The Sun and Moon Shine Together: The Chronicles of Wu Zetian

Synopsis of *Sun and Moon in the Sky: The Chronicle of Wu Zetian* In the eleventh year of the Zhenguan era, fourteen-year-old Wu Mei entered the palace of the Tang Dynasty. She had no idea that she would spend her life walking a path no one had ever traveled before: from a concubine of Emperor Taizong to empress of Emperor Gaozong, and eventually the only woman in Chinese history to rule as emperor. This is more than a tale of palace intrigue. Beneath the lamplight of Ganye Temple, she reclaimed an emperor’s heart with the song “Red Turned to Green.” Behind the curtains of Zichen Hall, she displayed her talent for governing with the “Twelve Recommendations for Good Governance.” She was a mother, yet personally smothered her daughter for the sake of the throne. She was a wife, yet controlled the empire from her husband’s sickbed. She established the imperial examinations and curbed the power of aristocratic clans, giving scholars of humble origins their first glimpse of hope. She also employed cruel officials and slaughtered members of the imperial clan, leaving the court trembling in silence. “Sun and moon in the sky” was a character she invented, and a metaphor for her life: light and shadow intertwined. As a woman, she broke through a thousand-year-old iron curtain. Amid the jeers that “a hen crowing at dawn foretells disaster,” she changed the Tang Dynasty into the Zhou Dynasty and ascended the throne as emperor. In her later years, alone beneath a solitary lamp in Shangyang Palace, she issued an edict stripping herself of the imperial title so she could be buried with her husband as his empress. She left behind only a blank stone monument, entrusting time to judge her merits and failings. Using a blend of historical fact and fiction, this book brings to life a complex ruler. It neither deifies her greatness nor shies away from her cruelty. Between power and gender, maternal love and ambition, creation and destruction, it explores how an individual struggles, breaks through, and is destroyed by the tides of history. Open this book and you’ll find not only the epic tale of a woman, but also a civilization’s arduous exploration at its limits: how far can humanity advance against the bronze walls of history? What does power mean? What does gender mean? Wu Zetian, an empress who ruled an age, left behind an eternal riddle.