dynasties for

nothing, they were, like the later royal houses of Europe, familial, or hereditary,

dynasties. The son generally followed the father on the throne, though this was

not etched in stone; if there was no male child to succeed the emperor, a

younger brother became the new emperor. In addition to his official consort, the

empress, the emperor generally had a very large harem of concubines with

whom he might father many children, yet all of the emperor's offspring were

considered children of the empress. This of course meant that an emperor stood

a reasonably good chance of producing a successor, without having to behead

the empress (viz., the problems that English King Henry VIII had in this regard,

and still did not manage to produce a son, though his daughter, Elisabeth, born

to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, eventually became queen regnant following her

older sister, Mary I's, short term as queen regnant... Elisabeth I would go on to

be a better English sovereign than most English male sovereigns!).

The Chinese people also knew of the phenomenon of female regents, though

there was only one lawful regent, Empress Wu of the Tang (CE 618-907)

Dynasty (Empress Wu's reign represents a brief interlude in the Tang Dynasty in

the sense that she simply created her own dynasty, the Wu-Zhou (CE 690-705)

Dynasty... after her death, the Wu-Zhou Dynasty disappeared the crack in the

Tang Dynasty was papered over (Empress Wu's son, Zhongzong, was crowned

emperor following Empress Wu, and he promptly repudiated his mother's

dynasty) and the previous Tang Dynasty resumed as if nothing untoward had

happened!

However there were numerous Chinese females who served as de facto leaders

of China, usually as empress dowager, or mother of an emperor who did not yet

serve as emperor due to his young age. The most famous, if not most infamous,

empress dowager was Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) who, had she been a

man, would probably have been considered one of the Qing Dynasty's most

powerful and effective rulers (Cixi was a very spunky woman who made a lot of

mistakes, but learned quickly from them).


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Forms of Address The emperor, as the Son of Heaven, was shown a level of

respect that accorded with his station. Not even the mother of the emperor could

call him familiar names. At best she could call him Er ("Son"), never "you",

though generally she would call her son Huangdi ("Emperor"), as did others. The

more formal terms of direct address by a head of state to an emperor were Bixia

("Your Imperial Majesty" (equivalent to "Your Royal Highness" in Europe) []);

Tian Zi (Son of Heaven" []); Huang Shang ("Emperor Above", or "Emperor

Highness" []); and Sheng Shang ("Divine Above or the Holy Highness"

[]). House servants would typically address the emperor as Wan Sui Ye (Lord

of Ten Thousand Years []).

Third person references to the emperor were typically either Huangdi Bixia ("His

Majesty the Emperor" []), Dangjin Huangshang ("The Imperial Highness

of the Present Time" []), or, more commonly (and quite a lot more

pompously(!): Ta de Diguo Huangdi, Bixia de Da ["X"] Wangchao, Tianzi, Zhu de

yi Wan Nian ("His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of the Great ["X"] Dynasty, Son

of Heaven, Lord of Ten Thousand Years" [, ["X"]

], where ["X"] stands of course for the name of the

dynasty). When referring to himself before an assembled crowd, the emperor

used the equivalent of the papal "I", namely, Zhen ("We" []).

An emperor ruled under an era name (nianhao [()]), often several such

auspicious-sounding era names as they took the emperor's fancy, though Ming

and Qing emperors ruled under a single era name (some may see the practice of

multiple era names as arrogance while others might see it as a form of artistic

expression whereby the emperor also sought, in some measure, to identify

himself with writers, poets, artists and other members of the intelligentsia, in


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much the same way that the famous French king, Francois I (he was France's

king when a 14-year-old Catherine de Medici arrived in France to learn "French

ways" as a prerequisite to marrying Francois I's second son, Henry I, who would

in fact succeed Francois I, the marriage having been arranged by none other

than Pope Leo X, Catherine's uncle), liked to hang out with artists andbohemians).

In ancient times, Chinese emperors were posthumously given a temple name

(miaohao []) as well as a posthumous title (shihao []). The death of the

emperor was referred to as jiabeng ("the demise of the emperor", literally: "the

collapse of the (imperial) chariot" [], which, to a Western ear, sounds a bit

comical, suggesting that Chinese emperors perhaps had a sense of self-irony,

though I am confident that this is strictly a Western interpretation of jiabeng!),

while during the reign of the ruling emperor, references to the deceased previousemperor were as Daxing Huangdi ("the late emperor", literally: "the emperor of

the great journey" []... alas, for an emperor, there was work to do even

in death!).

Official Imperial Rites and Duties It was not all glitter and glamour being the

emperor an emperor's life was circumscribed by a long range of rituals and

duties for which the coming emperor was conditioned, or schooled, from an early

age (viz., the 1987 film, The Last Emperor, by the Italian director and

screenwriter of Last Tango in Paris fame, Bernardo Bertolucci, about the life and

short reign of Puyi [], the last Qing Dynasty emperor (and therewith the last

Chinese emperor) who reigned, as a child, from 1909 to 1911). The cumulative

set of rituals and duties that befell an emperor was extensive, even if they were

subject to review and revision by each emperor, though an emperor did not

make drastic changes in these rituals and duties, for the sake of the continuity of

his legitimacy. But for certain, it was seen as an indication of the emperor's

personal commitment to the rituals and duties that belonged to his "office" thathe made certain modifications, rather than simply follow the course of his

predecessor.

Some ritual visits were unalterable for an emperor, such as the annual worship

at the Temple of Heaven, aka Altar of Heaven (Tiantan []) in Tiantan Park

in Beijing , situated about 3 kilometers south-southeast of the Forbidden City,


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and an annual visit to the sacrificial sites on Mount Tai where the emperor would

pay homage to Heaven (at the summit of the mountain) and to Earth (at the foot

of the mountain), called, respectively, the Feng [] and the Shan [] sacrifices,

or known collectively as the Fengshan Sacrifices. These rituals in particular

validated the emperor as the Son of Heaven (Tianzi []), and the emperor'sobservance of these rituals validated the rituals themselves.

As the Son of Heaven, the emperor was imbued with the Mandate of Heaven

(Tianming []). But this was a condition that was not automatic; that is,

unlike in the royal houses of Europe, where the king was automatically the Son

of Heaven with its complementary Mandate of Heaven, as it were, the Chinese

emperor had to make himself worthy of being the Son of Heaven. Expressed

slightly differently and this was a matter of state that was not dependent on

the charm or eloquence of the emperor, but on certain other verifiable conditions

that "proved" that the emperor was a worthy steward of the heavenly mandate

the Chinese emperor was not personally divine, but divinely appointed, meaning

that by negligence, the emperor could forfeit his divine mandate.

Moreover, when the emperor performed the Temple of Heaven rituals and the

Fengshan Sacrifices on Mount Tai, he was worshipping Heaven and Earth as his

own symbolic parents. These rituals formed part of the emperor's ancestral

worship, which was a practice common to all ancient Chinese religions, from the

pre-Taoist, animist religions to Taoism to Chinese Buddhism. These ancient

practices were absorbed into Taoism and later Buddhism in much the same way

that, for example, Christianity absorbed various pagan customs.

The humility of the emperor in this regard is also central to the Chinese tributary

system that was first demonstratively invoked under the Ming Dynasty, but was

pursued almost intact by the subsequent Qing Dynasty (the only reason why the

tributary system which says that the Middle Kingdom/ China is the supreme

country on earth and its sovereign the supreme ruler on earth was not invoked

earlier is that traders from afar had not arrived en masse at the court of the

Chinese emperor as they did during the Ming Dynasty, when Portuguese ships

first appeared in the South China Sea, quickly followed by Spanish, Dutch and

British ships, as well as the ships of other foreign nations to learn more about

the Maritime History of China, go here).

Indeed, the system of tribute, or subservience, involving the, to a Westerner,

humiliating "three prostrations (san baidao []) and nine kowtows" (jiu


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ketou [], where ketou means "to knock one's head against the ground")

that the foreign delegations were subjected to in Beijing during the Ming-Qing

period is the same system of kowtowing, as the practice was known by

Westerners i.e., three successive prostrations, each followed by three kowtows,

or in all, nine kowtows that the emperor himself was required to perform at theTemple of Heaven. The expression, "from the imperial court down to our village",

captures the notion that the ritual of baidao and ketou were practiced by all

Chinese people, from the emperor down to the most lowly peasant, during

ancestral worship, and also at funerals. These expessions of filial piety (xiao [])

were also championed by Confucius.

Yongzheng Emperor (Reign: CE 172235) Offering Sacrifices at the Altar of the

God of Agriculture

(Qing Dynasty court artist (anonymous), handscroll on silk, Palace Museum,

Beijing)


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As indicated, an emperor had to make himself worthy of the Mandate of Heaven,

and without it, he could not be presumed to be the Son of Heaven. When an

emperor was overthrown, the explanation given by his successor was that the

overthrown emperor had abused his heavenly mandate, thus forfeiting his divine

appointment. But the people also had a right to depose an emperor who did notfulfill his divine appointment. An emperor who fulfilled his divine appointment

ruled over an empire that prospered, where Heaven smiled upon Humanity,

blessing it with the earth's riches.

If, on the contrary, the empire was plagued with drought or famine, or with

natural catastrophes of the likes of earthquakes (there have been a lot of

earthquakes in China's history!), this could be interpreted as Heaven's

dissatisfaction with the Son of Heaven, meaning that the people therefore had a

legitimate right to depose the emperor. As the modern person can appreciate, itwas at times quite a thankless job being the Chinese emperor, for the Chinese

emperor, unlike, for example, the Inca and Aztec emperors, couldn't just toss a

few virgins into the volcano and hope that the gods would therewith be

appeased.

o-o-0-o-o

As we have seen in the above, under ideal circumstances, the role of theemperor was a very fixed part of the cosmic order between Heaven and Earth, as

well as all thing in between. Each rank, including the emperor's own rank, played

its role in the grand scheme of things, whose ultimate aim was to provide for

prosperity and to maintain order and harmony. Therefore the emperor's words,

as long as he enjoyed the Mandate of Heaven, were as commands from Heaven

itself. Alas, not all nor even the majority of Chinese emperors lived up to this

ideal, even remotely. Many of them were brilliant in a certain area but very

flawed in other areas. A few of them, however, enjoyed respect and admiration,

and were considered as great leaders both in their own respective times as well

as by posterity. Below is a line-up of the most famous/ most respected Chinese

emperors.


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Emperor Qin Shi Huang of Qin

Emperor Gaozu of Han (aka Liu Bang)


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Emperor Wu of Han


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Emperor Taizong of Tang


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Emperor Shizu of Yuan (aka Kublai Khan)

The Hongwu Emperor of Ming


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The Kangxi Emperor of Qing

Documents

Emperor of China