A peculiar discovery in the study of history is that although there were many poets in the Tang Dynasty, these great poets appeared after Wu Zetian. We look at Li Bai, Du Fu, He Zhizhang, Bai Juyi, Wang Wei, Liu Zongyuan, Pi Rixiu, and so on, and almost all of these exquisite poems that have left people in history have emerged after Wu Zetian. The reason for this is undoubtedly to say that Wu Zetian's reform of the entire imperial examination system of the Tang Dynasty not only increased the number of martial arts in the imperial examination, but also added essays, which was the main reason for promoting the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty's literary circles.
The influence of the Mongol clan on the Tang Dynasty
When it comes to why Wu Zetian attaches so much importance to the imperial examination, its main purpose is to suppress the forces of the Shi clan, especially the old Shi clan in Shandong, which is not our current Shandong, but refers to the east of Mount Hua and Kunshan, the current Hebei Province, Shandong Province, and parts of Henan Province.
In fact, the history of the formation of these warriors dates back to the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. In order to respect Confucianism alone, Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty, whether it was a central official or a local bureaucrat, needed a great Confucian who was good at scripture. The so-called classics is to study the Confucian classics and use a set of Confucian ideas to govern the country, which is the stepping stone for you to become an official and enter politics. Therefore, these great Confucians of scripture have passed on what they have learned all their lives to their own children, so that over time they have formed a family of scriptures. In particular, the emergence of jiupin Zhongzheng gave these warriors a firm control over the bureaucratic class.
By the time of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, these clans formed door valves, which intermarried with each other, and combined with the birthplace of the family and the surname, forming a set of their own standards. The most prominent door valves in the Eastern Jin Dynasty were the Wang clan and the Xie clan, and the Wang clan had the prime minister Wang Dao in the founding of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, as well as the Shusheng Wang Xizhi, and there was also the familiar "King and Ma sharing the world", the horse here refers to the emperor Ma family.
In addition to the Langya Wang clan and the Chen Junxie clan, these gatekeeper clans flaunted themselves and showed their identities to each other, and this phenomenon of elevation from us continued until the Sui and Tang dynasties. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the "Five Surnames and Seven Wangs" were formed, which were the Li clan of Longxi, the Li clan of Zhao County, the Cui clan of Boling, the Cui clan of Qinghe, the Lu clan of Fanyang, the Zheng clan of Xingyang, and the Wang clan of Taiyuan.
Although these famous monks slowly lost their influence in the politics of the Tang Dynasty, they were still "worms with hundreds of feet, dead but not stiff" in culture, especially in secular concepts, and had a strong inertial potential energy. They have enough wealth, take more concubines, have more children, and their reproductive ability is also very strong. When these clans are few, everyone can still have enough attention, but after there are too many descendants of these clans, people's attention is scattered.
However, they have enough advantages in the marriage market, even if they are the prime minister and propose to these door valve clans, they may not be able to succeed, and even the children of the royal family cannot compete with them. For example, during the Tang Wenzong period, in order to choose a son-in-law for his daughter, as a result, these famous and prestigious families have retreated, leaving Wenzong helpless, lamenting that the Li family's 200-year-old son is not as good as a fallen old nobleman.
For example, Wang Fanzhi of the Tang Dynasty has a poem: "If a child wants to marry a woman, he must choose everyone." Even if there is no posture, there will eventually be etiquette. This means that if you want to choose a daughter-in-law, you must be beautiful, even if you don't look good, you know etiquette very well." Wang Fanzhi wrote a lot of oil poems, because in the Confucian concept, he felt that these poems were not in the flow and had not been circulated. However, his poems truly reflect the whole picture of the lives of the people of the Tang Dynasty, and if his poems were not found in Dunhuang, they might have been buried forever. We can see the social concept at that time in his poems, preferring to choose a big girl who understands etiquette rather than a small family jasper with outstanding appearance.
Wu Zetian's anger
For those in power in the Tang Dynasty, this phenomenon was intolerable, and the emperor demanded the monopoly of imperial power, while the secular concept of the family clan was to be cracked down. During the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Taizong formulated the "Clan System", hoping that the officials would revise the family name genealogy and rank these clans in the back, but they could not change the worldly concept in the slightest.
Wu Zetian was also deeply poisoned by this worldly concept, Wu Zetian was a small surname in the Tang Dynasty, And Wu Zetian's father was originally a timber merchant, so when he wanted to make Wu Zetian empress, he was resolutely opposed by the eldest son Wuji, Chu Suiliang and others, for the simple reason that he felt that Wu Zetian was born too low. The Turkic Mosi Khan once proposed to the Tang Dynasty and asked the Tang Dynasty to send a prince over, so Wu Zetian chose a son in their martial family to go over, and as a result, the Mo Si Khan was very angry, saying that the Khan was going to marry Tianzi, a big surname like Li, and how could the small surname of the Wu clan be worthy of the khan's daughter.
Therefore, Wu Zetian deeply resented the Door Valve Clan, and during her reign, she formulated the "Family Name Record", not according to the rank of the Door Valve of the Gate Valve, but according to the rank of the officials of the current dynasty. However, the effectiveness of this system is still limited, and social concepts cannot be changed overnight.
Therefore, in order to crack down on these old clans in Shandong, Wu Zetian set up a system of forbidden marriage, that is, to prohibit these clans from intermarrying with each other. Then I will forbid you to intermarry with each other to see who you are still intermarriing with. As a result, this became the capital of the old lineage to show off, and the marriage ban became a glory list, and if your family was not in the marriage ban, you were embarrassed to come out and say hello.
The impact on this secular concept should be the reform of the imperial examination, which was also preceded by Wu Zetian, but the final link of the temple examination was presided over by the officials. This link is actually very critical, why all the disciples of the imperial examination were called Tianzi protégés later, because in the process of the palace examination, a personal relationship between the candidates and the emperor was formed. This breaks the teacher-student relationship in the previous imperial examinations, and if you are promoted by a certain teacher, you will form a personal relationship for life. We see in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" that He Zhizhang was in the dynasty for many years, and there were many protégés, and at the critical moment, Wang Ye was able to come forward for him.
We must know that the Tang Dynasty Imperial Examination is not a name, and whether the middle brother depends on your reputation, but also depends on whether you have the right teacher. This kind of teacher-student relationship simulates a blood relationship, there is an old saying "one day as a teacher, one life as a father", this social relationship is very consolidated, second only to the blood relationship between father and son. And the emperor passed the ceremonial examination of the palace test, and undertook the relationship between teachers and students under the imperial power, and in addition to the relationship between the superior and subordinate, the relationship between the monarch and the subject also added a layer of human affection.
Wu Zetian also added essays, that is, poetry and song, to the imperial examination. So this is one of the main reasons for the flourishing of Tang Dynasty literature, according to the General Code:
Empress Dowager Wu Zetian was quite involved in literature and history, and was good at carving insects, and Yonglongzhong began to take the article as a scholar. After Yongchun, the empress dowager ruled the world for more than twenty years, and at that time, the secretary of state was hundreds of times, and all of them were reached by articles. Following the rules for a long time, sleeping becomes the wind.
"Wu Zetian liked essays, and the readers at that time all devoted a lot of energy and time to these poems and songs, and those princes and nobles also used articles to show their status, so the literature of the Tang Dynasty had a very big relationship with Wu Zetian's reform.
In order to crack down on these nobles, Wu Zetian deliberately promoted middle- and low-level officials, these people from the Shu clan, and broke the monopoly of these famous and prestigious families on the bureaucratic clique. These Hanmen Shu clans, it can be said that the barefoot are not afraid to wear shoes, and they see the opportunity to launch a fierce attack on the Shandong Shi clan.
For example, Li Yifu, who was born in the Shu clan, he served as a Zhongshu Sheren, mainly responsible for drafting edicts, he originally offended the eldest son Wujie, when he was cornered, he heard that the emperor intended to establish Wu Zhaoyi as an empress, he felt that this was an opportunity, so he submitted a piece of music in accordance with the emperor's will, deposed Empress Wang, and established Wu Zhaoyi, Wu Zetian of course repaid Li with peach, and after becoming empress, he gradually promoted Li Yifu to the position of prime minister.
There was also Xu Jingzong, who was from the Shu ethnic group, who together with Li Yifu established a political team with the Shu officials as the core, historically known as the "Beimen Scholars", including Fan Lubing, Liu Yizhi, Zhou Xing, Lai Junchen and other people, in order to eliminate these officials and nobles, they adopted the politics of cool officials, specifically listing various crimes and framing ministers. Although this kind of cool official's method is very terrible, it is also a means of the rise of the Shu clan.
Due to the influence of Chinese Confucian culture, later generations have carried out a lot of groundless slander on the personal character of this empress, such as the Old Book of Tang, which depicts Wu Zetian as a vicious, lascivious, and scheming woman, but we see that during the more than 50 years of his reign, social stability, population growth significantly, and culture is also very developed, it is she who inherited and developed the Tang Dynasty's Zhenguan rule, laying the foundation for the later Xuanzong Kaiyuan prosperity.