Zhengde

Emperor of China (r. 1505-1521)

• Born: 1491
• Birthplace: China
• Died: 1521
• Place of death: China

Zhengde’s pursuit of pleasure, his reliance on eunuchs as advisors, and his neglect of imperial governance led to an increase in power and prestige of local scholar-officials and a decline of central government authority.

Early Life

Zhengde (jehng-deh) was born in 1491. His given name was Zhu Houzhao. Zhengde’s father, the Ming emperor Xiaozong (Hongzhi, r. 1488-1505), had ascended the Chinese throne in 1488. Having received the traditional Confucian-based education, Xiaozong instituted a number of reforms, including weakening the avaricious ambitions of the many eunuchs who were traditionally in charge of the royal wives and concubines but who too often exerted influence outside the harem, gaining power and wealth beyond their prescribed duties. Xiaozong was the only Ming emperor who was monogamous. His wife, and Zhengde’s mother, was Empress Zhang. In addition to Zhengde, Xiaozong fathered one other son and two daughters. Not a strong emperor personally but hardworking and well-meaning, he oversaw a relatively uneventful reign. The same would not be said of his eldest son and heir.

Life’s Work

Xiaozong deeply loved Zhengde but was doubtful about both his son’s ability and his dedication to ruling China’s vast empire. On the eve of his death in 1505 at the age of thirty-four, Xiaozong advised the high court officials, the Grand Secretaries, to keep close control of the young Zhengde, who was only fourteen when he ascended the throne. Unlike his father, Zhengde had little interest in government and quickly abandoned any Confucian precepts that he had been taught or that his father had so faithfully followed. Court ritual, so important to the Confucian philosophy and practice, held no interest for Zhengde. His teachers were dismissed, as were many of the officials whom his father had instructed to guide the young Zhengde, and he relied instead on many of the palace eunuchs who were more than willing to do the emperor’s bidding. Self-indulgent to a fault, Zhengde pursued hunting and horsemanship as well as even the less acceptable pleasures of wine, women, and song.

An attempt was made early in Zhengde’s reign to separate the emperor from his corrupt eunuch clique, but it failed, and by 1506, the eunuchs dominated the court and would continue to exert power and control until Zhengde’s death fifteen years later. Zhengde’s wife was Empress Xia (who died long after her husband, in 1535), but the royal couple had no children. Unlike his father, however, Zhengde was far from monogamous. Prostitutes were brought to the royal palace and inspected by the emperor, and his guards seized beautiful women for Zhengde’s pleasure. Even the concubines of his own military commanders were not above being commandeered by the dissolute emperor. Zhengde frequented Beijing’s brothels, and although usually disguised, in reality, his presence was widely known throughout the city and beyond. It was reported that the emperor’s fondness for wine was carried to such an extreme that he would remain drunk for days on end. The conservative Confucian officials were appalled, but in the general population Zhengde’s foibles and his reputation as a lover and a drinker were better tolerated.

The eunuch who dominated the court was Liu Jin, who was given responsibility for defense of China’s Great Wall, China’s most famous symbol. Built to protect civilized China from the nomadic barbarians to the north, parts of the wall were originally constructed at least as early as the third century b.c.e. during the reign of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, and various portions had been added during subsequent dynasties. The Ming emperors were the greatest builders of the wall, or walls, and work continued on the Great Wall throughout the Ming years (1368-1644).

Liu Jin had many officials and military commanders removed and often persecuted on trumped-up accusations. Even senior generals were not exempt; Yan Yiqing was convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned, and while he was imprisoned, little work was done on the section of the wall for which he was responsible. Zhengde’s reign proved disastrous for the integrity of the wall and northern defenses. Some government funds were redirected away from defensive matters to construct the so-called Panther House near Beijing’s Forbidden City. A large palace, the Panther House was Zhengde’s own private brothel.

Liu Jin was the empire’s de facto ruler for several years. To intimidate and destroy any possible opposition, he established a secret intelligence unit, the Net Chang, to ferret out potential foes. Many were tortured and murdered whether such punishments were justified or not. Eventually, after being accused of plotting to kill Zhengde and seize the throne for himself, Liu Jin was executed in 1510, but one vicious favorite was simply replaced by another corrupt courtier, Jiang Bin, who continued to indulge the emperor’s appetites.

Zhengde was convinced that he had a talent for military affairs. A rebellion in the province of Ningxia, east of Beijing, in 1510, and an uprising in Sichuan, in China’s south, in 1512, sparked the emperor’s enthusiasm for combat. He organized eunuchs as troops and personally trained them, and he adopted more than one hundred young officers as his sons. Zhengde ordered new uniforms for his commanders, and it became fashionable to wear military costumes at court. From 1517 to 1519, the emperor pursued his military endeavors in the north, along the Great Wall, where he claimed he had personally killed and beheaded a barbarian. In 1520, after hearing of still another rebellion, Zhengde journeyed south, traveling with a large entourage along the Grand Canal. The expense was considerable, but those who objected were flogged and beaten, and many died of their injuries. After reaching the city of Nanjing, one account reports, Zhengde ordered the inhabitants to refrain from raising hogs because in Chinese, “hog” was similar to the emperor’s family name of Zhu.

More significant for China’s future, the emperor while in Nanjing gave an audience to a Portuguese naval officer, Tomé Pires. The Portuguese had first arrived in China in 1514, landing in Guangdong Province in the far south. They returned in 1517 with eight warships and a letter from the king of Portugal. After numerous delays and undoubtedly resorting to bribes, in 1520, Pires was able to converse with the emperor. It was even claimed that Pires taught Zhengde some Portuguese, a most unlikely occurrence. Shortly after Zhengde’s death, war broke out between the Chinese and the Portuguese, but ultimately a later Chinese government leased the island of Macao to Portugal. This was the beginning of Western relations with China, relations that often boded ill for China in the centuries to come.

In 1521, after leaving Nanjing, the emperor was fishing when his boat accidentally sank at Qingjiangpu. Zhengde survived, but he soon became ill, and he died three months later.

Significance

Zhengde was not the worst emperor in China’s long history, but by every measurement his reign was a failure. His alienation of his Confucian advisors and his willingness to grant power and prestige to the court eunuchs brought the regime into disrepute, particularly among the traditional scholar-gentry class, which was so important to the stability of any imperial regime. With the central government’s authority weakened, the local gentry class added to their lands and evaded taxes, thus worsening the plight of the peasants.

Only a strong imperial government had the ability to cope with the ever-threatening invasions from northern nomads and from regional uprisings. The Ming Dynasty lasted another century before it fell to the non-Chinese Manchus (Qing Dynasty), but the seeds of the Ming decline are reflected in Zhengde’s years of rule.

Because of his amorous adventures and his dissolute life, however, Zhengde has remained notorious for his exploits and continues to be a popular character in Asian movies and television shows vice always being a more attractive subject than virtue.

Bibliography

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Cambridge Illustrated History of China. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Good coverage of the Ming period.

Paludan, Ann. Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. A reign-by-reign account of all the Chinese emperors from the Qin through the Qing, including a discussion of Zhengde.

Roberts, J. A. G. A History of China. Vol. 1. London: Alan Sutton, 1996. Includes a chapter on Ming China and references to Zhengde.

Twitchett, Denis, and John. K. Fairbank. The Cambridge History of China. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. The major work of scholarship on Chinese history. Volumes 7 and 8 focus on the Ming Dynasty, including the era of the reign of Zhengde.

Waldron, Arthur. The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. The standard account of the Great Wall, including a considerable discussion of the Ming era.