- 2 days ago
A journey through every rank of the Tang Dynasty, from the peasant in the field to the Son of Heaven on the Dragon Throne.
☕ Support the channel & suggest my next video idea: https://ko-fi.com/masterpov
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The Peasant
2:21 The Artisan
5:09 The Merchant
7:36 The Soldier
10:37 The Local Magistrate
13:50 The Metropolitan Official
16:34 The Prefect
19:35 The Minister
22:34 The Chief Minister
25:25 The Son Of Heaven
☕ Support the channel & suggest my next video idea: https://ko-fi.com/masterpov
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The Peasant
2:21 The Artisan
5:09 The Merchant
7:36 The Soldier
10:37 The Local Magistrate
13:50 The Metropolitan Official
16:34 The Prefect
19:35 The Minister
22:34 The Chief Minister
25:25 The Son Of Heaven
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Peasant
00:02You wake up before the rooster crows.
00:04The sun is still hiding behind the mountains.
00:07Your wife is already grinding millet by the cold hearth.
00:10Your three children are sleeping in a pile under a thin blanket.
00:14The hut is made of packed earth and thatch.
00:17The roof leaks when it rains, which is often.
00:20You sleep on a woven mat on the dirt floor.
00:23Your back has hurt every morning for the last 20 years.
00:27You pull on your tunic, the same one you've worn for three seasons.
00:31The hemp is rough and patched in seven places.
00:35You walk out into the courtyard and look at the small plot of land that your family has been assigned.
00:40It is yours, but it is not yours.
00:42The state owns it. The emperor owns it.
00:46You are allowed to work it under the equal field system, the jun tien.
00:50When you die, most of it returns to the state to be redistributed to someone else.
00:55You have 80 mu of land.
00:58Forty of those are personal share land that you must return.
01:02Twenty are mulberry land for growing trees that produce silk.
01:06The rest is permanent and will pass to your sons.
01:09You walk to the field with a wooden hoe that your grandfather carved before you were born.
01:14You till the soil until the sun is high.
01:17Your back screams.
01:19Your hands bleed.
01:20You eat a single bowl of millet porridge at midday.
01:24There is no meat.
01:26There is rarely meat.
01:28Three times a year you owe the state your taxes.
01:31You pay in grain.
01:33You pay in cloth woven by your wife.
01:35And you pay in labor.
01:37Twenty days a year of corvée service.
01:40You are sent to build roads or repair walls or dig canals far from home.
01:44When the harvest fails, the taxes do not.
01:48The magistrates' clerks come to your village with their ledgers.
01:52They count your sacks.
01:53They take what is owed.
01:55If you cannot pay, they take more.
01:58If you still cannot pay, they take you.
02:01You have heard of villages where the men were marched off to the frontier and never came home.
02:06You bow when the official rides past on his horse.
02:09You keep your eyes on the dirt.
02:12You are a farmer in the greatest empire on earth.
02:16The emperor in Chang'an does not know your name.
02:19He never will.
02:21Level 2.
02:22The Artisan
02:23You learned your trade from your father, who learned it from his father.
02:27You are a potter in a small workshop on the outskirts of Luoyang.
02:31Your hands are always covered in clay.
02:34Your fingernails are permanently stained the color of riverbed earth.
02:37You wake before dawn and walk to the workshop, where four other men are already at the wheels.
02:43The kiln is being stoked by an apprentice who is 12 years old and exhausted.
02:48You sit at your wheel.
02:49You begin shaping a bowl.
02:51The motion is older than memory.
02:54Your shoulders know what to do without instruction.
02:56You produce bowls, jars, ewers, and figurines.
03:01The figurines are popular now.
03:03Wealthy families bury them with their dead.
03:06Replicas of horses and camels and servants and dancers.
03:10The emperor's officials want Sansai glaze, the three-color style, with green and amber and cream running together.
03:17Your master pays you in copper coins called win.
03:21They are strung together on a hemp cord through the square hole in the center.
03:25A thousand win makes a string, and a string is worth approximately one bolt of silk.
03:30You earn perhaps three strings a month.
03:33Half goes to rent.
03:34The rest goes to food and to the registration fees you must pay.
03:38You are registered with the Bureau of Imperial Workshops.
03:42The state knows what you make.
03:44The state takes its share.
03:45You cannot leave this trade.
03:48The system does not allow it.
03:50Your son will be a potter.
03:52Your grandson will be a potter.
03:54Artisans are below farmers in the four-tier social order, the C-mean.
03:59Below scholars.
04:00Below farmers.
04:02Above merchants, but only barely.
04:04You are not allowed to wear silk.
04:07You are not allowed to ride a horse in the city.
04:09Your status is fixed by the emperor's law.
04:12You make beautiful things that you will never own.
04:16The wealthy come to the workshop and order ceremonial vessels for their ancestors.
04:21They pay your master.
04:22Your master pays you a fraction.
04:25You watch your work leave the kiln and disappear into a world you will never enter.
04:30At night, you walk home through streets that smell like smoke and night soil.
04:35You eat steamed buns and pickled vegetables.
04:38You sleep next to your wife in a single rented room.
04:41You dream of fire and clay.
04:45Your daughter has a fever.
04:46She has had it for three days.
04:49You cannot afford a physician.
04:51The neighborhood healer comes and burns moxa on her arms.
04:54She prescribes a tea of bitter herbs.
04:57You pay her with two of your best small bowls.
05:01Your daughter survives.
05:02Many do not.
05:04You go back to the wheel the next morning.
05:06The clay does not wait.
05:09Level 3.
05:10The merchant.
05:11You are a wealthy man.
05:12You have more silver buried in three different places than most farmers will see in ten lifetimes.
05:18And the emperor's law says you are below them.
05:22This is the contradiction you live with every day.
05:25You operate a trading house in the western market of Chang'an.
05:28Your warehouses hold goods from across the known world.
05:32Persian carpets.
05:33Arabian glass.
05:34Indian spices.
05:36Tibetan musk.
05:37Korean ginseng.
05:38You have agents in Samarkand and contacts in Guangzhou.
05:44Your caravans travel the Silk Road.
05:46Your ships sail the southern seas.
05:48You speak three languages.
05:51You can calculate the exchange rates between six currencies in your head.
05:55You wear plain cotton in public because the sumptuary laws forbid merchants from wearing silk.
06:01You ride in a covered cart instead of on horseback because the law forbids you from riding in the city.
06:07Your sons are not allowed to take the imperial examinations.
06:10The Confucian scholars who run the empire consider you a parasite.
06:14They believe wealth should come from the soil.
06:18They believe trade is the lowest form of work because it produces nothing and merely moves what others have made.
06:25You bow to scholars in the street.
06:27You smile when officials insult you.
06:30You pay extra taxes because merchants are taxed at higher rates than farmers.
06:35You pay bribes that are larger still.
06:38The chief inspector of the western market expects a monthly gift.
06:42The gift is not optional.
06:45The bribe to renew your trading license is paid in advance every year.
06:50You build alliances.
06:51You loan money to a young scholar studying for the examinations.
06:55If he passes, he becomes an official.
06:58If he becomes an official, he remembers who fed him.
07:02This is how merchants survive in a system designed to keep them small.
07:07You buy land in the countryside through proxies.
07:10Land is the one form of wealth that confers respect.
07:14You marry your daughter to the third son of a minor official.
07:18You buy your way into a clan that has prestige but no money.
07:22You play the long game.
07:24Your great-grandson, you tell yourself, will sit for the examinations.
07:29Your great-grandson will be a scholar.
07:32Your great-grandson will not have to bow to anyone.
07:36Level 4.
07:37The Soldier
07:38You were conscripted at 16 under the foobing system.
07:42Your village had to provide so many men, and your family had three sons, and you were the middle one.
07:48You marched to the garrison in Huxi Corridor with a hundred other boys from your prefecture.
07:53You were given a quilted jacket, a leather helmet, a spear, a bow, and 40 arrows.
07:59You were told to provide your own boots.
08:01The foobing system worked like this.
08:04You served on rotation.
08:06You spent part of the year farming your assigned land back home, and part of the year on military duty
08:11at a frontier post.
08:13You were not paid in coin.
08:15Your service was your tax.
08:17Your land was your salary.
08:19The system worked when there were enough peasants and enough land.
08:23By your time, the system was breaking.
08:26Land was being concentrated in the hands of nobles and monasteries.
08:31Peasants were fleeing the equal field allotments.
08:33The army was running out of soldiers.
08:36They sent you west, to the frontier with the Tibetan Empire and the Turkic Confederations.
08:42The mountains there are higher than anything you imagined.
08:45The wind cuts through your jacket.
08:47The water freezes in your canteen.
08:50You have killed three men.
08:52The first was a Tibetan raider who came over a wall in the dark.
08:56You stabbed him with your spear and felt his ribs crack and watched the life leave his eyes.
09:01You vomited afterward.
09:03The second and third you killed in a skirmish on the steppe.
09:07You barely remember them.
09:08They were shapes on horseback that fell when your arrows struck.
09:12You feel less about killing now than you used to.
09:15You do not know if that is good or bad.
09:18You eat boiled millet and dried mutton.
09:21You sleep in a barracks with thirty other men.
09:24The lice never stop.
09:26The food is sometimes good and sometimes nearly nothing.
09:30The pay you were promised has not arrived in fourteen months.
09:34You suspect the regional commander is keeping it.
09:37You cannot say so out loud.
09:39There is a man in your unit who said something similar.
09:42He was flogged.
09:44He died from the infection that followed.
09:46You will go home eventually, if you survive.
09:51The frontier eats men slowly.
09:53Your name is on a list in a clerk's office in Chang'an.
09:57If you fall, they will mark you down and find another middle son.
10:01You have not seen your mother in four years.
10:04You sent her a letter through a returning soldier last winter.
10:08You do not know if she received it.
10:10You do not know if she is still alive.
10:13The letters that come back are rare.
10:16A wife learns she is a widow when a runner arrives at her door.
10:20You write your wife's name on a piece of bamboo.
10:23You carry it in your jacket against your heart.
10:27You think of her face every night before you sleep.
10:30You are starting to forget what she looks like.
10:33That terrifies you more than any battle.
10:37Level five.
10:38The local magistrate.
10:40You passed the prefectural examinations on your second attempt.
10:44You did not pass the metropolitan examinations, the next level up.
10:48So, you took the lower path.
10:50You purchased a position.
10:52Your family pooled its resources.
10:54Cousins contributed.
10:56Uncles signed promissory notes.
10:58You paid the right official in the Ministry of Personnel.
11:00And you were appointed magistrate of a small county in Hanan.
11:04You are the emperor's representative in this place.
11:07You are the judge, the tax collector, the public works director, the police chief, and the moral authority.
11:14You have a seal carved with your office.
11:16You wear robes of dark blue with embroidered patterns that signal your rank.
11:21You are an official of the seventh grade.
11:23There are nine grades in the imperial bureaucracy, with the first grade being the highest.
11:28You are near the bottom, but you are inside the system.
11:31You are above almost everyone in your county.
11:35You hear cases every morning.
11:37A farmer accuses his neighbor of moving a boundary stone.
11:40A widow accuses her brother-in-law of stealing her late husband's land.
11:45A merchant accuses a customer of failing to pay a debt.
11:49You consult the Tong Code, the legal compendium that governs the empire.
11:53You weigh the testimony.
11:55You order beatings to extract confessions when testimony is unclear.
11:58The bamboo cane is the standard tool.
12:02You set the number of strokes according to the offense and the suspect's behavior.
12:06Sometimes the truth comes out.
12:08Sometimes the suspect dies.
12:11You are responsible for collecting the grain tax, the cloth tax, and the labor tax.
12:16The emperor has set quotas.
12:18If your county falls short, you fall short.
12:21If you fall short too many times, you are demoted or transferred.
12:25You are also responsible for maintaining roads, repairing dikes, and overseeing the local granary.
12:31You are responsible for organizing the corvée labor.
12:35You are responsible for the moral instruction of the people.
12:38You give speeches at the Confucian temple twice a month.
12:42You also take bribes.
12:44Everyone takes bribes.
12:45Your salary is not enough to maintain the household and the staff that your position requires.
12:50You have a wife and two concubines.
12:53You have eight servants.
12:55You must entertain visiting officials with banquets that cost a year of a peasant's labor.
13:00The bribes are not corruption in the way modern minds would understand it.
13:04The bribes are how the system actually functions.
13:07You take what is offered.
13:09You refuse what would compromise you.
13:11You learn the difference quickly or you do not survive.
13:14The county has 30,000 registered households.
13:18You know perhaps 50 of them by name.
13:20A peasant comes to your yamen weeping.
13:23His son was conscripted last spring and never returned.
13:26He wants to know what happened.
13:28You write to the regional military office.
13:31Months later, a clerk replies.
13:33The son died of dysentery in a camp near the Western Pass.
13:37You summon the peasant and tell him.
13:40He drops to his knees in your courtyard and wails.
13:43You give him a small sum from the discretionary fund.
13:46The peasant goes home.
13:47The next case is waiting.
13:50Level 6.
13:51The Metropolitan Official
13:53You passed the Jinxi examinations.
13:56You did this on your fourth attempt, at the age of 32.
14:00The Jinxi is the highest examination.
14:02It is the examination that produces the men who run the empire.
14:06The pass rate is below 2%.
14:09You spent 15 years studying the Confucian classics.
14:13You memorized the Analects, the Mencius, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Great Learning.
14:19You also memorized the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, and the Book of Rites.
14:24You composed poetry in regulated verse with strict tonal patterns.
14:29You wrote essays on policy questions in the prescribed format.
14:33The examination took three days locked in a small cell with paper and ink and a chamber pot.
14:39When the results were posted, you wept openly in the street.
14:44You are now a fifth-grade official assigned to the Ministry of Rights in Chang'an.
14:48You work in a complex of buildings inside the Imperial City.
14:53The Imperial City is the inner ring of the capital that civilians cannot enter.
14:58You wear robes of crimson silk.
15:01You ride a horse with silver fittings.
15:03You have a residence in one of the wards designated for officials.
15:07Your wife came from a respectable family with old lineage.
15:11Your sons attend the Imperial School.
15:14Your work is paperwork.
15:16Endless paperwork.
15:19You draft memorials to the throne.
15:22You review proposals from the provinces.
15:25You coordinate with other ministries on matters of protocol and ceremony.
15:30The Tong Empire runs on documents.
15:33Every grain of rice collected as tax generates a document.
15:37Every soldier conscripted.
15:40Every magistrate appointed.
15:42Every road repaired generates a document.
15:44You are part of the document machine.
15:48The work is tedious, but you are not foolish enough to resent it.
15:53The work is what you spent fifteen years preparing for.
15:57The work is the prize.
16:00You attend court ceremonies.
16:02You stand in the great hall with hundreds of other officials, arranged by rank.
16:07The emperor receives tribute from foreign envoys.
16:10You see the emperor from a distance.
16:13He is a small figure in yellow robes, seated on a high dais.
16:18The hall is filled with incense and music and the rustling of silk.
16:23You feel something every time.
16:26Pride.
16:27Pride.
16:27Awe.
16:28Fear.
16:30Ambition.
16:31Sometimes all at once.
16:34Level 7.
16:35The Prefect.
16:36You have been promoted.
16:38You are now a prefect, governing a major prefecture in the south.
16:42The emperor sends his best men to the south because the south is rich and rebellious.
16:48The rice grows three times a year.
16:50The merchants are wealthy.
16:52The local clans are powerful.
16:55The aboriginal tribes in the hills do not always recognize imperial authority.
17:00Your job is to keep all of it working.
17:03Your prefectural seat is a walled city of perhaps 200,000 people.
17:08The walls are tall.
17:10The streets are wide and laid out on a grid.
17:13There are markets, temples, monasteries, schools, and yamen offices.
17:19You preside over the largest yamen in the prefecture.
17:23You command a staff of hundreds.
17:25You have under-magistrates for each county.
17:28You have clerks, runners, jailers, executioners, granary keepers, and military officers.
17:35You answer to the regional governor and to the censorate.
17:39The censorate is the emperor's eyes and ears.
17:43They send investigators to audit your books, your judgments, your conduct.
17:48A bad report from a censor can end your career.
17:51You manage local rebellions before they grow.
17:54A village refuses to pay taxes.
17:57You send the militia.
17:59Twenty men are arrested.
18:01The leaders are executed.
18:03Their heads are displayed at the city gate.
18:05The taxes are collected.
18:07You manage natural disasters.
18:10The river floods.
18:11Three thousand farmers lose everything.
18:14You order the granaries opened.
18:17You petition the throne for tax remission.
18:20You organize labor brigades to rebuild the dikes.
18:23The local Buddhist monastery is becoming too wealthy.
18:27The monks are buying up land and avoiding taxes through their religious exemption.
18:31You write reports to the central government.
18:34You wait for instructions.
18:36You also write poetry.
18:38Every educated man writes poetry.
18:42You exchange poems with other officials.
18:44The poems are about wine and friendship and the beauty of the southern landscape.
18:49The poems are also political.
18:52A poem about an exiled minister can be read as a comment on current affairs.
18:56A poem about an ancient ruler can be a coded critique of the present one.
19:01You write carefully.
19:03You speak more carefully still.
19:06You have a wife in the prefectural residence and a concubine in a separate house.
19:11The concubine is younger and trained in music.
19:15She plays the pipa and sings poems you have written.
19:18Your wife tolerates the arrangement because the law and custom permit it.
19:23She runs the inner courtyard with quiet authority.
19:26This is how men of your station live.
19:29You did not invent the system.
19:31You inherited it the moment you put on the robes.
19:35Level 8.
19:36The Minister
19:37You are now a minister of the second grade.
19:40You head one of the six great ministries of state.
19:42The six are personnel, revenue, rights, war, justice, and public works.
19:50You sit on the council of state.
19:53You attend the emperor in private audience.
19:56You shape the policy of the empire.
19:59You walk through the imperial city wearing the dark purple robes of the highest officials.
20:04Your jade belt has nine plaques.
20:07Your residence is large with multiple courtyards and a private garden.
20:11You have a household of 40 servants and eight horses.
20:16You have two concubines, a chief wife, and seven children.
20:21Your eldest son has passed the genshi.
20:23Your second son is studying for the examinations.
20:26Your daughters are betrothed to the sons of other ministers.
20:30You spend your days in meetings.
20:33The council of state meets at dawn.
20:35The emperor presides.
20:37The chief ministers debate policy.
20:39Should the salt monopoly be expanded?
20:42Should the campaign in the west be continued?
20:45Should the tax on tea be increased?
20:48Should the foreign monks at the Persian temple be permitted to remain?
20:53You speak when called upon.
20:55You offer your opinion in the precise diplomatic language that the court requires.
21:00You never directly contradict another minister in front of the emperor.
21:04You never directly contradict the emperor at all.
21:08You manage factions.
21:10There is the faction of the chief minister who has held power for ten years.
21:15There is the faction of the eunuchs who control access to the inner palace.
21:19There is the faction of the imperial in-laws who command the praetorian guard.
21:24You belong to none of them and to all of them as needed.
21:28You make alliances and break alliances.
21:32You have seen ministers fall.
21:34One was sent into exile to a malarial province where he died within two years.
21:40One was permitted to commit suicide in his own home, which was considered a mercy.
21:45One was beheaded in the public square along with his entire male line.
21:50The empire is the prize.
21:52The empire is also the executioner.
21:56You sleep four hours a night.
21:59You have not seen your home prefecture in twelve years.
22:03Your mother died while you were in the capital.
22:05You attended the funeral by proxy.
22:08You sent a son to perform the rites.
22:11You stayed in Chang'an because the political moment was too delicate to leave.
22:16You tell yourself she would have understood.
22:18You are not certain she would have.
22:22You write a poem about her after the funeral.
22:25The poem is praised by other ministers as a masterpiece of filial sorrow.
22:30You file it away and never read it again.
22:34Level 9.
22:35The Chief Minister
22:36You are the Zai Shang, the Chancellor, the Chief Minister of the Empire.
22:42There are usually two or three chief ministers serving simultaneously,
22:45balancing each other, watching each other.
22:48You are first among them.
22:50You are the man who actually runs the government.
22:53The emperor reigns.
22:54You rule.
22:56You have served the throne for thirty years.
22:58You passed the examinations young.
23:00You served in the provinces, then in the metropolitan ministries,
23:04then on the Council of State.
23:06You survived two purges.
23:08You navigated the death of one emperor and the accession of another.
23:12You arranged the marriage that bound your clan to the imperial family.
23:16You orchestrated the disgrace of a rival who had grown too powerful.
23:19You did all of this while writing poetry that scholars will study for centuries.
23:23You wake before dawn.
23:25Your secretaries are already waiting.
23:27You read memorials from the provinces.
23:30You draft responses in the emperor's name.
23:32You have the authority to issue edicts that bear the imperial seal.
23:36The emperor reviews them later.
23:38He almost always approves.
23:40You manage the eunuchs.
23:42The eunuchs control the inner palace.
23:44They control access to the emperor.
23:46They control the harem.
23:48They have grown powerful in recent reigns.
23:50Some of them command armies.
23:52You cooperate with the ones you must, and you isolate the ones you can.
23:56You manage the military commissioners on the frontiers.
23:59The jia dushi.
24:00They command armies of fifty thousand men.
24:03They are nominally under imperial control.
24:06In practice, they are warlords.
24:08You send censors to watch them.
24:10You rotate them between commands.
24:13You bribe them with titles and gifts to keep them loyal.
24:16You know that one day the system will break.
24:18You know that the regional commanders will rebel.
24:21You know the empire is hollowing out from within.
24:23The equal field system has collapsed.
24:26The peasant army has been replaced by professional soldiers loyal to their commanders.
24:31The taxes flow unevenly.
24:33The eunuchs grow stronger.
24:34The court is rotting.
24:36You see it.
24:37You write memorials warning of it.
24:40The emperor reads them and praises your wisdom and changes nothing.
24:44You hold the empire together with your hands while it crumbles.
24:47You will be remembered for that.
24:49Or you will be blamed for that.
24:51History has not yet decided.
24:53You have a private library of ten thousand volumes.
24:56You read each night before sleeping.
24:58The histories of the Han and the Sui are your favorites.
25:01You study them for the patterns of dynastic decline.
25:04You see the same patterns in your own time.
25:07The concentration of land.
25:09The corruption of the court.
25:10The growth of the eunuchs.
25:12The rise of the regional commanders.
25:14You know the dynasty will not last forever.
25:17You hope it will outlast you.
25:19You hope your sons will be permitted to live their lives in peace.
25:22You doubt they will be.
25:24Level 10.
25:26The Son of Heaven
25:28You are the emperor.
25:30You are the Tienze, the Son of Heaven.
25:32You are the apex of every hierarchy beneath you.
25:36You sit on the dragon throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
25:39The empire breathes when you breathe.
25:41The empire fears when you frown.
25:43Your robes are imperial yellow.
25:46No one else is permitted to wear that color.
25:48Your dragons have five claws.
25:50Theirs have four.
25:51The very air you breathe is ceremony.
25:54You wake to bells and gongs.
25:56You are dressed by attendants who have served the imperial household for generations.
26:00Your meals are tasted before you touch them.
26:03You write characters in vermilion ink because vermilion is the color of imperial command.
26:07The mandate of heaven rests on you.
26:10This is the foundation of your legitimacy.
26:12Heaven chose your dynasty.
26:14Heaven blessed your ancestors.
26:16If heaven withdraws its mandate, the dynasty falls.
26:20Floods are signs.
26:21Earthquakes are signs.
26:23Comets are warnings.
26:24Famines are judgments.
26:26You sacrifice at the great altars to keep heaven satisfied.
26:29You read the omens and pray for favorable seasons.
26:32You receive ambassadors from kingdoms across Asia.
26:35The Japanese send envoys who copy your court rituals and take them home.
26:39The Koreans send tribute.
26:41The Tibetans send princes to be educated.
26:44The Persians send refugees fleeing the Arab conquests.
26:47The Sogdians send merchants and dancers and musicians.
26:51Chang'an is the largest city in the world.
26:54Two million people live within its walls.
26:56They speak 40 languages.
26:57You sit at the center of all of it.
27:00You also live in fear.
27:02Your father died of poison.
27:04Or perhaps natural causes.
27:06The court physicians could not agree.
27:08Your uncle was strangled with a silken cord by your mother's order.
27:11Your half-brother was exiled to a southern province where he conveniently drowned.
27:16You have three sons by three different consorts.
27:18Their mothers are already plotting against each other.
27:21The succession will be decided in blood.
27:24You know this.
27:25They know this.
27:26The court watches and waits.
27:29You walk in your private garden.
27:31The chrysanthemums are blooming.
27:33A nightingale sings in the willow.
27:35You think of a poem.
27:36You compose a line about the brevity of glory.
27:39You smile a small smile.
27:41Your attendants do not see you smile.
27:43They are not permitted to look directly at your face.
27:45You sign an edict that condemns a minister to death.
27:48You sign another that grants amnesty to 10,000 prisoners.
27:52You sign a third that declares this year a year of harmony and renewal.
27:56The seals are stamped.
27:58The runners depart.
27:59The empire shifts according to your hand.
28:01Somewhere in a village in the mountains, a child is being born.
28:05The midwife is a peasant woman who has delivered a hundred babies.
28:08The mother is exhausted and bleeding.
28:10The father waits outside in the rain.
28:13The child draws breath and cries out.
28:15The child does not know your name.
28:17The child will learn your name.
28:19The child will be told that you are the son of heaven and that the harvest depends on your virtue.
28:24The child will pay taxes that flow up through the magistrates and the prefects and the ministers.
28:29Those taxes will eventually feed the kitchens of your palace.
28:32The child will live and die without ever seeing you.
28:36And you will live and die, having shaped that child's entire world without ever knowing the child existed.
28:42The dynasty rolls on.
28:43The peasants till the soil.
28:45The soldiers march to the frontier.
28:47The merchants haul their goods.
28:49The scholars study their books.
28:51The officials shuffle their papers.
28:54The emperor sits in his palace at the center of it all, alone with his power, watching the chrysanthemums bloom.
29:00The cycle continues.
Comments