The history of Wei Zifu

             Chinese Legendary Female

                                  --- The story of Wei Zifu

      Wei was born in an extremely poor family, and she had one older brother, two older sisters, and three young brothers. These three young brothers and Wei were given births by one person, so Wei as the sister of these three, she had to support her family. Fortunately, Wei was hired by one of the princesses of palace in Han dynasty as a singing girl, and the Princess who named Pingyang really like her not only because her good-looking, but also her excellence and warm-hearted. So, the life Wei spent in Pingyang’s mansion house went pretty well.

     On the other hand, Pingyang was the emperor, Liu Che’s older sister, and she noticed that since Liu ascended the throne, he had not gotten even one child. In Chinese tradition and culture, one primary task for both men and women is to give birth to offspring, and that is why in ancient China, one emperor has over three thousands concubines. Therefore, Pingyang thought she should in charge of picking “good-quality” concubines for Liu to have offspring. At very beginning, Pingyang arranged ten good-looking maidservants, but Liu liked none of them. So Pingyang arranged another group of singing and dancing servants to serve Liu. Fortunately, Liu fell in love with Wei in the very first glance, and at that night, Liu said he would take Wei back to palace and made her as one of the concubines. At that night, Pingyang talked with Wei, and gave her a lot of suggestions about how to “survive” in that competitive court of concubines.

      After Wei went to the palace, she was not being called to serve the emperor for two years, and it seemed that Liu has forgotten the existence of Wei. Wei was not willing to just stay at her home and do nothing every day, and she thought that the life in palace was too boring and meaningless. So one day, she went to Liu’s room, and begged him to let her go. Liu felt sympathy towards Wei, so he just let Wei to stay and serve him. And after that day, the doctor told Liu and Wei that Wei was pregnant. However, before Wei went to the palace, Liu has already had one empress, Chen, who has the highest power among all concubines. As I noticed before, the competitions between concubines were as fierce as officials in the courts. So Chen felt jealous and wanted to revenge Wei, so she used all her power and rights to let soldiers to kill one of Wei’s young brothers, Wei Qing. Luckily, Wei’s brother did really good job in guarding the safety of the country, and he followed a capable superior who saved him from being killed by the empress. Because the empress just wanted to kill Wei’s young brother secretly, and she didn’t think that the emperor would know this. After the emperor knew this issue, he did not punish the empress because she had so much power in managing whole concubines, but he promoted both Wei Qing and Wei’s older brothers to higher positions in the courts. And from this case, we could conclude that it was a blessing in a disguise for Wei’s family.

     In the following ten years, Wei just focused on her own duties, and in the ten years, she gave births to three daughters and one son. She was a good mom in caring all her children, taught them to be kind, genuine, and be adventurous. Because in that era, girls could not do as much as men can do, Wei taught all her daughter to playing instruments, memorizing and writing poems, singing, etc. In addition, she wished her son could be a brave man to guard country and assist Liu in keeping the safety of the border, so she asked her son to follow Wei Qing, one of her young brother, to learn the strategies of fighting and methods of formatting soldier in battlefield. It is extremely rare that concubines could be still simple after they went to the palace, and to be honest, if one concubine was not that smart in protecting themselves, she would always be murdered. So at some degree, Wei was an intelligent woman who protect herself and all her children, but it was still seldom that Wei can live that simple and kind to others.

      Nevertheless, the empress, Chen, was still jealous of Wei because she had no kid who can ascend the throne from Liu, and at that time, after Wei gave birth to a boy, Liu just loved her even more than before, so the empress just wanted to use all ways to kill Wei or Wei’s family. Finally, she used one way that was prohibited at that time, witchcraft, and she just wanted use this method to fulfill her two wishes, the first one is to pregnant, and the second one is to kill Wei and her family members. However, her “day dream” was a failure and her behaviors irritated Liu. Then Liu deprived her throne and sent her to the countryside. Then there was no empress, so every official just recommended Liu to let Wei become the second empress of Liu at that time. Liu did not agree with it until Wei gave a birth to a boy, Liu agreed to let Wei become the empress.

       Compared with the history of Wu Zetian, Wei’s life was not that dramatic, but we have to admit Wei was really a lucky woman. And the reason why she could be that lucky must depend on her moral qualities. Plus, from her story, I concluded that people should always be kind to others, even though we are poor, we should not change our moral quality. As an old saying goes, “Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice”, as long as we choose to stay kind and genuine, we will always get unexpected gift from life. 

(A famous Chinese Actress portraits Wei Zifu in Chinese drama series)