The Emperor and the Concubine - A Legendary Romance

Tang women were the most fortunate of all in China’s feudal history. They lived in a period of unprecedented economic prosperity, cultural and artistic diversity and, most significantly, gender equality. Such parity engendered the feminine charms synonymous with women of that glorious epoch: plump wholesome beauty, candidness, warmth and artistic versatility. These attributes were further enhanced by the artistic execution and gorgeous workmanship of Tang haute couture.

Yang Yuhuan personified all the charm, beauty and versatility associated with Tang women. She was one of the “Four Beauties of Ancient China” as well as its most graceful dancer. Fate, however, is not always kind to the privileged. Yang Yuhuan’s legendary existence spanned heaven and hell, creating a classic romance that was inevitably associated with one of ancient China’s greatest tragedies.

Romantic Emperor

In 637, two decades after the establishment of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Emperor Taizong remarked to his imperial cabinet: “I worry constantly that affluence may give rise to extravagance and negligence to turmoil. Maintaining awareness that preserving what we have achieved is no easy matter is gravely important to our national security. This must on no account be forgotten.”

Taizong’s fears were confirmed 118 years later. It was during the reign of his great-grandson, Emperor Xuanzong, that the mutinies led by An Lushan and Shi Siming (referred to by historians as the An-Shi Mutiny) plunged the Tang Dynasty from its zenith of prosperity into rampant warfare and abysmal decline. The love of Emperor Xuanzong for his concubine Yang Yuhuan was a determining factor in the tragic fall of what many believe to have been China’s greatest dynasty.

Emperor Xuanzong, named Li Longji, reigned for 43 years (712-756). Historical records present him as a brave and talented ruler and strategist and a gifted musician. During the first two decades of his rule he effectively and resourcefully resolved the perennial problem of court plots to usurp the imperial throne. He created a period in Chinese history known as the “Prosperity of the Kaiyuan Reign.” In the two decades that followed, however, he fell prey to the extravagance and negligent complacency of which his great-grandfather had warned. Having achieved national peace and prosperity, Xuanzong no longer cultivated the company of upright and conscientious officials. He was instead content to be beguiled by the sweet rhetoric of crafty sycophants and the earthly pleasures available to him as supreme ruler.

Records show that during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, the inner court housed more than 200 imperially conferred concubines, and that non-conferred court ladies in the respective western and eastern capitals of Chang’an and Luoyang amounted to 40,000 -- more than the total officialdom of the Tang Dynasty. The court ladies of Chang’an and Luoyang were the emperor’s nominal concubines. They received no imperial title until they had won the emperor’s favor by virtue of their feminine charms and sexual prowess. It is said that when Xuanzong’s son succeeded him as emperor, his streamlining of the inner court entailed the dismissal of 3,000 court ladies. Emperor Xuanzong unquestionably had more mistresses at his disposal than any other Chinese emperor.

Immaculate Wedlock

A Tang Dynasty painting depicting Emperor Xuanzong's escape to Sichuan (partial). (Image: China Today)Emperor Xuanzong was inconsolable at the death of his favorite concubine, Wu Huifei, in 737. Not one of his legions of wives and concubines could fill the space she had left in his heart. His spirits finally lifted on being informed that the daughter, named Yang Yuhuan, of one of his officials possessed peerless beauty that could not fail to soothe his aching heart. Xuanzong commanded an interview with Yang Yuhuan, and was immediately captivated by her irresistible charm, beauty and the elegance emitted by her smile, manner and every gesture. He was no less impressed by the intelligence and perspicacity manifest in her conversation. The emperor fell deeply and irrevocably in love, but could not take Yang Yuhuan as his wife because she had married his 18th son five years earlier. Passion, however, motivated him to find ways of arranging their union. His first move was to place Yang Yuhuan in a Taoist nunnery, in so doing eliminating her secular ties and, therefore, wifehood to the 18th prince. Yang Yuhuan, known by her religious appellation Taizhen, was assigned to the imperial Taoist nunnery within the palace precinct. She was thus within easy reach of the emperor. At the time, Yang Yuhuan was 22, and Emperor Xuanzong was 56. The resecularization of Yang Yuhuan’s life was subsequently made. It signaled the beginning of a new round of worldly life that sanctioned the emperor’s taking her as his wife.

Despite the great disparity in their ages, Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Yuhuan were a happy and loving couple, all the more closely bound by their common interest in dance and music, and admiration of one another’s artistic talent. The Tune of Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Dress (Nishang Yuyi Qu), regarded as a masterpiece, was composed by Emperor Xuanzong and said to have been inspired by a dream he once had of beautiful fairies gracefully dancing. As legend would have it, when Yang Yuhuan heard the piece played in the imperial palace, she spontaneouosly began dancing to it and, to the amazement of the Emperor, her steps were identical to those of the fairies in his dream.

Xuanzong was an enthusiastic patron of music and theater. He made the imperial theatrical garden a center for music, dance and folk opera that incorporated an imperial performing arts school. Yang Yuhuan acted as his most trusted helpmeet in this regard, particularly in recruiting talented artists to teach at the school. Under the imperial couple’s sponsorship, the development of Tang Dynasty dance, music and theater reached its apex. In the following centuries, Emperor Xuanzong was justly acknowledged as the founder of the Chinese theater.

Waxwork models of Emperor Xuanzong and Concubine Yang Yuhuan receiving foreign envoys. (Image: China Today)Within the history of Chinese imperial families, Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Yuhuan were the exemplary loving and devoted couple. The emperor conferred on Yang the supreme title of imperial concubine in 745, thereby making her his de facto empress (the actual empress’ throne had been empty since 724, when Xuanzong deposed his then empress). From that time onwards, the couple was inseparable, as verified by Tang Dynasty literature, which records how they “traveled in the same carriage, stayed in the same room, dined at the same table, and slept in the same bed”; also that the emperor “had never since appeared at the morning court assembly”; and that he “never had any other woman in his bed.” Yang Yuhuan lived a life of unashamed luxury in the Chang’an palace. The emperor built her a Duanzheng (Propriety) Tower that served as her dressing room, and a luxurious hot spring bathhouse. She had more than 700 personal dressmakers and took delivery of her favorite fruit, lichee, freighted all the way from the southern coast to the capital of Chang'an by special imperial express.

Song of Eternal Sorrow

The entire Yang clan reaped the benefits of Yang Yuhuan’s lavish imperial favor. High imperial titles were conferred on her mother and three sisters, who were moved into luxurious mansions. The Yang men were offered official positions, among which the promotion of her brother Yang Guozhong, an evil, good-for-nothing, to the position of prime minister augured the end of this apparent idyll. None of the Yang family used imperial favor wisely, instead abusing it to an extent that enraged both the imperial lineage and the common people. Their thoughtless self-indulgence hastened the tragic end to a legendary imperial romance and the doom of the entire Yang family.

It was the An-Shi Mutiny, however, that was the death-blow to the Tang Dynasty. An Lushan was of mixed Hu and Han ethnicity. He was a handsome man of an impressive height and awesome physique and was also a graceful dancer, despite his hefty 150-kilogram weight. An Lushan was a meritorious high-ranking officer that garrisoned the Tang Dynasty northern territory. Emperor Xuanzong highly appreciated An Lushan’s military talent, and his droll sense of humor made him a favorite of both the emperor and Concubine Yang. On one fateful occasion An Lushan offered, ostensibly in fun, to kowtow to the imperial couple as its adoptive son, and was happily accepted as such by the pair. This allowed him the freedom to visit the inner court more frequently, at which times he would flirt playfully with Yang Yuhuan, who was 16 years his junior, and with ever greater audacity. It was not long before rumors of an affair between the two began to circulate.

An Lushan and Yang Yuhuan’s brother, prime minister Yang Guozhong, had never been on good terms. An despised Yang as an inferior, mean, greedy incompetent, while Yang, aware of this, fomented hatred of An Lushan by spreading rumors that he was a character of evil intention. Xuanzong turned both a blind eye and a deaf ear to these savage jibes, attributing them to the men’s fundamental incompatibility. But An Lushan was actually intent on usurping the throne. Worried that his ambitions might be suspected, he decided in 755 that the time was right to act. On the pretext of following a secret decree issued by the emperor ordering him to capture and kill Yang Guozhong, An Lushan dispatched 150,000 of his troops from the north on a southern expedition to Chang’an.

Historical records of the rebellion waste few words on the death of Yang Yuhuan. Different versions of her fate later arose, one of which stated that it was one of her maids and not Yang Yuhuan that was killed, and that she escaped to Japan. Certain researchers are still interested in establishing exactly what happened to the Imperial Concubine. In any event, historians agree that it was the An-Shi Mutiny that sounded the death knell of the Great Tang Empire.