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This book focuses on the remarkable political career of Wu Zhao (624–705), China's first and only female emperor better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu. In the tortuous half century of her reign, Wu Zhao faced daunting cultural obstacles and fierce opposition. Acutely aware of the breadth of resistance to her public political engagement, Wu Zhao capably deflected much of the virulent criticism. This book examines how Wu Zhao overcame these ponderous obstacles to become the sole female emperor in China's long historical pageant by developing and embracing a lineage of culturally revered female ancestors, goddesses, and paragons from different traditions, all of whom were closely associated with her person and her political power. It explains how Wu Zhao, by endorsing these various cults and drawing upon each of the “three faiths” (san jiao)—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—significantly bolstered her political authority, providing both a divine aura and tremendous normative charisma. The book explores the timing, nature, and purpose of Wu Zhao's connections to this eclectic assemblage of past influential women and female divinities.

In 695, in the Zhou court of female emperor Wu Zhao 武曌‎, Xue Huaiyi 薛懷義‎, improbably risen from male favorite of humble origins to become a Buddhist abbot, an influential ideologue, a veteran general of many expeditions, a visionary architect of grand imperial ritual constructions, lay on a bench and bared his midriff (tanfu坦腹‎). The eccentric Huaiyi’s wanton disregard for protocol, for the dignity and solemnity of venue, scandalized and profoundly outraged the Confucian establishment, creating a furor in court. To better couch Xue Huaiyi’s bared midriff in the complex historical and ideological context of the times, the chapter examines different aspects of meaning underlying the eccentric and unorthodox monk’s irreverent gesture—Buddhist, Confucian, folk/popular, etymological.

China has an ancient and impressive tradition of philological studies, most notably in the fields connected with the needs of the imperial examination system. The authors as well as the intended readers of this outstanding production of linguistic works were essentially men. Women did not participate to the imperial examinations and were almost completely absent from the landscape of Chinese philology. Nevertheless, Chinese history shows examples of erudite women and their linguistic education should be taken into account. Several textbooks were explicitly conceived for women’s education, and were often written by women. Moreover, women played an important role in the transmission of literacy in the familial context. This chapter investigates the reasons for the almost complete absence of women in Chinese philology, and describes the main examples of women’s contribution to the history of Chinese linguistic studies.