Reading the story “Sunzi and the Emperor’s Concubines” was about Ch’i state native, Sun Tzu who trying to prove to Ho Lu, the king of Wu, that his theory of managing soldiers was affective. When Sun Tzu was demonstrating to Ho Lu his techniques, the two concubines he was using at the time did not pay attention. They did not do anything they were supposed to do which made Sun Tzu look bad. After this, Sun Tzu wanted to have them beheaded because of their behavior, but the king was resistant. These were his favorite concubines, and to have them beheaded would be tragic. Sun Tzu did not listen to the king and the concubines were beheaded. This resulted in two others having to fill in. In this story there is an overall concept that can be …show more content…
Instead of killing them, Sun Tzu could have just replaced them with two others. This would have been no harm and the job still would have gotten done with the replacements. Sun Tzu could have respected the king’s wishes and not have them beheaded. A second option would have been to replace Sun Tzu and put someone else in charge who could have controlled the army better. Regardless of what happened, there were deaths which goes against taking whole. Another theme from Art of War is orthodox and unorthodox approaches. It could be seen that having no one die would be orthodox approaches, but instead Sun Tzu went with the unorthodox approach and killed two concubines. It would have made sense for Sun Tzu to just move on with two other people, but on the other hand, two deaths is nothing compared to the amount it could have been. They were fortunate it was only two deaths and not a lot more. Even though the alternatives seem plausible, the job would not have gotten done as well and Sun Tzu would not have become general and had success. If they just replaced the first two concubines then the others would not change their behavior and just be okay with being replaced until there were two that listened. The fact that they saw Sun Tzu kill the concubines was needed in order for the others to realize he was not going to tolerate any messing
I also found it somewhat interesting that those who were in command of fleets and armies in China were mostly eunuchs. These eunuchs were fiercely loyal to the emperor. Levathes describes in depth how prisoners would be castrated and become eunuchs. Zheng He was the commander for Zhu Di fleet of treasure ships. Despite him being a eunuch he was not the stereotypical one; he had a big, booming voice and was about six feet tall. Zheng He died on the returning trip to China and is now renowned as one of the greatest real-life legends of all time.
In When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, each of the characters – the mother, the daughter, the son, and the father - change because of their time spent in the Japanese-American internment camps. These characters change in not only physical ways, but they also undergo psychic and emotional changes as a result of staying in the camps. These changes weaken their resolve for living and cause the quality of their lives to decline; some of these changes will affect their lives forever. Their reclassification into the internment camps stays with the family long after they are released from the camps.
In the epilogue to The Death of Woman Wang, we see several ways in which Chinese culture determined the sentence meted out to the Jens by Huang. False accusation of innocent persons was a capital crime in 17th century China, punishable by death. The Jens, however, were not executed. The largest factor in sparing the younger Jen, was based around the cultural importance placed on continuation of family lines and the strict ways in which this could acceptably happen.
Ban Zhao wrote Lessons for a Woman around the end of the first century C.E. as social guide for (her daughters and other) women of Han society (Bulliet 167). Because Zhao aimed to educate women on their responsibilities and required attributes, one is left questioning what the existing attitudes and roles of women were to start with. Surprisingly, their positions were not automatically fixed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Ban Zhao’s own status as an educated woman of high social rank exemplifies the “reality [that] a woman’s status depended on her “location” within various social institutions’ (167). This meant that women had different privileges and opportunities depending on their economic, social, or political background. Wealthier noble women would likely have access to an education and may have even been able to wield certain political power (167). Nevertheless, women relinquished this power within the family hierarchy to their fathers, husbands, and sons. Despite her own elevated social status, Ban Zhao still considered herself an “unworthy writer”, “unsophisticated”, “unenlightened’, “unintelligent”, and a frequent disgrace to her and her husband’s family (Zhao). Social custom was not, however, the only driving force behind Zhao’s desire to guide women towards proper behavior.
Most outcasts of history had a particular, exclusive life; full of struggles against the society ever since birth and grew up with a heart made out of steel from the harsh criticism they have endured. They differ from the community within their beginning to their end, and many of their stories end up becoming legends and gaps of the past that nobody will be able to reincarnate. China’s first and last female emperor, Wu Zetian, was one of these exclusives. Ever since birth, her history of tactics to the people around her; in order to ascend the throne, juxtaposed towards society’s attitudes of women at the time; through her breakdown of gender stereotypes and quick knowledge, and offered a new perspective to the world of just how cruel and beautiful women can be. She successfully destructed all accumulated views of women in the Tang Dynasty, and created her future in the way she wanted it – on top of every man in her country. She was an outcast – somebody who juxtaposed against the demands of her. She was history.
Shunzhi 1 ( 1644 ), the army of Qing Dynasty defeated the Ming army, and became the ruler of China. At the beginning of Qing Dynasty there were two orders. One was for men to cut the hair to a special Manchu hair style. Another one was for women to prohibit the foot binding. However, the order for women was defeated in Kangxi 7 (1688) because of a great degree of resistance and the worry from ruler. Practically speaking, mandatory haircut caused a lot of tragedies like "Jiading Three Slaughter" which is most famous event that lots of people were killed. Although all men cut the hair finally, it caused social unrest, and added to the discontent of the people. At this time, foot binding had lodged itself in the public mind and women as keeping foot binding as a tool to express the protest about rebelling Qing Dynasty rule. Kangxi thought that would appear worse social unrest if the policy was carried out. The result of this smokeless war was foot binding was kept, and ruler failed. By the way, most Manchu women did not light the feet to binding. In Han people 's view, foot binding or not was a way to separate Han women and Manchu women who they thought were
The Chinese possessed strong beliefs about astrology, so when it was prophesised that a women ruler would soon ascend the throne word quickly spread throughout the common people. It was predicted that within 30 years this woman known as ‘The Prince of Wu’ would rule over China. Whether or not Empress Wu’s rise to power was due to ‘heaven ordained fate’, she fulfilled the prophecy and became China’s first woman ruler in the 7th century. Historians, scholars and common people alike have long debated Wu’s reign. She is commonly referred to as an evil usurper due to the way she took power. However whether she fully deserves this reputation is to be examined. As the only female Chinese ruler, Wu challenged traditional gender roles and legitimized herself as a leader at a time when women were not meant for such positions. Empress Wu came to power through self-determination and a remarkable gift for politics. Once on the throne, she kept her power by all means necessary, often those means being murder and betrayal. Some of her actions were undoubtedly cruel. However once she was established as an empress conducted a mostly peaceful and prosperous reign. Empress Wu was by definition a usurper of the Chinese throne however not necessarily an evil one. She was manipulative and ruthless yet brilliant and exceptionally gifted. Her rise to power through sheer determination is to be commended despite the harsh tactics she used along the way.
... Genji held off their attack in order to “allow the enemy time to perform religious rites.” Plus, high officials altered sentences from death to exile. As in the case of the warrior Nobutsura whose life was spared after Kiyomori was given an account of Nobutsura’s meritorious reputation. Warriors would take time to justify why they are unable to save them from execution as Yortiomo did with Munemori. Yoritomo elucidated “it is impossible for anyone born in this country to disregard and imperial edict.” It is the actions of these warriors that exhibit characteristics of people who kill purely for duty.
Zhu Ying was a member of the military’s theatre troupe, and about to be a member of the party, until she refused to sleep with party members. After that, they transferred and then imprisoned her. While her role in the military could have made Zhu Ying an androgynous figure, an emblem of communist gender equality, the party’s expectation that she have sex with party members makes her a sexual object, which is its own form of feminization. Zhu Ying is allowed to retain her femininity only if she consents to being a sexual object; when she does not, she is sent to be a laborer, and later imprisoned. Moreover, by being separated from her boyfriend, her chance at domestic happiness is taken away. After imprisonment, she has no opportunity to fill the traditional female role of marriage and children (which she may or may not have desired). Thus, the party halts the “natural” order of marriage and
He had every right to kill the suitors for messing with his wife. The suitor were harassing his wife. He should have killed them for that very reason. They wanted her to marry one of them when she was already married. In addition, he should have killed them because they were not loyal.
Julie Otsuka’s story, “When the Emperor was Divine,” illustrates what calamities an unnamed Japanese American family lived through during, and after being sent to an internment camp by the American government. The story takes place after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when America was engulfed in a rise of “yellow peril” emitting a widespread fear of Japanese people across the country. Every chapter is see through the eyes of a different family member and gives the readers details about how differently each character was affected by the events that unfolded around them. Rather than explaining what the characters felt, Otsuka used symbolism to enumerate the hidden themes within the story, such as with the use of the woman’s rosebush. In the fourth chapter, Otsuka uses the rosebush as a symbol of the family’s former lives, and how that freedom was stolen from them, never to be found again.
With divine right, rulers are supposed to carry out justice. They are responsible to follow God’s rules and in turn make their subjects follow God’s rule. They are trusted with carrying out God’s justice. In “Reflections” by The Emperor Kangxi, he writes about multiple times he had to carry out justice. When one of his high officials wrecked havoc through their town he dealt with it immediately. He writes, “… the Board of Punishment recommended that Hu be dismissed and sent into exile for three years. I ordered instead that he be executed with his family, and in his native place…” Although the punishment was intense and gruesome, the Emperor was doing what he considered was right and carrying out justice he believed was most right. In “Memoirs” by the Indian emperor Jahangir, the emperor states rules and regulations that he put into place as a way to keep things orderly. It’s almost like Moses reading the Ten Commandments. These rules are absolute and are not meant to broken. He writes, “I instituted… special regulations… as rules of conduct, never to be deviated from in their respective stations.” It’s very important for a ruler to be just and set rules so the kingdom or empire won’t turn into complete chaos. Since the rulers have the divine right, the subjects need to follow them and both this articles show how the emperors make that happen.
Between 500 CE and 1300 CE, China established international dominance, respective to the world of third-wave civilizations. However, East Asia’s rise to authority consisted of several changes that ultimately reinvented global perception of the region. Culturally, what was considered the “golden age” of the Song dynasty was also fraught with new patriarchal restrictions on women, societal opinions becoming increasingly misogynistic. Regarding the disruption in cultural opinion was the prominence of Confucianism, which had originally died out in favor of a more liberal mindset imposed by the surrounding steppe nomads. The most critical change was the definitions of masculinity and femininity; as Confucianism advocated education as one’s most valuable asset, women were seen as temptresses, distractions to men’s scholarly pursuits. Subsequent to what is considered a Chinese “golden age” is also a blemish on the country’s past, as practices that arose during this time were blatantly cruel, at least from a modern perspective. A product of this mindset was the new tradition of foot binding, which was both a mark of elitism and subordination, each central to Confucian philosophies. This process was created out of societal objectification of women, as women with smaller feet were allegedly more attractive to men and had a higher chance of marrying into a wealthy family, but also out of economic hierarchies, since peasant women could not have their feet bound because they needed full mobility to provide for their families on the fields. Economical changes usurped the previously woman-dominated field of textile production, and the greater chance for household prosperity limited social cohesion due to jealousy and tension. Ch...
There, in almost all the stories in this chapter, is a strong focus on what the woman has done for a male ruler, husband, or relative. Following traditional Confuciean ideas “women’s roles were primarily kinship roles: daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and mother-in-law,” (Ebrey, Women in Traditional China) you can see this reflected in the fact that each of the stories starts out by saying who the woman was related or married
When Confucius returned to Lu, he became a renowned teacher, but when he was 35, Duke Zhao of Lu led his country to war and Confucius was drafted. Duke Zhao frequently came to him for advice, but when being counselled by one of his ministers, he decided against granting land to Confucius and gradually stopped seeking his help. When other nobles began plotting against Confucius, Duke Zha...