“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.
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I definitely agree with you. I feel that from what I have learned in history, and from your book, many women were certainly mistreated and underestimated simply because they were women. In many literary works that I have read, such as The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, I see that women’s intelligence is undermined. It is sad to realize that by denying females a chance to prove their skills many great successes didn’t happen.
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