But after seeing it more often, when the Empress Dowager was handling affairs in the Imperial Study, she would trace the memorials about the floods in Jiangnan with her fingertips, and without sleeping all night, she would circle twelve flood discharge points on the map.
Her small, neat handwriting in red ink impressed even the old Minister of Revenue, who sighed as he held the memorial, "Your Majesty's mind is ten times more meticulous than mine." That year, thanks to her strategy, the number of refugees decreased by 30% during the flood.
When King Zhao sat in the Dali Temple court to try a case of salt merchants’ corruption, even if the defendant was the emperor’s grandmother’s nephew, he could still find the mastermind by following the ink marks on the account books.
As the gavel fell, the verdict resounded on the ground: "Corruption and embezzlement, disregarding kinship and favoritism." In the end, the nephew was sentenced to exile, and the people applauded along the streets.
Not to mention the female soldiers in the military camp—last autumn, a captain from the Shence Battalion, clad in silver armor, shot an arrow through two deer from horseback, the arrow feathers whistling in the wind.
When she cracked her whip and laughed, the red tassels at her temples swayed more fiercely than those of men, and even her father praised her, saying, "This girl has more spirit than the princes."
Those outdated prejudices I heard from Shouzhuo are like the mud wall in the corner of the Prince's mansion that has not been repaired for years.
Cracks creep up from the daily tremors, and it sways as if it will collapse when the wind blows.
Until that day, while sorting through the Regent's belongings, she found old cotton wadding at the bottom of a camphor wood chest. This cotton wadding was a gift from the people when she fell ill with frostbite at the border, and she had always been reluctant to throw it away.
They pulled out her handwritten notes that were hidden under the "Veritable Records of Empress Wu".
The Xuan paper she used was the Xuancheng cicada wing Xuan paper, which was so thin it was translucent yet tough, but the ink marks were a bit faint.
It seems that he had already contracted a cough when he wrote it, and his wrist was weak, so his strokes were a little shaky, but he still refused to write it carelessly.
Her fingertips brushed over the small handwritten annotations on the edge of the page; the pen still carried its usual sharpness, but with a touch more melancholy than usual.
"Historical writing often takes a biased approach, always placing the word 'woman' before the emperor's title, as if gender were an innate flaw, an indelible stain on achievements."
Empress Wu expanded the territory by three thousand miles, pacified the four seas, and ended the wars, yet she was still called the 'Empress' in the end.
If it were a man, he would be called a "wise ruler" or a "sage king," so why would he need this superfluous footnote?
To say that a man becoming emperor is "destiny," while a woman becoming emperor is a "special case," is a ridiculously biased historical writing.
At that moment, my heart felt like it had been gently bumped by something soft, a dull ache, and my eyes suddenly welled up with tears.
Only then did I suddenly realize that so many invisible shackles were hidden in the books of later generations that bore the seal of "official history" where the regent once lived.
It confines a woman's life too rigidly.
A woman's duty and virtue are to do needlework, support her husband, and raise her children. If she picks up a book to read and learn to read, it is considered "out of line" and "not in keeping with the proper way of a woman."
If someone dares to wield a sword and practice martial arts, they are considered a "wild girl," someone "unwanted." But if they actually rise to the position of emperor and gain military power...
They are first labeled as "women," and then scrutinized repeatedly by the world with a magnifying glass.
If she does well, it's said that "it's rare for a woman to have such talent," as if a woman's talent is an anomaly.
If a woman performs poorly, it is said that "women are indeed unfit for important tasks," as if women's incompetence is inevitable.
It was as if their achievements were inferior to those of men from the very beginning, as if the height they reached with all their might was merely the starting point that men could easily attain.
It seems that their entire lives are defined by the word "woman," something they cannot escape or break free from.
I am increasingly grateful to have been born in Zhaoning, and grateful that my "stubbornness" back then failed to overturn the tiles of the Zichen Palace. He said, "When women hold power, the country will perish."
They call the Regent a "femme fatale who brought ruin to the country," but they forget who led Chengxiao's army to repel the barbarians and who ensured the people had food to eat.
Fortunately, Ning Chao never made such remarks, and fortunately, his grandfather and father had different ideas from those described in the books.
Otherwise, those books would be filled with ironclad rules such as "women must not interfere in politics" and "women in the harem must not interfere in politics."
The wisdom that was stifled because of gender and the talents that were locked up because of etiquette will likely be repeated in Zhaoning sooner or later.
Just like those noble ladies of the former Xuanyuan Kingdom who were locked in their mansions, even if they had extraordinary talents, they could only look at the flowers in the mirror and the moon in the water.
She sighed as she twirled the embroidery needle, "Born a woman, what can I do?" She spent her whole life in the deep courtyards of her mansion, and in the end, no one even remembered her name.
The Regent once sat across from me on a snowy night. The plum wine warming in the bronze stove emitted a cool aroma, which, mixed with the fragrance of snow, filled the room.
She said firmly, “Your Highness, women and men should complement each other, like the two wings of a bird, which cannot fly without one, or the two wheels of a cart, which cannot move without one.”
Without the wisdom of women, the court is like a body missing a leg, unable to stand firm.
At that time, I had just become the Crown Princess. Clutching the candied fruit she gave me, my mouth was cloyingly sweet. I took it as just ordinary comfort and didn't understand the weight of her words.
Reflecting on these words now, I feel their weight, each one striking my heart with profound significance, just as a field needs the combined light of the sun and moon to yield a bountiful harvest.
If there is only sun and no moon, the rice seedlings will be scorched and their leaves will curl up, drooping and wilting.
If there is only the moon but no sun, the rice seedlings will have difficulty heading and filling, and will not produce grains.
Rivers need streams to flow into them to become turbulent.
If it relies solely on the main current without the nourishment of tributaries, it will eventually dry up and become a dead river.
How can the court be without the wisdom of women, relying solely on men to hold up the sky?
Men have their strength, and women have their gentleness; the balance of strength and gentleness is the key to a stable and prosperous nation.
Thinking about it this way, he felt even more impatient with the descendants of the former ministers of the original Xuanyuan Kingdom who remained stubborn and unrepentant after surrendering.
A few days ago, during the morning court session, there was an elderly minister with white hair kneeling shakily in the front hall, holding a memorial in his hands that was crumpled like a piece of paper.
His knuckles turned white from the exertion, and he said that there were too many women among the newly appointed officials sent to the former territory of Xuanyuan, "which may make it difficult to win over the hearts of the local gentry and may ruin the ancestral system."
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