Wanting What You Can't Have

“At the age of thirteen, my daughter conceived a violent passion for Xue Shao, whom she had met while walking beside the River Luo. To fulfill her desires, I ordered the young aristocrat to repudiate his legitimate wife, and I offered them the most lavishing wedding in history. But prince consorts have hearts capricious as imperial princesses: Having been forcibly married, Xue Shao remained attached to the memory of his first wife who had chosen to commit suicide rather than be abandoned. He had treated Moon (blogger’s note: the daughter) with respectful contempt. Moon was accepted and rejected, feared and loathed by her husband’s family, and she had had hidden her pain from me until that day I discovered that this unworthy son-in-law was involved in a conspiracy.
Xue Shao was executed; Moon lost her failed source of happiness. I urged her to remarry, and she fell in love with my nephew Tranquility who was also a married man. The cousin, astonished, by this unexpected good fortune, did not want to be begged. He dismissed his wife and loved Moon with religious fervor. But, she was haunted by Xue Shao: The imperial princess preferred an impossible love to the adoration she was offered. Very soon after they were married, she betrayed her husband in the arms of a guard’s officer.” (268)


I chose this passage because it dabbled into the idea of love. To me, what Moon thinks is love is nothing more than just a game of possession. Sure she must have maybe liked Xue Shao, but what drove her to think she loved him was the fact that she knew she couldn’t have him. Although, in the end, she got what she wanted, which was to be married to him, she did not get his heart.
The most interesting line of this passage was “The imperial princess preferred an impossible love to the adoration she was offered.” She thought she loved her mother’s nephew, but that did not turn out too well, because his adoration of her seemed to drive her away. The idea of desiring something you cannot have has been around for ages.
In the Fairytale Cinderella all the commoners yearned to be Prince Charming’s wife, which is evident in their presence at the ball. Even today, in teen movies, there are always those average students in high school dreaming about the cool popular guy.

Window of Opportunity

“The Emperor’s prosperity is a duty for every one of us. Every individual-whether an official or of no distinction, nobleman or commoner, Chinese or foreign , gifted in the field of culture, economics, defense, education, justice, or of major works-should present themselves to the recruiting officers without a letter of recommendation” (234)

This was a decree that Empress Wu sent out to all the provinces in China. This decree gave all men a chance to become an official, which in most cases, is the first step to becoming noble. This is a big contrast to how other nations’, like Britain, noble system worked at the time. In their nations, ranks in society are based on ancestry and were unchangeable. I believe the Chinese had a good system in trying to make sure no intelligence goes unnoticed. But, the only drawbacks would have to be that the window of opportunity was only open to men. Like many other places, women were not seen as any useful intelligence at all. But, of course, all of us know that this is certainly not true. One great example of this is the protagonist of the story, Empress Wu (Heavenlight), herself. If you think about how many women there were back in those times, there must have been many undiscovered intelligent people who were woman.