Who is she:
- One of the renowned female politicians from the Han dynasty
Notable Life Events:
- Born in 81 AD, as daughter of a military official in a region bordering one of the prominent nomad groups of that era
- When she was only two, her father was removed from his position due to acquaintance with a relative of the Emperor and the whole family moved back to their ancestral home
- When she was five, her grandmother cut her hair for her but due to poor eyesight, accidentally injured her forehead and she did not react. When asked about it, she claimed that she did not want to make her grandmother feel bad because she cut her hair for her out of love
- She could read from the age of six and became well versed in two texts already by the age of 12. She was very interested in books but her mother chided her for not learning a woman’s duty so she learnt to sew by day and read by night.
- In 92 AD, she was chosen to enter the Imperial Palace as a prospect concubine for the Emperor and males of the royal line but this had to be postponed for three years because her father died soon (the custom at that time dictated that children had to hold off marriage for three years after the death of their parents)
- In 95 AD, she officially entered the Imperial Court and started learning from Ban Zhao (link) in not just the classical texts but also astronomy and mathematics
- In the winter of 96 AD, she was chosen as a concubine by the Emperor He of the Han Dynasty after he chose his Empress in the spring of that year
- In the summer of 102 AD, the original Empress was deposed by the Emperor and Deng Sui was chosen as the new Empress
- In the year 105 AD, Emperor He died. His eldest son had a chronic disease and could not ascend the throne while the younger princes have all successively died. Consequently, Deng Sui made a three-month baby the Emperor and effectively ruled in his stead under the title of “female sovereign” for 16 years
- During the 16 years of her reign, she
- conquered ten years of the most severe natural disasters in the eastern Han period
- defeated pirates and the threat of multiple nomad groups and even managed to expand territory
- participated in the refinement of the paper making art by Cai Lun (the type of paper he made was credited as one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China alongside the compass, printing and gun powder) and put Zhang Heng in place to build an astrology equipment and the very first earthquake detector (see pic at the top).
- Created the first ever co-ed school in Chinese history so that females can be educated outside the home
- Ordered the first Chinese dictionary to be made
- She died in 121 AD
Why is she remarkable:
- She was actually ranked as Best Empress by Chinese historians and it is clear that she had done a lot of good during her reign
Moonlake’s thoughts on her:
In the Chinese references that I had read through, she seems to be the archetype of a good woman- a very filial grand-daughter (the hair cutting incident) and a woman who knows her place and is not jealous at all (I didn’t mention this in my summary above but it was talked about in the Chinese references I consulted). But to be honest, I’m not quite sure how much of that is actually true or whether it was recorded in that way as to reflect the norm of that period.
At any rate, she must have been highly intelligent, with a thirst for knowledge. It also seems that later she has put that intellect to good use.
English Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Sui
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