Chinese characters are really a great treasure of world culture, ancient Cangjie characters, oracle bones, cursive, calligraphy are now very many fonts, have to admire the profundity of Chinese culture. It is said that Wu Zetian also made eighteen Chinese characters, but with the passage of time, only one of these eighteen Chinese characters has survived to this day.
Wu Zetian, as the only female emperor in Chinese history, must be very clear to everyone in the right and wrong of governing the country and personal life, and will not be introduced too much here. Perhaps only such an open environment as the Tang Dynasty could create this unique female emperor.
The New Book of Tang records that "Then Tianshun Saint Empress Wu Clan was secretive, and the State Wenshui people were also. "Wu Zetian, at the age of fourteen, entered the harem as a talented person of Tang Taizong, Tang Taizong gave the title of "Wu Mei", Tang Gaozong was initially Zhaoyi, and later empress (655-683), with the honorific title of Tianhou, and Tang Gaozong Li Zhi was called the Second Saint. From December 27, 683 to October 16, 690, as the empress dowager of Emperor Zhongzong and Emperor Ruizong of Tang, he later established himself as Emperor Wuzhou (reigned from October 16, 690 to February 22, 705), and after abdicating in 705, he became the only female emperor in Chinese history. The Wu Dynasty ended, the Tang Dynasty was restored, and the Shendu was restored as the Eastern Capital. On the 26th day of the 11th lunar month (December 16, 705) of the first lunar calendar of the Shenlong Dynasty, Wu died of illness at Shangyang Palace at the age of 82, and was later buried with Emperor Gaozong in Qianling, leaving a wordless monument.
In addition to Wenzhi martial arts, Wu Zetian is also a non-concession in the creation of characters, so she is also known as the Empress of Character Creation. So how many words did Wu Zetian create in his lifetime? The answer is 20. Wu Zetianzao's 20 characters have been handed down so far, and only one "Cao" character has been used, and it is also the only word that can be found in the dictionary, so why has this word been handed down?
This is because this is the name of Wu Zetian, Wu Zetian is also known as Wu Zhao, and later before calling himself emperor, he changed his name to Wu Cao, which means that the sun and the moon are empty and illuminate the earth, which can be said to be in line with Wu Zetian's careful thinking, so when she saw this word, she immediately changed the "zhao" in her name to "曌".
And the other dozen words, because it is not practical, it is difficult to remember, and does not conform to the evolution of the text from complexity to simplicity, so in the later history it has been slowly forgotten by people, think about it, if these words are still in use now, it is easy to write the word "exceptional".
But why is the word "曌" rarely used as a name now? This is because this word is really difficult to write, and this word is too big, ordinary people can not control it, in addition, in the Tang Dynasty, this word is not allowed to be used by others, over time, it has become the exclusive of Wu Zetian.
In fact, Wu Zetian's characters were not created by her, but most of them were created by Zong Qinke.
Of course, Zong Qinke dared to create characters, or was instructed by Wu Zetian, or because Zong Qinke's "Cao" character was very cool, which made Wu Zetian very satisfied, so she would instruct Zong Qinke to continue to create words, but because Wu Zetian was already old at that time, he slowly became less interested in making words, so there were only 20 words.
According to the Song Dynasty's Ouyang Xiu in the New Book of Tang, "zhào (zhào), heaven, earth, sun, moon, star, jun, subject, dai (beginning), zai, nian, zheng, ten have two texts", later Chinese scholar Shi Anchang, carefully examined the Tang Dynasty inscriptions and excavated classics, and concluded that Wu Zetian created a total of eighteen characters in his lifetime.
These words mean "illumination, heaven, earth, sun, moon, star, king, subject, beginning, load, year, zheng, grant, certificate, saint, country, person", clear-eyed people can see that these words are related to rule, which also shows that Wu Zetian wants to correct his position as emperor through words. Later, with the death of Wu Zetian, these texts, which had been forcibly promoted in the imperial examination and other systems, were naturally restored to their original appearance.