Read this short appendix. There is no need to worry about remembering the details. Just think about this matter, and we will return to it later.

Kings Jie & Zhou, Palace Ladies, and the Ideal of Impartiality

Many mainstream historical accounts claim that the extreme evil of the two famous "last kings" was the unfortunate result of a depraved woman’s influence. For example, regarding King Jie (#click here for illustrated Chinese version#):

Meixi was the concubine of King Jie of the Xia dynasty. She was beautiful in appearance but poor in virtue, and she threw the whole palace into confusion. . . . Jie cast aside propriety and lusted after women. He sought beautiful women with which to fill the palace harem; and gathered in hired singers and actors, pygmies and jugglers who were able to give weird and strange performances. . . . Day and night without ceasing, he drank wine and feasted with Meixi and the women of the imperial harem; he placed Meixi on his knee and hearkened her advice. In this disorder, he lost all sense of the rightness of things, becoming proud, extravagant, and unrestrained. He made a wine lake on which boats could move about and from which at one stroke of the drum, three thousand men drank like cows. While their heads were haltered, they drank of the wine lake, and, becoming drunk, they drowned in the lake. Meixi laughed at them and considered it fun (p. 186).

Regarding the last Shang King, King Zhou (#click here for illustrated Chinese version#):

Daji was the wife of King Zhou of the Shang dynasty and as a concubine she found favor with Zhou. . . . He loved wine and lewd pleasures and never left Daji at all; he valued highly whatever Daji praised, and he destroyed whatever Daji disliked. He made songs of new lusts, performed the dances of the northern villages [i.e., "barbarian" dances], and partook of extravagant pleasures. . . . He stored up grain until it was a hill, let wine flow until it filled a pond, and hung up meat like a forest. He made men and women pursue each other naked in their midst for a long night of feasting, and Daji loved it (pp. 187-88).

"The common people bitterly looked on . . . King Wu thereafter received the Mandate of Heaven to raise troops to punish Zhou; they fought at Muye and the leaders of the Shang forces turned down their spears. . . King Wu brought about the punishment of Heaven, cut off Daji’s head, and hung it up under a little white flag to manifest that it was a woman who had destroyed King Zhou (pp. 188, 189).

(Passages above are based on Albert Richard O’Hara, The Position of Women in Early China According to the Lieh Nü Chuan "The Biographies of Chinese Women" [Taipei, Taiwan: Mei Ya Publications, Inc.], with some modification.)

At first glance such passages may seem like pinning the blame for the king's allegedly depraved rulership onto a woman in his court. And indeed Meixi and Daji are obviously not portrayed in a positive light. But whether Meixi or Daji caused their kings to become depraved is not so clear. These kings' infatuation with Meixi and Daji might well be a symptom or manifestation of the kings' depravity. In classical Chinese thought, it is a ruler's duty not to allow the members of his inner court to influence politics and government administration (even though in practice they often did).

Moreover, there is another point that might be missed here because of modern biases. Emperors had numerous concubines. We tend to view such a situation as immoral or even misogynist, and we tend to look with favor on the development of a close relationship between a man and a woman. The large harems of Chinese emperors were not only there to maximize the passing on of imperial genes (though that was one purpose). Additionally, the emperor was supposed to go from one lady to the next without favoring anyone or developing especially close emotional ties to one woman. By so doing, no particular palace lady would not be in a position to influence the emperor in the realm of government. Emperors were not supposed to forge emotional ties with women.

The following illustration is from a scroll painting of admonitions for palace ladies produced during the period in between the Han and the Tang dynasties. It depicts an emperor rejecting the advances a palace lady who is overly aggressive (and ambitious) in courting the emperor's fancy.

Commenting on this scene, Shane McCausland points out that:

The emperor was meant to 'favor' all his wives and concubines, and none was meant to monopolize all his affections to safeguard the stability and posterity of the dynastic house. It was not that sexual or any other kind of pleasure—such as the enjoyment of wealth, titles, privileges, and so on—was considered wrong. On the contrary, these were the just rewards for upright behaviour. Rather, an overly strong bond with one individual could cause the ruler's impartial judgment to become partial or his balanced conduct to become skewed. In this scene, the beautiful wife had hoped to take advantage of his affections, which is immediately abhorrent to her 'wise man'. The message of this scene is directed as much to men as to women. A minister's relationship with a ruler should also not become overly close. (Shane McCausland, First Masterpiece of Chinese Painting: The Admonitions Scroll [New York: George Braziller, 2003], p. 76.)

As we will see, ancient Chinese moralists tended to take the ideal relationship between rulers and their wives and apply the same logic to the relationship between rulers and their ministers. Rulers should not, in other words, show particular favoritism toward any one minister, adviser, or official. In practice, of course, such impartiality was difficult to maintain.