Zhaoning’s Long Song: The Female Chancellor of Great Chen

“A daughter of the Xie family dares to discuss state affairs?” An old minister from the Gu faction flings the “Nine Strategies for Farming and Sericulture” to the ground. Xie Zhaoning bends to pick it up, her fingertips brushing the ink. “Does Your Excellency know that this year in Chen Commandery, converting dry fields to irrigated ones has increased the yield by two dan per mu?” She produces testimony from farmers bearing their bloody fingerprints before the court, leaving the entire assembly speechless.

From secretly writing on her brother’s behalf to becoming a Hanlin scholar accused of “bringing ruin to the country as a woman,” she uses new salt and iron regulations to put an end to the great clans’ embezzlement, then drives back a hundred thousand Xiongnu troops with a scheme of sowing discord. Even Xiao Chengyu teases her: “Those hands of yours ought to hold a brush and paint, yet you insist on turning the world upside down.” But when she stands in the Golden Throne Hall wearing her crimson official robes and the emperor points to the chancellor’s seat, saying, “This position awaits you,” every cry that “a woman cannot serve the nation” becomes a stepping stone beneath her feet.

This is a grand song of a life, and it has never been about one person’s supremacy. It is about the confidence to say that women, too, can shape the world!