Empress

Time passed. The wheel of fortune turned. Skills vanished in the flames of war, and men no longer knew how to build palaces tall enough to touch the clouds. The Tatars streamed in from the deserts and the steppes, one dynasty followed another. Women abandoned the arts and bound their feet. Emperors continued with the Mandarin competitions I had instigated and still used the Urn of Truth I invented. But I had become a symbol of a corrupt woman. The A

Other women reigned behind the purple gauze of the curtain. Other women governed the Empire but not one found a dynasty. Other emperors undertook the pilgrimage to the Sacred Mountains, but not one witnessed a celestial revelation.

Eternity runs on. Ivy crawls up over the walls, and the frescoes fade. Wooden pillars are gnawed away by worms and rot under the lichen.

Why do some things cross through the curtain of time? Why do some places resist erosion and decline? Why should one name, one jewel, one vase moor up in a distant century, stray vessels finally finding a harbor?

All the trees have now been cut down in the region where the Palace of Solar Breath once sprawled. Glass phials cast their gloomy reflections in the dark underground galleries. Workmen streaming with inky, black sweat operate machines to extract energy from the darkness. Some say they have seen women in muslin dresses, trailing their long silk sleeves, slipping in and out of those walls of black crystal. They claim to have heard laughter, tinkling bells, a bamboo flute between the mechanical drumming.

One thousand three hundred years later, floods have poured earth and stones into the River of Rocks. The emerald cliffs have become piles of black rock. The poems that I had engraved can still be seen on two rock faces-almost illegible. Peasants confirm that when the moon is full and the sky is clear, when the wind whispers through the wheat fields, you can still see boats dripping with gold and bristling with scarlet ba

My mountain tomb has watched civil wars and foreign invasions. It has resisted extremes of frost, heat, and torrential rain. All that remains of my discredited name and my forgotten dynasty is my stela. Men come to visit it in the vain hope of finding some answer to their questions. It is flat and smooth, reaching for the skies but naked. Some see this lack of any inscription as a symbol of my humility: I wanted to give men the opportunity to inscribe it with their blame or their praise. Others interpret it as an expression of overweening pride from a woman who became emperor: No one can comment on my destiny.

God robbed me of a legacy to make me timeless, to spread my soul over the entire earth:

I am the peony blushing red, the swaying tree, the whispering wind I am the steep path leading pilgrims to the gates of heaven I am in words, in protests, in tears

I am a burn which purifies, a pain with the power to transform

I travel through the seasons, I shine like a star

I am Man’s melancholy smile

I am the Mountain’s indulgent smile

I am the enigmatic smile of He who turns the Wheel of Eternity

About the author

Shan Sa was born in Beijing, China, to a scholarly family. Her real name is Yan Ni Ni; she adopted the pseudonym Shan Sa, taken from a poem by the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi. At age 8, she published her first poetry collection, and went on to obtain the first prize in the national poetry contest for children under 12 years, an event that created a public upheaval. After graduating from secondary school in Beijing, she moved to Paris in August 1990 thanks to a grant by the French government. Settling there with her father, a professor at the Sorbo