Page 119 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 112
Emperor

huang-di

Chinese Emperors were believed to be descended from the mythical Shang-di, the Ruler
of heaven. The Emperor was the Son of Heaven, entrusted with the mission
of safeguarding the harmony between heaven and earth. He was the ruler of
the ‘Middle Kingdom’ and the ‘Four Directions’, to each of which he made
periodical journeys of inspection and in each of which he was represented at other times
by his most august officials. At the beginning of spring he guided a plough drawn by
an ox to make the eight sacred furrows at the Temple of Husbandry in Peking:
he also sowed rice and four kinds of millet. He dwelt in a palace which faced south –
the only being in China to enjoy such a privilege ( left and right). He was symbolised
by the dragon. The unicorn might also appear in the imperial gardens, provided
that a wise ruler sat on the throne: when this happened it was a palpable manifestation of
divine approval from on high.
Early Emperors did not just sit about: they could turn their hand to many things, and
the legendary Fu-xi is credited with inventing marriage as an institution, the
eight trigrams and the fish-net. The historical Emperor Yong-le (r. 1402–24) had the
Great Wall and the Imperial Canal repaired: he moved the capital from Nanking to
Peking, built the Temple of Heaven, and commissioned an encyclopaedia covering
the entire body of knowledge then available. Even he was surpassed by Shi-huang-di, the
‘First Emperor’ of China who used a reign of only eleven years (221–210 BC) to lay
the foundations for the Middle Kingdom that was to last for two thousand years.
He introduced the system whereby 36 ‘commanderies’ were each administered by a
Military Governor and a Civil Governor, a centralisation which spelled the end of the old
feudal system and the ascendancy of the officials. He unified the Chinese script, the

weights and measures, and the coinage: he opened up the land by building canals and
roads, and is responsible for the two greatest edifices of his time – the Great Wall and his
own mausoleum, in which there was, apart from everything
else, room for an army of 7,000 lifesized clay warriors. The number of people who
perished in the construction of these monuments cannot even be guessed at; and he is also
responsible for the first burning of the books.
Shi-huang-di made his mark in the realms of magic and cosmology also. Fire,
which had been the ruling element in the preceding Zhou Dynasty, was replaced by
water: black became the ruling colour in the place of red. The number six
was now to rule Chinese life: even the hats worn by officials were to be 6 inches
long and 6 inches wide. The First Emperor travelled the length and breadth of his realm
and visited all its main cities; one might say he took ritual possession of the Middle
Kingdom. All his life he was terrified of death, and he sent one expedition after another
to search out and bring him the herb of immortality and the miraculous mushroom
of longevity.