The Astonishing Life Of China's Tyrant Empress | Wu Zetian | Absolute History

In China's Valley of the Kings, there stands a tall carved stone. It marks the tomb of a woman who rose from lonely concubine to become Emperor of China. The only woman to dare claim that title. But China's female emperor has gone down in history as a controversial and deeply divisive ruler. To have a woman with such power really threatened the establishment. Not only did Wu Zetian rock the boat, in some ways she overturned it. It would have been a very dangerous thing to get in the way of Wu Zetian. Since her death 1,300 years ago, Wu Zetian has been remembered as a callous tyrant who brought calamity to China. But now, extraordinary new discoveries are revealing a very different picture of her reign. From ancient tombstones. I've been waiting since this was excavated. I am ecstatic. To Buddhist temples. I honestly wasn't expecting that. That is really exciting. Seeing this with your own eyes is an incredible experience. And lost treasures. It's even more fantastic than I thought it would be. Now, for the first time, experts are discovering how one woman managed to rule all of imperial China. And whether Wu Zetian really was an evil dictator, or one of the most misunderstood leaders in history. The only female emperor in China's 2,000 years of imperial history was named Wu Zetian, Wu the Celestial. She first entered court in 637 AD as a 13-year-old concubine. Part of the harem of mistresses serving Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty. Tang Taizong had more than 100 concubines. By repute, she was beautiful. She was charming. She was entertaining. She also had a real zest for life. Concubine Wu soon got herself noticed. When she entered the palace, she quickly gained favor of this emperor. And her relationship become closer with the rise of her influence at court. And she proved to be politically very, very skillful. And she's very shrewd. When the old emperor died, Wu Zetian became, at first, concubine to his son, Gao Zong. Then in 655, he made her his empress. But Emperor Gao Zong was a sickly man. And gradually, Wu became the real power behind the throne. Until in 690, with her husband dead, Wu Zetian stepped from the shadows and declared herself emperor. Yet China's ancient chroniclers were scathing in their accounts of her rise to power. History tells us a really dark and bleak picture about Empress Wu. One of the most brutal stories we have is that she killed her own child just to frame the previous empress and gain station at court. We're also told that Wu Zhao had her two rivals' legs and arms cut off and then dipped them in a vat of wine and let them slowly bleed to death. So this paints a picture of a devious, manipulating, calculating, self-serving and absolutely ruthless Virago, hell-bent on power. Even after she claimed the throne, we're told Wu Zetian was ruthless in her reign. This is the tomb of Wu Zetian's second son, Li Xian. He was a threat to his mother. Li Xian was accused of treason. And he was exiled to the most remote corner of the Chinese empire, locked in a room and forced to commit suicide by poisoning. So this is a mother killing her own son so that she can hold on to power. Wu Zetian led China for nearly 50 years. According to legend, she was a tyrant whose reign brought disaster to the empire. Now, archaeologists are unearthing new evidence that challenges this version of Wu's story. Professor Zhong Zhanlin is the world's leading archaeologist of the Tang era. Today, the city of Xi'an has grown to encompass old Chang'an, Wu's capital. With a population of 12 million, Xi'an is rapidly expanding. It's also home to Professor Zhang's conservation facility. Historian Dr. Harry Rothschild has heard about some intriguing recent finds that date to Wu's reign. It's amazing seeing all these Tang artifacts. I've been studying Wu Zhao, Wu Zetian, for 17 years. And finally, here we are at ground zero. You can sense her everywhere here in Chang'an. The figurines show life in Wu's capital. The musicians, traders and nobles buried with the dead to ensure a comfortable afterlife. But there's also something unexpected here. A first clue to what Wu's China was really like. We can see that the women of the Tang era wore men's clothing in a very fashionable fashion. Because women were able to go out and do things just like men in the society at the time. For example, horse-riding, hunting, or going out to play. In Wu Zetian's time, the status of women was greatly elevated. It was much higher than before. So, we're looking at an unprecedented boost for the position of women. You're talking about a female emperor here, after all. And so, that translated directly into sort of greater opportunity and greater freedom for women in the late 7th and early 8th century. It seems like there may be more to Wu Zetian than meets the eye. Ancient art is a great source of inspiration. Ancient chroniclers denigrated her reign. But many recent tomb discoveries, like the women in men's clothing, hint at a rather different story. Professor Tonya Eckfeldt is an expert on Tang-era tombs. She's on her way to see one of the most amazing archaeological finds in all Chinese history. It's amazing. It's even more fantastic than I thought it would be. This is the fabled Phoenix Crown of ancient China. A long-lost treasure from the Tang era, written about in ancient texts but never seen, until now. This priceless headdress is held under lock and key and can only be viewed by special appointment. Tonya believes it is a vital clue to the truth about Wu Zetian's China. There's an enormous amount to investigate in this piece. Looking closely, the metalwork is filigree and there's a lot of granulation. Granulation consists of tiny little beads of gold. The whole crown is like a peacock displaying its tail. There are very, very fine flowers made of mother of pearl and pearl. There are even fine bunches of grapes made of Chinese glass. So really what we see here is something cosmopolitan and something rich, something fashionable, full of luxury items, not only in the making of it, but also in the imagery involved. Professors Young's team found the Phoenix Crown in a grave that was already an exceptional find. A tomb that had never been raided. Inside was a skeleton and on the skull, a beehive hairstyle studded with jewels. The skeleton was of a young woman named Li Chui, a minor descendant of the Tang royal family. For 18 months, the team carefully picked out every single jewel and stone, slowly piecing together the headdress to reveal its true glory. But when they used x-ray chromatography to discover where the different jewels and stones came from, they were in for a surprise. The headdress has carnelian from Uzbekistan, 2,900 miles to the west of Xiongnu. Garnet from India, 3,000 miles southwest. Amber from Iran, 4,000 miles away. And ivory from Sri Lanka, 4,500 miles from Wu's capital. The crown gives us clues about Wu Zetian's society. Life was rich. There was a lot of luxury. It was a real high point in the arts. What we can see here is the embodiment of all of the wealth and all of the treasure that the Tang court could attract. Li Chui wasn't even a princess, yet she was buried wearing this priceless headdress. Clear evidence of the extraordinary wealth of China at the time. Her tomb holds one final secret. She was buried with a jade silkworm in her hand. Another clue that reveals Wu's ambitions to make her China the wealthiest empire in the world. In 7th century China, a woman named Wu Zetian rose from lowly concubine to empress. With her husband, the emperor, sick, she ruled the empire in all but name. Ancient chroniclers dismissed her reign as a time of calamity. But today's experts think the truth may be very different. In a tomb 50 miles northwest of Wu's capital city, Chang'an, Tonya Eckfeld is investigating murals that provide strong evidence of Wu's influence and power. Here we can see a mural of foreign ambassadors coming to court. Ambassadors came from far and wide. In this mural, we can see a Mongolian, a Korean, and a tonsured monk, perhaps from Rome or Syria. There's a man from Xinjiang, from Greece, and from Persia. It's interesting because we can see that the ambassadors are in quite subservient positions. Their hands are clasped before them and seem quite in awe of the situation. The mural suggests that Wu Zetian was a respected international leader of her time. I think Wu Zetian was a consummate politician. She saw advantage in the use of diplomacy rather than warfare and led a society that was quite open and open to foreigners. Many foreigners at high level beat a path to her door. Recent research suggests that there were 25,000 foreigners living in Wu's Chang'an. Many were traders and more than anything, they were after one Chinese product. Since the 4th millennium BC, China had produced the finest quality silk. By Wu's era, the demand for Chinese silk had made it as valuable as gold. The ancient trade routes of the Silk Road began in Chang'an, spreading east and west, linking China to other nations. But by the mid-7th century, bandits and robbers threatened to stop trade in its tracks. New discoveries reveal Wu Zetian's masterstroke. She built military outposts far into Central Asia, securing safe passage all along the silk routes. Harry Rothschild has come to the very start of the Silk Road in Chang'an to find the latest archaeological evidence of trade in Wu's capital. This is incredible. We've been allowed to come right down here into the western market. We're standing right on the edge of the canal, looking right across into this square where you had all of these stalls arrayed, where rows of ironmongers and butchers and tanners and silversmiths, goldsmiths, calligraphy brush salesmen would be arrayed where you could find anything under the sun. If you get down closely here, you can see ruts that have been left in the earth from the carts that went over this bridge. You really feel the ambience of the western market. In Wu Zetian's Chang'an, the east and west markets marked the start of the Silk Road. In the west market, goods from land to the west of Chang'an were bought and sold. Silk Road trade not only made Wu's empire wealthy, it brought so many foreigners to China that her capital became one of the first truly cosmopolitan cities in the world. People from all across the world traveled to Chang'an and many chose to stay. And this multicultural influence can still be felt in present-day Xi'an. We are walking along the Hui Street, the Chinese Muslim street on the very heart of old Tang Chang'an. It is bustling, it is vibrant, it is full of energy, as you see by the milling bustle going on behind me now. I think these are sugared figs or dried figs here. These came along the Silk Road from Persia. So this is a kind of wheat kernel candy and he's pulling this taffy. Then afterwards, they'll take the taffy and they'll roll it out with pumpkin seeds or with sesame seeds and then turn it into this hard candy. The sesame came from Persia and the Middle East along the Silk Road. So this is sort of the fruit of something that was trafficked 1,300 years ago during Wu Zetian's time. I think in terms of the multiculturalism, the vibrance, the bustle, the energy, just the constant commercial buzz, you have a great sense of what was going on during the time. By 662, with her husband the emperor ill, Empress Wu Zetian was in effective control of the whole Chinese empire. Trade had brought wealth and luxury, evident from the valuable artifacts that have been found. And Wu wanted to flaunt this to the rest of the world. To do this, she planned the expansion of the imperial palace on a scale never seen before. When archaeologists first uncovered the foundations, they were amazed by what they found. This is one of the huge gated entrances, rebuilt to scale on those very foundations. This is Danfeng Gate, the southern gate of Daming Palace. Just looking up at it, it conjures a sense of awe. For me, it's a statement. It provides a sense of imperial grandeur. It makes anyone sort of standing before the gate feel a sense of their own smallness and insignificance. Wu Zetian's Daming Palace was the largest in the world. Completed in just three years, the scale of the complex outshone anything anyone had ever seen. Look at the size of Daming Palace. This is twice as big as old Pompeii. It's five times bigger than the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing Dynasty emperors. It's 22 times the size of the Acropolis. The scope, the grandeur, it's absolutely staggering. You can read about it, but you don't really appreciate that magnitude until you step out on this balcony and you look out at this vista. There are archery grounds. There are polo grounds, cockfighting arenas, places for drama troops to practice, and that's just the beginning. There are three or four more palaces beyond that. Emissaries coming from foreign countries would come in with their jaws dropping with just a sort of starry-eyed wonder, and they would feel like they were looking at a celestial world, a paradise on earth. I do think it was about imposing her power with the majesty and size of Daming Palace. But Harry thinks this place is unusual in more than just its extreme size. Chang'an, when it was first designed, was the model of perfect imperial symmetry. The old imperial palace was in the north-central position within the Tang capital, Chang'an. This new Daming Palace was outside of the city walls altogether. It's very unusual to build a palace outside of this usual model of imperial symmetry. There's one good reason. For 12 years, Wu Zhao had languished in the old imperial palace. For her, this was a chance to get a new start, to distance herself from her lowly and obscure past as a fifth-ranked talent. Here, where you have this stunning, new imperial grandeur, was an opportunity to sort of reinvent herself. It's becoming clear that Wu Zetian made China her global superpower. Contrary to how the legends were written, she was at the centre of a web of trade, wealth and political influence that stretched from Japan to the Mediterranean. In the 7th century, Wu Zetian's capital city, Chang'an, was in a class of its own. So Chang'an, during Wu Zetian's time, would have been an absolutely massive city. There's supposed to be almost a million people living within the city walls and another million outside. Which just outclasses anything else in the world at that time. Jonathan Dugdale from Birmingham University thinks he knows one reason for Wu Zetian's remarkable success. She would win the support of the common people through the reinvigorated religion that was sweeping China, Buddhism. Wu Zetian realised patronising Buddhism was a great way to please the people. And what better way than building new temples and pagodas? So one of the main ones she built was this one right behind us. The Great Wild Goose Pagoda. The Great Goose Pagoda was originally built in 652. As someone who studied pagodas for a long time, this is particularly awesome. The pagoda was an important temple housing sacred Buddhist writings. But just 50 years after it was built, it was destroyed in an earthquake. Wu, who had been brought up in the Buddhist faith, spending time in a nunnery, decided to rebuild the pagoda, but on a much bigger scale. Jonathan suspects that this new building was a record breaker and that Wu surpassed herself in her desire to make her mark in her people's faith. And he thinks he can prove it. I would really like to find out how tall this building was when Wu Zetian rebuilt it. Because it'd be really interesting if she's decided to build it significantly bigger for a reason. One, two, three, four, five. But first, he has a problem to solve. Wu Zetian's pagoda was partially damaged by a second earthquake. The top three floors toppled. So Jonathan has to work out how high her structure would have been with the missing floors. 58. Onwards and upwards. One, two. Okay, so that's 40 steps to that one. And that puts us on the fourth floor now. 35, 36, 37, 38. One, two, three. He's found a pattern in the number of steps. The previous floors, we've gone from 43 to 40 to 38 to 37. So if the next floor is either 37 or 36, we should make an accurate calculation. 34, 35, 36, 37. This is good. We're still decreasing, so this is good. We might be able to do something. Last one. 31, 32. Let's do the maths, people. By working out the pattern and height of the steps per story. 166. Jonathan calculates with the missing three floors, the true height of Wu's pagoda was close to a staggering 300 feet high. Which would have made it not only the tallest brick pagoda in Asia, but possibly one of the tallest buildings in the world at that time. It would have been like nothing else that anyone had seen before. In the cityscape now, it still looks impressive. But in those days, it would have soared above absolutely everything else in the city. Wu built this record-breaking structure as a statement, targeted directly at her people. There's so many different things she stands to gain from building a massive pagoda in such a visual space like this. The majority of the population of Chang'an at this time are Buddhist. And they will see that she is supporting Buddhism. She's supporting their religion. Wu Zetian ordered the building of new Buddhist temples in every town in her empire, creating allies among the common people of China. And she didn't stop there. 250 miles east of Chang'an in Hunan province are the Lungmen grotto caves. Historian Lu Yang thinks they may be key to understanding Wu's power. This is a sacred place for Buddhist religion. And pilgrims have been coming here for centuries. But I've been told there is a connection that links Empress Wu directly to that faith. Members of the elite paid vast sums to carve small caves into this sacred hillside. There are over 1,400, housing over 100,000 Buddha figures. The smallest is just an inch tall. The biggest is an imposing 57 feet high, commissioned by Wu Zetian herself. And it has a story to tell. Wow, isn't this impressive? What a view. It is gigantic. The official name of this Buddha is Vairojana, which is the radiant Buddha of a great sun. This is basically a universal Buddha, symbolize the power and dominance of this religion. Wu Zetian wanted to put herself at the heart of Buddhism in the eyes of her people. To do this, it's possible she took one audacious step and ordered the statue to be carved in her own image. The legend says that this statue actually is modeled on her face. She wanted to make this a statement of her power. This will give her more credibility because this is the age of Buddhism and there's a massive follower of this particular religion. And by creating this temple, she basically put herself on the center stage of not just religious action, but also the society in general. You know, seeing this with your own eyes is an incredible experience. This is so impressive to me and I think she got what she wanted. Human grottoes of the Great Goose Pagoda suggest that Wu Zetian was a skillful tactician who knew how to use religion to promote her own status and keep her empire happy. And upriver from the giant Buddha, a series of very recent archaeological discoveries reveal another of the secrets of her success. Wow, this is spectacular. Here in Luoyang, Professor Wang Ju and his team have been excavating giant granaries designed for storing rice. Inscriptions enable the team to date each granary precisely. Yes, yes. Wu Zetian ordered rice from eastern China to be brought here by canal, stockpiled in these vast grain stores, then redistributed in times of need. During the early 7th century, China suffered prolonged droughts leading to famines. But under Wu Zetian, improvements to the rice store's design were to prove invaluable. Marvelous. Wow, the massive scale of this granary really testify the power and the capability of Emperor Su old regime. and she is a very capable ruler. The grain kept here can last for many years. So this has not just contributed to the stability of her regime, but also for the future of Tang Dynasty as well. Archaeology is revealing that Wu Zetian was an efficient administrator who ensured her people and her soldiers were always fed. But despite her successes, as a woman, she could never rely on the support of the aristocratic establishment. She needed allies. So, in a radical break with tradition, Wu allowed communists to join in the administration of her government. She encouraged women to be entrepreneurs and permitted Chinese women to divorce and marry freely for the first time. And in a moment of breathtaking audacity, she even appointed a female prime minister by the name of Shangguan Guan'er. Harry has been told of evidence Professor Zhang's team have found in recent excavations of the prime minister's tomb, suggesting her life had a controversial final chapter. This is Shangguan Guan'er's epitaph. I've been waiting since September of 2013 when this was excavated for a chance to actually see this in person, and it's finally happening today. So I am ecstatic. This says she had 47 springs and autumns at the time of her death. But when Zhang's team found the prime minister's tomb, it had been purposely destroyed. And this destruction is key to understanding why the bleak picture of Wu Zetian has been passed on through the centuries. This was thorough, malicious and intentional destruction that had been done to the tomb. Shangguan Guan'er's tomb had been dismantled by order of Emperor Shuizong, Wu Zetian's successor. Harry believes there is a direct link between this destruction and the chronicles that tell of Wu's evil and incompetence. Now that I know that Shangguan Guan'er's tomb and Shangguan Guan'er's grave was dismantled, this is part of an intentional process, an intentional destruction of vestiges of female power during the late 7th and early 8th century. The Confucian patriarchy striking back and re-establishing normative power. By 690 AD, Wu Zetian had ascended the throne to become the first female emperor ever to rule the Chinese Empire. But her opponents were determined to unseat her. She had annihilated many, many of her enemies. But where there's power, there are always rivals and there's always a contest. Although there is clearly more to Wu Zetian than the ancient writers led us to believe, it has also emerged that some of the tales of her callousness were not just propaganda. Art historian Dr Jenny Liu has discovered new texts in the tomb of Wu's great-granddaughter, Princess Yongtai, that suggest even blood knew no mercy. I've studied other princess epitaphs as well and this is a passage here which I've never seen. You have the character for anger, OK? And anger at the... ..at the two boys and their secret medicine. So this passage tells you what happened to Princess Yongtai. These are characters that are usually used for the miscarriage or the loss of a child. And it is the Zhang brothers' secret medicine, or poison, that made her miscarriage, leading to her death. This refers to Wu Zetian because it's very possible that she was the instigator of the poison, the Zhang brothers were very close to her and they did her bidding. And she was known to have pitted people against each other in court and she would cause one to poison or kill the other. And she did this with officials and now it seems maybe she did it with her relations, her kin. And what's the motive? Why? Why does she want the princess dead? She was bearing the child of two of the strongest clans in contention for the throne. And it might be possible that she did not want this child to be born, no matter the gender. It would have been a very dangerous thing to get in the way of Wu Zetian. As Emperor of China, Wu Zetian had successfully fought off all rivals to hold on to power. But the fight had been bloody. Wu Zetian became incredibly ruthless. She had hundreds of members of the ruling family executed. The violence and reign of terror, you could say, was extreme. But she was not without a conscience. She was very troubled by what she'd done. With her mind turning towards her afterlife, Wu wanted forgiveness of her sins. She wrote a confession and had it engraved onto a golden tablet and had that tablet taken to a holy place to perform a sacred ritual. So here we are on Mount Song. It's the central of the five sacred peaks of ancient China. And it became a very important place in Wu Zetian's later life. In the year 700, Wu Zetian came to this mountain. She had a golden tablet made on which she inscribed her sins, which was then cast down the mountain as a form of absolution. And we know precisely what that gold tablet said, because nearly 1,300 years later, a farmer found it lying in the earth on the mountain slopes. Its inscription was short, but its message profound. It said, What you can tell by the fact she's throwing away this tablet in such a visible fashion is that she's really trying to demonstrate to other people that she was repentant. It's a very visible ceremonial thing. It's saying, I have sinned and I wish to be absolved of these sins. And whether she actually believed that was the case or not, I think is less important than the impression it would create to other people. The end of Wu Zetian's reign would become fraught with scheming and rebellion among the male nobility at her court. The higher she goes, she becomes a tall poppy. She becomes a bigger target. Jonathan has come to a remote location in the foothills of Mount Sun, that Wu retreated to in her last years. It's awesome. I've wanted to come here for a long time. This is quite special. This is the Songyue Pagoda. It's important in Wu Zetian's life because she used to come here to worship. It's 1,500 years old. Not only is it still standing, it still looks pretty good. So, Wu Zetian would have come probably into this very building because this is the original structure from 1,500 years ago. I've never seen anything like this before. This is a phenomenal building. You can feel why Wu Zetian would want to come here. I mean, Chang'an at this time is politically very difficult and she wants to come here to just escape all that. It's a place of safety and refuge. Throughout her life, Wu Zetian had shattered Confucian tradition, rising from a lowly concubine to become the only female emperor of China. She had achieved much. She made China a better place for women, the empire wealthy and peaceful, her capital city vibrant and cosmopolitan. And her population fed and free to practise their religions. But the male establishment was closing in and the Xi emperor was too old to fight back. When Wu Zetian's rule came to an end, she was 80. In effect, she wasn't usurped. She abdicated. So, she was still maintaining her own sense of control. She lived for a few more months and she went quietly. Her time had come. Emperor Wu Zetian died in 705. This is Changling, the Tang dynasty mausoleum complex, her final resting place. She's buried in a secret chamber deep inside the mountain We're on the spiritual path, walking toward Wu Zetian's tomb. It's impressive, it's daunting, it's powerful. The area that it covers is almost the same as the Daming Palace, so it's a huge area. The path to Wu Zetian's tomb is protected by imperial bodyguards who use them as sculptures to ward off evil spirits. Beside the gateway entrance, are two sets of foreign emissaries lined up to pay homage. Being here is a really awesome experience. It's so impressive. Wu Zetian may have held power for more than half a century, but in this place, really, her spirit and her sense of majesty and authority and power has lived on for many centuries. Standing alone at Changling is the carved stele honouring Wu Zetian's resting place. By her decree, it was left blank, inviting historians to write of her achievements. And they did so, distorting her story for centuries. But having discovered more about her life, what would today's experts now carve upon the stele? I would write something along the lines of, she was a woman who did what she had to to stay in power. She was a great leader, she had a lot of political acumen. But most of all, I'd say she was the woman that proved that in a man's world, you didn't need a man to lead it. The one word that I would put is just maverick, because of the way that she went about gaining power. I'd write nothing. For her entire idiosyncratic, unprecedented political career, defied labels, and for 1300 years, she's defied historical verdicts. I think that the blankness of the stele is a perfect monument.