2026

The Fengshan Ritual: China’s Supreme Ceremony of Heaven and Earth Only the Son of Heaven Could Perform It — From the First Emperor to the Song Dynasty A Hierarchy of the Sacred: Who Could Worship What To a reader shaped by Christianity or other Western religious traditions, this may seem deeply strange. In those traditions, prayer is available to everyone — the poorest farmer and the most powerful king kneel before the same God, and no earthly rank determines one’s…

The boy named “joint rule” who was never let in. — The Tongzhi Emperor was given a name that promised him everything and handed him nothing. Tongzhi (同治) means “joint rule.” Yet the boy who carried it was kept outside that rule from before he could even speak. The power was shared, just never with him — it was shared between his mother, Empress Dowager Cixi, and the thin screen she sat behind while the empire was governed in her…

LATE QING DYNASTY SERIES February 12, 1912: The Day Two Thousand Years of Imperial China Came to an End Empress Dowager Longyu, Yuan Shikai, and the Last Act of the Qing Dynasty On February 12, 1912, a six-year-old boy named Puyi signed away the throne his family had held for nearly three centuries. With that act, more than two thousand years of continuous imperial rule in China — a system that traced its origins to the First Emperor of Qin…

The Guangxu Emperor: The Emperor Who Said He Didn’t Need Power Imprisoned by Cixi, possibly poisoned — yet Guangxu never broke. He launched 103 days of reform to save China. The emperor who chose mission over power.The Guangxu Emperor and the 103-Day Revolution That Failed Late Qing Dynasty Series “If it would save the country, I do not need to hold power.” No emperor in Chinese history was supposed to say this. Princes fought and bled for the throne. Empress…

Lü Buwei: The Merchant Who Bought a King In the article on [Bu coins (the price of a person in ancient China)], we saw that in antiquity a human being could carry a price tag. One man pushed that idea to its absolute limit. Grain, pearls, talent — and finally a single prince — he cornered them all as qihuo — literally “rare huo,” rare value worth hoarding. His name was Lü Buwei: the central figure of the drama The…