Emperor Guangwu

This book tells the story of Liu Xiu, a commoner with a royal bloodline, who rose up in his hometown at the end of the Xin dynasty, when the realm was fractured and the land plunged into chaos, beginning his life as a soldier.

In 25 CE, Liu Xiu openly broke with the Gengshi regime and ascended the throne at Qianqiuting, south of Hao in Hebei. To signify the revival of the Liu clan, he kept “Han” as the name of his dynasty, which history calls the Eastern Han. After twelve years of unification campaigns, Liu Xiu defeated the regional regimes in the Guandong region, Longyou, Western Shu, and elsewhere. He ended nearly two decades of warlord conflict and fragmentation that had begun at the end of the Xin dynasty, ushering in the “Restoration of Guangwu.”

Liu Xiu reigned for thirty-three years, promoting Confucian learning and honoring moral integrity. Later historians praised the Eastern Han as an era in Chinese history with “the finest customs and the flourishing of Confucianism”!