Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [45]
Nestorian Christianity, a mixture of Christian and Near Eastern religions, also came to China under Taizong. In 635, a Nestorian monk known by the Chinese as O Lo Pen (possibly a translation of “Ruben”) arrived at the imperial court. Taizong granted him several audiences, pressing the monk each time with questions about his beliefs and at one point ordering the translation of his sacred books. Favorably impressed, Taizong not only authorized the construction of a Nestorian temple in Changan but issued the following edict:
The Way has more than one name. There is more than one Sage. Doctrines vary in different lands, their benefits reach all mankind. O Lo Pen, a man of great virtue from [the Roman Empire] has brought his images and books from afar to present them in our capital. After examining his doctrines we find them profound and pacific. After studying his principles we find that they stress what is good and important. His teaching is not diffuse and his reasoning is sound. This religion does good to all men. Let it be preached freely in Our Empire.15
Taizong's rule had unsettling effects on China's traditional social hierarchy. In 632, Taizong ordered that a genealogy be compiled of the empire's most important families. This proved humiliating. While intermarriage between Chinese and non-Chinese was not uncommon during the Tang period, China's most aristocratic clans remained “pure-blooded” Chinese, who looked down on the “semi-barbarian” clans of the northwest no matter how sinicized they were. To Taizong's fury, the report ranked the emperor's own family in lowly third place. Taizong rejected the draft, with instructions for its revision. Needless to say, the second edition of the report came back with the imperial family ranked first.
The new genealogy also did something else, of great import. It raised the status of the families of Taizong's highest ministers— whom the emperor selected on the basis of ability and Confucian learning—over China's most powerful hereditary clans. This change had two significant implications. First, it elevated the scholar-official over mere aristocratic lineage. Second, it foreshadowed the rise of meritocracy in Chinese government through the civil service examination system. The latter institution, which would transform not only Chinese but much of East Asian society, was not established by Taizong himself. The person principally responsible for its development was the extraordinary Empress Wu, a former concubine who became the first and only woman officially to rule China.16
THE EMPRESS AND THE APHRODISIACS
The son chosen by Taizong as his heir was an unusual personality, perhaps mentally disturbed. He refused to speak Chinese, insisting instead on speaking Turkish, following Turkish customs, and wearing Turkish dress. His homosexual affair with a court entertainer infuriated his father, who ordered the lover killed. Eventually the heir-prince himself was killed, and another of Taizong's sons ascended the throne as Emperor Gaozong. But Gaozong was weak and indolent, and for most of his long reign (649-683) he ruled as the puppet of his wife, the Empress Wu.
Wu Zhao was a woman of exceptional beauty and intelligence and ruthless political opportunism. At the age of twelve, she became a concubine in the elderly Emperor Taizong's court. According to custom, after Taizong's death in 649, Wu Zhao should have shaved her head and become a Buddhist nun, along with all the other concubines who had not borne children. Whether she did or not is the subject of debate, but in any event, Wu Zhao quickly infatuated the new Emperor Gaozong, becoming his favorite consort and giving birth to his son in 652. In 655 she was elevated to the status of empress. Shortly afterward, to remove any threat to her power, she reputedly disposed of Gaozong's first wife and a rival concubine by ordering their arms and