同一个武则天，为什么让史书既佩服又害怕？

Why did even some critical historians admit that Wu made important contributions while assisting government? One reason was her ability to find people who could do difficult work. The civil service examinations had roots in the Sui and were already used in the early Tang. Wu did not invent them. She continued to expand examinations, recommendations, and routes for officials to put themselves forward, allowing a wider range of candidates to become visible. Capable officials such as Di Renjie and Yao Chong held important posts under her, and she could dismiss and later recall someone who had displeased her.

Yet “choosing by talent” did not suddenly give every commoner an equal chance. Preparing for examinations required education, time, and connections, and many Tang officials still came from families with substantial resources. Scholars continue to debate how deeply Wu changed the official class. She opened opportunities, but she also promoted members of the Wu clan, favorites, and cruel officials who served her political needs. A selection system can discover talent and build a team loyal to a new ruler at the same time.

Luoyang held special importance in her politics. She called it the “Divine Capital” and built the Mingtang, using ritual, architecture, and new titles to display the center of Zhou rule. The great hall served both as a site for state ceremony and as a stage on which political order became visible. To judge administrative ability, we need concrete records of appointments, relief, warfare, and local government. One magnificent building cannot prove that everyone across the empire lived well.

An emperor needed more than control over armies and officials. People also had to believe that the ruler ought to rule. Confucian political custom tied the throne to male family succession, so Wu needed other languages of legitimacy. Around 690, monks composed and presented a commentary on the Great Cloud Sutra. They used its story of a female figure becoming a ruler in another life to explain that Wu had received a sacred mandate. The court distributed the text and ordered Great Cloud Temples established in the prefectures. Buddhist belief, state support, and political propaganda met here. The sutra was not a letter dropped from heaven appointing a woman emperor.

Wu also strongly supported Buddhist buildings and images. The monumental Fengxian Temple group at Longmen near Luoyang was completed while Gaozong and Empress Wu shared power, and inscriptions and scholarship support their royal patronage. A popular story says the central Vairocana Buddha was carved to look exactly like Wu. No dependable contemporary text states that its facial features were modeled on hers. A more careful reading connects monumental Buddhist imagery, female sovereignty, and Luoyang politics while leaving “this is her stone portrait” as an interpretation.

None of this means Wu merely pretended to believe. A ruler can hold sincere faith and use religion to establish legitimacy at the same time. Instead of guessing how much belief was in her heart, we can examine what the court funded, distributed, built, and performed.

In 686, Empress Dowager Wu placed bronze petition boxes at court so people could submit applications, advice, grievances, and secret reports. They were not only “snitch boxes.” At a time when ordinary people could rarely reach the highest ruler, a box might bypass local officials and carry a proposal or injustice upward. But the same route also received political accusations. The court rewarded some informers, while cruel officials such as Zhou Xing and Lai Junchen led interrogations. Torture, forced implication of others, and secret cases damaged established legal procedures.

Early chronological sources record executions, exile, and punishment of relatives among the Tang royal clan, opponents, and suspected officials. After Prince Li Zhen and others rebelled in 688, suppression and purges became especially severe. Even senior officials once appointed by Wu could suddenly be killed. Later historians sometimes used gendered insults - such as comparing female rule to a hen announcing the dawn - and portrayed her as more monstrous than male emperors. Yet legal history, together with records of named victims and judgments, shows that cruel-official politics cannot be dismissed as nothing but misogynistic invention.

Wu later executed or removed some cruel officials and sometimes accepted ministers' appeals in individual cases. That shows the officials were not always beyond control, but it does not cancel her earlier permission for the system to grow. One ruler can promote excellent ministers and use fear to secure power. Writing about the first is not whitewashing; writing about the second does not require inventing private crimes.

After Wu's death, she was buried with Gaozong at Qianling. Two great steles face each other near the tomb approach. Gaozong's bears a long inscription. The stele on Wu's side originally had no prepared tribute to her, although later visitors carved words onto it. People now say, “Her achievements and faults were too great, so she left judgment to the future,” or “She knew her crimes and could write nothing.” No contemporary evidence tells us that Wu personally ordered the blank, and no single explanation has been proved. Even this “wordless” stone has a later history of accumulating words.

The stele reminds Xiaohe that silence is not an empty space we may fill with anything. We can establish many events in Wu's life: formal enthronement, institutions, buildings, edicts, executions, and abdication. For deaths inside private rooms, personal motives, and the reason a stele began blank, we must identify layers of sources and uncertainty.

Why, then, do the histories show both skill and fear? Wu broke the political boundary that reserved the formal title of emperor for men, and she demonstrated skill in selecting officials and managing a court. She also caused real harm through purges, informant systems, and cruel officials. Later ideas about gender magnified and reshaped parts of her story, but they did not invent every contradiction from nothing. She is neither an inspirational poster nor a monster from a horror tale. She is an emperor whose ability, violence, and evidence must be studied together.