Talk:Wu Zetian

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[edit] Posthumous name

Tianhou is a "posthumous name". It is still my strong opinion that it qualifies. It was used, yes, in her lifetime (specifically, during the reign of her husband Emperor Gaozong) but not after during the reigns of her sons or herself. It was later, during the reign of her grandson Xuanzong that it was again used -- as the official way to address her, rather than Zetiandasheng Huanghou. That lasted through the rest of Tang Dynasty. I think it qualifies as a posthumous name. Please elaborate on why you disagree. --Nlu 19:26, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

As can be checked here and here, Tianhou (天后) was the posthumous name of Empress Wu Zetian only between July 28, 710 (景云元年六月丁未) and November 13, 710 (景云元年十月乙未). Her posthumous name then changed many times, until eventually in 749 (天宝八载) the final version of her posthumous name was set as Empress Zetian Shunsheng (則天順聖皇后), which is the posthumous name that appears in the infobox. So please do not change that again. Hardouin 19:38, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe you are reading those passages correctly. Those refer to how she would be addressed in the temple with her husband -- not how she would be addressed in general. There were references throughout the rest of Tang dynasty documents of her as Tianhou -- not as Zetian Shunsheng Huanghou. I do not dispute your chronology. What I do dispute is the overly narrow definition of what a "posthumous name" is; if Tianhou is not considered a posthumous name, why was it used throughout the rest of Tang Dynasty as a way of referring to her? --Nlu 19:52, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Just to add to that: see [1] (reference to Tianhou in Biography 57 of Xintangshu -- during Emperor Xuanzong's time; Biography 67 of Xintangshu); [2] (Biography 77 -- the reference to which in Zizhi Tongjian was what alerted me to this usage in the first place), [3] (Biography 88; Biography 99). Your assertion that Tianhou is not a "posthumous name" because it is not the one used for official long-term title would mean that, for example, Wendi is not a "posthumous name" for Emperor Wen of Han -- because the official long-term title is Xiaowen Huangdi. I disagree strongly. --Nlu 20:04, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I think the problem here is that you are confusing two things in English: a posthumous name on the one hand, and a style on the other hand. A posthumous name was a formal name that appeared in the temple of the ancestors, and which was also used by historians in formal circumstances. So a posthumous name was never meant to be used by people living in imperial China. Instead people used styles, for instance the ruling emperor could be called huangshang (皇上), a retired emperor could be referred as taishanghuang (太上皇), and for dead emperors there were many ways to refer to them, and the way to refer to them changed along Chinese history. Remember that in ancient societies, people almost never referred to important people using their real name, or even their official name. Instead, they used styles. For example, the brother of King Louis XIV of France was Philippe, duc d'Orléans, but nobody called him "Philippe", and nobody even called him "duc d'Orléans". Instead, he was refered to by his style: "Monsieur". It doesn't mean "Monsieur" was a posthumous name. Closer to us, Empress Cixi was referred to by her style laofoye (老佛爷). It doesn't mean laofoye is her posthumous name. I think it is very important to understand that it is not because a name is used after the death of the person that it is automatically a posthumous name. Styles can be used long after the person is dead, yet they are not posthumous names.

In the case of Tianhou, it is obviously a style, whose litteral meaning is "Heavenly Empress". It was used after Wu Zetian's death, as the biographies that you linked are showing, but it doesn't mean that because it was used after her death it was a posthumous name. In the infoboxes of emperors and empresses, we only list official posthumous and temple names. We don't list styles. The reason for that is because styles changed a lot over time, an emperor or an empress could have many styles during their life, and after, depending on fashion, so it is too shaky ground to include in the infoboxes.

On the other hand, you could mention the style Tianhou inside the article if you want. The story behind it is very interesting. When Wu Zetian became in control of her husband Emperor Gaozong in the 660s, she wanted to show her power to all, and so she managed to convince her weak husband to change her and his title. So it was decreed that the title (style) of the emperor would be changed from huangdi (皇帝, i.e. "Emperor") to tianhuang (天皇, i.e "Heavenly Emperor"), and the title (style) of the empress would be changed from huanghou (皇后, i.e "Empress") to tianhou (天后, i.e. "Heavenly Empress). This shocked a lot Confucian officials, because it was placing the emperor and the empress above their ancestors, who were only huangdi and huanghou. Later after Wu Zetian's reign these titles were reverted to the traditional huangdi ("emperor") and huanghou ("empress"), so that there is only one Tianhou in Chinese history, Wu Zetian. Because this title of Tianhou was unprecedented, I believe this is the reason why she was referred to as Tianhou after her death. There could be no ambiguity when using this name. We can add all that in the article if you want. The exact date when the titles were changed can be found in the Book of Tang.

Now an interesting codicile is this: at the time when the titles tianhuang and tiandi were given to the emperor and the empress, Japan was opening itself to Chinese culture. The ruler of Japan thought that it would be improper for him to be just an "emperor", so he had to be a "Heavenly Emperor" like the husband of Wu Zetian. Later in China this title "Heavenly Emperor" was abandonned as I said, but not in Japan, so today the emperor of Japan is still known as tianhuang, pronounced tenno (天皇) in Japanese. We can also add this if you want. Hope this makes things clear. Hardouin 21:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I checked in the Book of Tang, and I found the date when the titles tianhuang and tianhou were decreed: September 20, 674 (上元元年八月壬辰). Hardouin 21:46, 9 August 2005 (UTC) 　

[edit] Emperor or Empress?

When Wu Zetian be came the Chinese monarch, did she consider herself to be the Emperor or the Empress? People apparently were required to call her either 皇上 or 皇帝 when she was in full power. That would translate directly into Emperor. Empress would be the title of the female consort of the Emperor. Of course, Wu's husband wasn't around when she became emperor, so there wasn't the issue regarding the name of a male consort of the Emperor. Technically, 皇上 or 皇帝 is genderless and unsexist.

Calling Wu Zetian merely as Empress Wu would actually support the POV of the restored Tang Dynasty after the palace coup that disposed her of power. The restored Tang Dynasty apparently did not acknowledge that she actually served as the (female) Emperor.

The following BBC article makes the case that historically in Japan, when the female becomes the 天皇 monarch, she is considered to be the emperor rather than the empress.

Maybe we should change the name of the article into "Emperor Wu Zetian." Any comments? Allentchang 16:07, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think calling her "emperor" would be correct. In this case, "empress," in context, is simply the female counterpart to an emperor -- in other words, more explicitly, an empress regnant (as opposed to an empress consort). Queen Victoria of Great Britain, for example, also carried the title of Empress of India -- but she was not the wife of an emperor; indeed, her husband would be refused the title of king, which she wanted to give him, by parliament. She was an empress regnant, as was Wu. I don't think calling her empress is not NPOV, because it did not imply that she did not reign as a monarch; indeed, I think calling her "emperor" would be grammatically incorrect. --Nlu 18:23, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

- How exactly would calling her emperor be grammatically in correct? These days, there have been plenty of English anti-sexist language rectification campaigns where the English grammar has effectively been changed to accomodate non-sexist language. In certain femminist circles, it would now be considered gramatically incorrect to use sexist language. Even if we ignore the modern English sexist language issue, the Chinese term for "Emperor" does not imply gender and somehow we need to make it very clear in English. When Wu Zetian was the monarch, no one dared to add any feminine indicator to her official title as Emperor. Only after she died did they dare to do so. Also consider the fact, that in the past, it would be considered illogical to think that the terms "senator," "justice," or "president" could imply a female office holder. Allentchang 09:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Here's another thing to consider (taken from the Wikipedia article on sexist language): The Chinese language is remarkably gender-neutral due to its underlying structure, even though China has a long history of male dominance. Critics of gender-neutral language modification in other languages see this as evidence of a lack of cause-and-effect relationship between a society's gender relations and the use of grammatical gender in its language.

Comprehension in Chinese is almost wholly dependent on word order as Chinese has no inflection for gender, tense, or case. There's also very little derivational inflection, instead the language relies heavily on compounding to create new words. A Chinese word is thus inherently gender-neutral unless it contains a root for man or woman. For example, the word for doctor is yīshēng (醫生) and can only be made gender-specific by adding the root for male or female to the front of it. Thus to specify a male doctor, one would need to say nányīshēng (男醫生). Under normal circumstances both male and female doctors would simply be referred to as yīshēng.

Spoken Chinese also has only one third-person pronoun, tā for all situations (though -men 們 / 们 can be added as a plural suffix). Tā can mean he, she, or it in any case. However it is written with three different characters: "他", containing the human radical "亻", for he, or a person of undetermined gender; "她", containing the female radical "女", for she; and "它" for it. Despite this, there is no "he/she" issue in Chinese, because pronouns are usually implied from context, and replacing "她" with "他" causes no grammatical conflict. Allentchang 10:01, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Emperor over empress is not ungrammatical for me although it is a little unusual. But even if unusual, I would guess that many would prefer it due to the issues of sexist language. Emperor-empress would parallel king-queen, but the -ess suffix is often used in a sexist way, as in tiger vs. tigress, tempter vs. temptress. The -ess often emphasizes (a perhaps improper) sexuality which is not really relevant to being a tiger or a ruler. So, this decision of whether to use empress or emperor will depend upon how much this sexual connotation is perceived. It does seem to be neutralized (for me) a little by the king-queen parallel. whatever happens in Chinese does not seem so relevant to what happens in English (although it is interesting to compare). peace – ishwar (speak) 00:41, 2005 September 9 (UTC)

In English, we do not call women "Emperors" even if they are called by the word for Emperor in a foreign language. We should note in the article that she was referred to by the Chinese word for Emperor, rather than just by the word for Empress, but we should not pretend as though it is normal in English to refer to empress regnants as emperors. Maria Theresa was referred to in Hungarian as "King of Hungary," but we always call her "Queen of Hungary." We also do not call Hatshepsut "King of Egypt." Nor do we call the various women who were Tenno of Japan "Emeperor." Such strange instances should be noted, but we should not give the idiosyncratic usage as the primary one. john k 01:08, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. One language cannot change to "suit" another. An English speaker can't force a Chinese person to use a single term for all his brothers/sisters regardless of comparative age because English only has the words brothers and sisters compared with Chinese jiejie/meimei/gege/didi...maybe a bad example but the point is, we must conform to native usage and not pursue superficial/literal translations. --Dpr 16:37, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

In any case, there is no reason to fuss about translation, because in Chinese she is known as "Empress Consort Wu" (武后), she is not known as "Emperor Wu" (武帝). She was known as "emperor" (皇帝) only during her reign. Ever since she was deposed in 705 she has been called "Empress Consort" (皇后). Yes it was the POV of the Tang dynasty, but it's a POV that has turned into usage. Hardouin 01:17, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Only female emperor?

It says in the article that Wu Zetian is the only female emperor in the history of China. What about the Empress Dowager?

You mean Cixi? She never officially sat on the Dragon Throne. She merely ruled as Regent. 24.14.120.92 08:23, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biased Sources?

I think the article presents too strongly the viewpoint that Empress Wu was a heartless and depraved woman who gained power by sexually manipulating every man she could. This is likely the invention of classical Confucian historians, who hated her for two reasons: she was a usurper and a woman. Usurpers were never treated kindly by Confucian historians, and one who is a woman would be treated even more negatively. I think the reader should be made more aware of the biased nature of the traditional source materials. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hasmidas (talk • contribs).

Perhaps, but it is confirmable that she killed many people -- including her own sons and grandchildren. Whitewashing should not be done in the name of removing bias. --Nlu (talk) 23:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that she probably killed lots of people, I only meant that maybe we ought to make it more clear that classical Confucian histories about her are likely to be quite biased. (Thanks for showing me by example how to sign a post, by the way) --Hasmidas

Not to mention Wu Zetian is far from being the only emperor(empress) of China that killed her own kins to secure the power. Tang Taizong killed his brothers, and so do many Ming emperors. Han founders killed off his trusted colleague and doesn't seem to mind when his parents' life were threatened. Most of it in the name of "stability" or "birth right". In case of Wu Zetian, heartless or not, it was double standard. Suredeath 11:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chen Shuozhen

Wasn't she the first female emperor? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.235.83.132 (talk • contribs) 04:31, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Shangguan Wan'er

i wonder how there could be no mention of the women premier,"Shangguan Wan'er" during her reign. i think it will add depth to the Realdan 18:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)article

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