YouTube Deep Summary

## Intro [00:00] hi everyone and welcome back to the history and 20 podcast i know it's been a while but i've been pretty busy with some other projects and plenty new episodes coming your way later this year so hopefully uh you'll tune in and listen to those ones as well so today i thought i'd do something a little bit different rather than focusing on one historical character i thought i'd do like i did before with the 10 roman emperors something similar to that so i had quite a bit of nice feedback recently on my instagram which you can find at history in 20 on instagram if that's your thing um regarding the structure of those episodes so i thought like i mentioned earlier i thought i'd do something pretty similar and this time instead of just focusing on chinese characters i wanted to focus solely on chinese women because i was looking through the videos on my channel and there's only really eleanor of aquatan who's like the sort of only soul female video that i have got on here so i thought it would be interesting to discover some maybe lesser known characters i'm not sure maybe if you're from china or you're from asia or you've studied that area you might be familiar with these characters but for me personally i'd only heard of one of them before so like before the research obviously not before i'm recording it now that'd be a bit duffed wouldn't it but uh yeah i thought i'd do five uh key figures f well key female figures from medieval china or if you like five famous chinese women from medieval china so i'm class in medieval china as i would medieval europe from about the 4th century a.d up to about 1500 round about that area anyway so all of these figures were based within that period so although when we think of china in this period we think of it as a heavily male dominated society there were still a number of women who more than held their own against those male counterparts and to this day still stand out as key figures in chinese history and i'm going to go through these chronologically starting with the earliest and on to the end so without. ## Princess Ping Yang [01:57] further ado let's start with number one princess ping yang and she was born round about the 590s and she died in 623 and just a little disclaimer uh i do apologize for any incorrect pronunciations in this because i'm really not familiar with the chinese language if you know how to pronounce them correctly just just let me know but you'll probably have to bear with me for this episode i'm afraid so uh princess ping young then who was she so like said she was born sometime during the 590s and she was the daughter of li wan who became the founding emperor of the tang dynasty which ruled china from 618 to 690 and then again from 705 to 907 so she famously helped her father seize power from the short-lived sioux dynasty uh which lasted from five eight one to six eighteen so in 617 li wan who was princess ping yang's father planned to rebel against emperor yang of tsu as he had previously been imprisoned by him so he sent a letter to his daughter and her husband who's a guy called chai xiao summoning them back to taiwan taiwan not taiwan as they were both currently in the sioux capital of changhan however chai xiao was not convinced that the pair of them would be able to escape but ping yang told him to go regardless and that she as a woman will be able to hide herself more easily so after a short period of hiding ping young distributed her wealth among several hundred men obviously gaining their trust and loyalty along the way she then openly rose up in support of her father she also sent her servant who is called ma to persuade other rebel leaders to join her and a multitude of them did these were called hairpan ren li zhongwen zhang shanzi and ki shili and she then led those rebel leaders and their supporters and captured some of the nearby cities so in total she had a master force of seventy thousand men so following ping yang's victories li wan crossed the yellow river into the changan area and sent chai chao who'd successfully escaped and met up with lee won after princess ping young had told him to to rendezvous with ping yang they both commanded separate wings of the army and were granted the role of general and ping young's force was known as the army of the lady because there'd never been an army that had been uh led by a female in chinese history before so the following year lee won had emperor yang's grandson yield the imperial throne to him and he established the tang dynasty and he crowned himself as emperor gauzu and his daughter as princess ping yang for help in creating his victory princess ping young unfortunately died a few years later in 623 but interestingly her father ordered a grand military funeral like a military general would have however ministers in the ministry of rights denied this opportunity arguing that it was not suitable for a band to perform a woman's funeral however emperor gaozu responded as you know the princess mustard an army which helped us overthrow the sioux dynasty she participated in many battles and her help was decisive in founding the tang dynasty she was no ordinary woman and in the end she did have a state funeral that was fit for a military general so i thought that was a really interesting female character and the second one is the only one that i'd. ## Empress Wuzhitan [05:12] heard of prior to this and you might have heard her as well so number two is empress woo jatan and she was born on the 17th of february 624 and she died on the 16th of december 705. so in over three millennia of imperial rule wu zhitan was the only woman to ever rule china in her own right so no list of famous chinese women is complete without it regardless if that's from the medieval period or not so woo was born on the 17th of february 624 in lijiao in china under the tang dynasty that we just mentioned earlier and her father was a wealthy man because of her father's wealth and social status and everything um she received a good education which was as you can imagine unusual for women at that time and she was taken to be a concubine of emperor tai zhong who ran from 626 to 49 when she was just aged 14 but and this is a quote from taiz young due to her beauty and intelligence the emperor promoted her to be his secretary instead however while taijong was still alive wu had an affair with his son a guy called li zhu tai zhong died in 649 and lee succeeded him as emperor gao zhang in tang china when an emperor died it was expected that all concubines shaved their heads and lived their lives out of court in chastity however gao zhang ordered wu back to court almost as soon as he'd taken the imperial throne in 654 wu gave birth to a baby but it sadly died but she accused empress wang who was the emperor's wife of murdering the baby out of jealousy gao zhang believed wu and deposed his wife so wu became his consort the following year however some historians think that wu murdered her own baby in order to frame empress wang in a power struggle which given the nature of wu's character that we'll find in a minute wouldn't be uh unbelievable let's put it that way so gao zhong died in 683 and wu became empress dowager to her son li jai who became emperor zhong zhang however he showed signs of disobeying his mother so with her allies she sent him into exile and her youngest son who was called lee dan became emperor rujong instead it's little surprise that rujong never appeared at court due to his mother's controlling nurture and demeanor in 690 wu deposed him and declared herself empress regnant empress wu then declared that she had established her own dynasty and she called it the jew dynasty which was actually named after the long reign ancient chinese dynasty of the same name which reigned china from 1046 to 256 bc so as a result this period was known as the wujou dynasty but as wu was the only only ruler it doesn't really fit in with a traditional dynasty because the traditional dynasty involves a number of successors from one family and the wu zhu dynasty sorry for any spoilers ended with just her so wu was known as a cruel ruler and she had thousands of her rivals families imprisoned and numerous aristocrats murdered as well however she was strangely viewed as a popular and much-loved monarch but this is worth mentioning that it's worth looking into these sources here looking who wrote them what position they had because no one's going to you know criticize her um if they're anywhere near her court so part of the but nevertheless part of this is due to her coming to the throne at a time of relative economic stability and also that many of her suggestions for reform came from the people themselves um as well as this she also pursued a policy of military expansionism extending china's borders to its furthest extent in central asia you'll see a map on your screen about now uh while also reclaiming territory which have been lost to the tibetan empire in 670. she also reopened the silk road which had been closed since 682 due to outbreaks of plague and nomadic tribes who were killing travellers so by the late 690s wu was actually forced to abdicate as she was spending more time with her young lovers rather than ruling china and she abdicated in favor of her exiled son zhong zhong who was reinstated as emperor of the tang dynasty and wu died a year later aged 81 and with her died the short-lived wu zhu dynasty but even so she deserves a place on this list for being the only woman to rule china imperial china in her own right so we'll fast forward to the 11th century now 11th early 12th century and. ## Lee King Zhao [09:32] we'll come across a character called lee king zhao who's number three on our list so not all of the women on this list this was something i was conscious to do by the way that not all of the women on this list are members of the royal imperial families i wanted people who weren't necessarily just members of the royal family's haunted inverted commas ordinary people as ordinary as you can get and find these sources from nearly a thousand years ago so lee king joe is an example of this she was a poet and she's one of the most famous chinese women of the medieval era so she was born in 1084 in jinan shangdong which is on the eastern coast of china during the song dynasty and the song dynasty ruled china from 960 to 1279 her father was an academic professor and her mother was also a poet and lee received a good education too and she studied literature apparently incredibly well during her teen years which as you can imagine with her being a poet would have helped her massively so when she was 18 she married a man called xiaoming cheng who was an essayist poet and politician and together they collected inscriptions on calligraphy and it's reported that they had a happy marriage so lee's happy marriage was actually reflected in the nature of her poetry which is reported that it took on a calm and elegant tone so as both lee angel husband were keen poets they often wrote poems for each other describing items that fascinated them such as bronze architecture from the shang dynasty and zhu dynasty and just so quick uh to let you know the shang dynasty was another ancient chinese dynasty which ruled china from about 1570 to 1045 bc so a long long time ago because they collected some of this stuff as well some architecture from there however though with the onset of the jin song wars which run from about 11 25 to 1234 lee and zhao were forced to flee south of the yangtze river and they settled in nanjing sadly died a year later which left lee devastated and she moved to a place called hangzhou and her poetry during his period of her life was often full of nostalgic memories of her husband it wasn't the calm elegant loving tone that it had taken on during her early years um lee died around 11 55 when she was aged approximately 71 but unfortunately during the turbulent years that followed because of the ginsong wars the majority of her work was lost and only around 100 poems remain to this day which is really sad because there's probably some fascinating artworks and cultural works as well that have just been lost to war unfortunately however though her legacy does live on there are various memorial halls dotted around china which are named after her as well as and this one's quite interesting two craters on the planet's mercury and venus i'm not sure about mercury but my theory is probably venus because venus was obviously the goddess of love some of her poetry is written in that sense but now i've just said i don't know and it's just come to me there that mercury was the messenger god wasn't if i'm if i'm wrong let me know in the comments something but i think mercury is the messenger god so i'd guess again messaging and writing so you've got writing and then you've got love i suppose it makes sense that creators on those planets are named after her so we'll move on to number four on the. ## Guan Daosheng [12:45] list sorry if this is going a bit quick and there's not much detail but it's just from the sources that i can find unfortunately is not loads of material about them but anyway i'll move on to number four and she's a woman called guan dao sheng and she lived from 1262 to 13 19. so much like lee king zhao guo dao guan dao shang was remembered for her cultural significance making her another one of the famous chinese women on this list who was not a member of the nobility she was a painter and calligrapher so she was born in xiao in eastern china around 1262 and she received a good education and was evidently highly talented her father thought very highly of her from the moment she was born because her name guan dao sheng literally translates as wave righteousness rising as the sun so when guan was around 24 years old she married a man called zhao meng fu who was a renowned artist at the time so lately they married into people who were like similar of similar interests to them so they raised four children together as well as zhao's children from previous marriage and due to the nature of zhao's work as an imperial calligrapher painter and scholar they traveled around china regularly and this gave guan access to meet leading artists of the era and also gave her the opportunity to visit places and see artworks that many women would not have had access to at the time so she had a real good advantage there with her husband's position which obviously inspired some of her artwork as i'm not taking anything away from her i was just mentioning that as well so after kublai khan who you've guessed it was a descendant of genghis khan video card in the top right corner about now if you want to check out that video after kublai khan had finalized the mongol conquest of china and formerly established the wan dynasty which ruled china from 1279 to 1368 he wanted the most talented chinese scholars to help establish cultural control over the chinese population and zhao was deemed as one of these scholars and he was employed by kublai khan and again this gave gwan the opportunity to display her own works at the imperial court too so much of her work depicts the traditional style of chinese art using fine brush strokes to paint scenes of ink bamboo and it's also believed that both joe and guan painted many works together so i've put a few images images on the screen now and you might notice that when i certainly do anywhere and i think of these chinese paintings i think if you know the koi carp and like the jungle scenes and it's this style of ink bamboo that guan was renowned for so chances are it's probably one of her paintings that you've seen when you've seen that kind of artwork so anyway in 1319 guan died after a long illness so following her death zhao painted numerous bamboo paintings in her honor and memory because that was one of her favorite subjects to paint and her tombstone was interestingly marked in the same way as would be given to a feudal lord once again reinforcing the high honor that had been bestowed upon her and the impact that she had on both chinese art and culture so already we're up to the final uh. ## Senghei [15:48] famous chinese woman from medieval china on this list and she's called sengai reggie or raji and she was born in circa 1283 and she died in 1331. so she was a late 13th and early 14th century collector of chinese calligraphy and works of art from the song dynasty so she was born around 1283 and she was actually a great granddaughter of kublai khan and she had three brothers one was a stepbrother and the other two were full biological brothers and the latter of two latter two became emperors who they were emperor kaishan who ran from 1307 to 11 and emperor aya bawada who ran from 1311 to 1320 and this is where she rose to fame and gained prominence within the chinese courts because of her brother's position as well and she was granted the titles of grand princess of lou and princess supreme of lou in 1307 which was the grand princess titles usually reserved for imperial ants but she was given that title anyway so in 1323 sengay hosted an elegant gathering which was a historic moment because it was held by a woman these sorts of events before had only ever been held by men so numerous scrolls were brought out to the attendees who were instructed to add color funds to them which were sort of descriptions about them so about 15 of these still survived today and she was also noted for her charitable act as a result of her buddhist faith so a year later senghei's daughter buddha shiri married tu temer who was budashiri's own cousin and sengey's nephew chu temur helped increase his mother-in-law's position considerably when he ascended the throne in 1328 and he granted her huge sums of money so that she could build her own residence and own plots of land unfortunately though sengei died in early 1331 so she didn't have much time to enjoy her new residence however thanks to her charitable work and her collection of arts and cultural items she deserves a place on this list of chinese women from medieval china so i know it's probably a bit of a shorter one today but i just wanted to know what you think of this format of maybe occasionally doing five characters from wherever or ten characters five key moments if you like it let me know if you prefer me to focus on one battle one conflict one person also just let me know but i'd appreciate any feedback so thanks for listening and i'll catch you at the next one.