Wu Zetian was the only orthodox female emperor in Chinese history, and after ascending the throne at the age of 67, she implemented a series of drastic reforms in politics, economy, culture, and military, so that outstanding talents could be used by the country and no longer regretted for life by the obstruction of some corrupt officials. However, in her later years, Wu Zetian gradually became a prisoner of power, and after solving the problem of heirs, she began to indulge in pleasure, not only overhauling the palace and Buddhist temple, but also favoring the first Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong brothers, resulting in turmoil in the dynasty and disputes.
In fact, not only Wu Zetian, but all the kings of the past, they all did some absurd things in their later years. Therefore, although Wu Zetian made mistakes, the positive measures she implemented during her reign are still worthy of admiration and praise. Politically, Wu Zetian expelled Changsun Wuji, Chu Suiliang, and others from the imperial court, and these interest groups of the old era were only an obstacle to him, and in order to consolidate her rule, she could only kill chickens and scare monkeys.
In addition, she also sent people to various places to search for talents, and every time she found a person who met the conditions, she let him go to the capital to take the examination, which was personally inspected by Wu Zetian, which is the famous "system and policy" in history. In addition, regarding this matter, it is also recorded in the "Tang Dynasty New Language": "Then the Tianchu Revolution, the great search for the people of the four directions, the applicants to the ten thousand people, then the south gate of the Heavenly Emperor Luocheng, personally tested." It can be seen from this that Wu Zetian's move not only lowered the threshold for talents to enter the army, expanded the ranks of officials, but also improved the quality of work, and indirectly accepted and served the people.
However, when the situation stabilized, Wu Zetian began to appoint cool officials, and she poisoned her own son and killed the cool official Zhou Xing, which made people up and down the court panic. It was not until 697, with the death of the last cool official, Lai Junchen, that the reign of the terrible cool official came to an end. Economically, Wu Zetian advocated "persuading peasants to do so and enslavement by thin labor"; on the one hand, she paid attention to the assessment of local officials; on the other hand, she increased the rewards for those who "opened up the land and stored grain" and increased the enthusiasm of the people to cultivate the land.
According to records, during the reign of Wu Zetian, agriculture developed continuously and steadily, and the number of households increased from 3.8 million to 6.15 million later, an average annual growth rate of 0.721%, which is also very rare in ancient China. However, compared with political and economic measures, Wu Zetian is most talked about is the story of summoning Zhou Maosi, Fan Lubing and other ministers to compile the "Sea of Characters" and create Chinese characters.
As a female emperor who "broke new ground", Wu Zetian naturally wanted to create a unique Chinese character- The Zetian Script. Unfortunately, according to the scholar Shi Anchang, Wu Zetian only created 18 Chinese characters in his lifetime, of which the only one that has survived to this day is the word 曌 (zhào). 曌, is a typical yiyi character, meaning "the sun and the moon are empty", obviously, this is the proud work of the minister of character making, which not only holds Wu Zetian high, but also makes her unable to refuse.
In addition, since ancient times, there has never been a woman as an emperor, and the word "曌" just solves this problem, because "day" symbolizes men; the moon, which symbolizes women, is empty at the same time, and the two are integrated, providing Wu Zetian with legitimacy for ascension to the throne. Therefore, she will use this word as an exclusive text and change her name to "Wu Cao". The remaining 17 characters were gradually abandoned due to their complexity and difficulty, and after Wu Zetian's death, these words were even more unspeaked, and in this way, they gradually disappeared in the long river of history.