Thank you, though, for correcting my misidentification of “turtles”. I am not, as you no doubt guess, a specialist in Chinese history.

Setting aside for a moment that ‘more than 3000 years’ counting backwards from the 7th century takes us well into the realm of myth, I think many a reader might have expected this to conclude, ‘Her name was Cixi, and she held power in one guise or other over the Great Qing Empire, which included China, from 1861 to her death in 1908.’

Much of this time was spent in successive regencies, officially shared for part of the time with Xianfeng’s widow, Ci’an, and her power was great enough for her effectively to de-throne and imprison the Guangxu emperor and rule in his stead before hand-picking his successor immediately before her own death. She ruled over greater territory and a larger population than Wu Zetian. No one was in any doubt where power lay at court, never mind which emperor was nominally on the throne, and there was no shortage of controversy either: she stands accused of poisoning her co-regent, Ci’an; there are sexual rumours (although sources–especially Backhouse–are unreliable); plenty of other corpses including those involved in the ‘Hundred Days’ reforms that might have saved the Qing; supposedly misappropriation of funds to rebuild sections of the Summer Palace; and responsibility for the debacle of the Siege of the Legations which saw Beijing occupied by foreign armies while she fled (for the second time in her life). Some would place entire responsibility for the final collapse of the Qing just a few years later firmly in her ultra-conservative hands.

At the very least she can’t be ignored.

Information at the site (and thus, I would not deny, quite possibly problematic) suggests that the Qianlong emperor, despite a tendency to scribble absolutely anywhere he could, avoided placing commentary about his father on the two stelae I mentioned, probably erected two years after the Yongzheng emperor’s death which is when the tomb was completed (1737), both out of filial piety and because he felt it too soon. And surely the Great Stelae Hall you mention is the very same Da Bei Lou (‘Great Stelae Hall’) in which the blank stelae stand? No? So why would the two with characters (which I must admit I don’t remember seeing and my photography is not immediately to hand) be ‘principal memorials’ and those without not be, unless their lack of inscription is taken to indicate that, which would be a rather circular argument?

And of course stelae are never set in ‘turtles’, but in bi4xi4 (赑屃)–one of the nine ‘sons of the dragon’. Note the un-turtle-like teeth and claws.

What about, for instance, the two stelae in the Da Bei Lou at the beginning of the route to the Tai Ling, the Yongzheng emperor’s tomb at the Western Qing Tombs? These are also blank.

It is especially refreshing that these, and particularly,Wu, are most notably, Women.

I suppose if Eve, of garden of Eden fame, can not escape the sensational wrath of predominantly male historians and the ire of gentlemanly scholars, Wu is fair game, too. As are any other aspiring or current leaders whose misfortune is lack of penes.

Oh! The intrigue of rolling heads! Reports of hands and feet rudely removed! Infanticide, sordid sexual romps, and whatnot, do show that, whatever gender, power will gained, by some, no matter the cost. Or they will certainly make someone else die, while they are trying!

M. Lemontree