Born beautiful, and for that very reason, drawn into the power struggles of the imperial court.
Most of the women who entered the inner palace were daughters of good families, raised with learning and refinement. Yet they were thrown into a contest of life and death. When not only your own life but the fate of your whole clan hangs in the balance, no one can remain simply a good person. Caught in the whirlpool of power, do they not, in the end, lose themselves?
Beauty granted by heaven is a gift, and at the same time a curse. And in the inner palace, every action taken to survive eventually comes back to you. This is what Buddhism calls karma, or gō in Japanese: an action, and the consequence that action brings. The women of the inner palace all lived inside that karma.
Among them, Shen Meizhuang was one who never lost herself, to the very end. She was not always a good person. But she never lost herself.
In the Chinese court drama Empresses in the Palace (original title: Zhen Huan Zhuan, 甄嬛传), Shen Meizhuang is a woman who, beneath an elegant exterior, survived the inner palace through fierce pride and cool-headed strategy.
Her symbol is the chrysanthemum.
The emperor and Shen Meizhuang looked at the same flower and saw entirely different things. That gap would decide her fate.
Who Was Shen Meizhuang?
Shen Meizhuang came from a distinguished family and was raised with a refined education.
Outwardly she carried dignity and grace, but within she held a sharp intellect and strong pride. Through her wisdom she rose steadily in rank and earned the deep regard of both the emperor and the Empress Dowager. She was the very model of a “well-mannered” aristocrat, perfectly suited to what palace rule demanded.
She also showed remarkable skill amid court intrigue, and came through many crises.
Had she not let go of her ambitions so early, she might have risen to the top of the inner palace before Zhen Huan did. She had that much talent. What decided her fate was not a lack of ability, but misfortune, and unfortunate choices.
Two Chrysanthemums: A Fatal Misunderstanding
The Emperor’s Chrysanthemum: The Flower That Does Not Compete
Knowing that Meizhuang loved chrysanthemums, the emperor sent her chrysanthemums and renamed her residence in their honor.
To the emperor, the chrysanthemum held a special meaning.
In spring, flowers of every color bloom as if competing with one another. In the inner palace, too, beautiful women compete for imperial favor. But the chrysanthemum blooms quietly, in the season when other flowers do not.
A woman who does not compete is a woman who brings peace of mind.
That was the chrysanthemum the emperor saw.
Meizhuang’s Chrysanthemum: The Flower That Does Not Yield
But when he asked her why she loved chrysanthemums, Meizhuang answered with an entirely different chrysanthemum.
寧可枝頭抱香死 何曾吹落北風中
(Better to die on the branch, still holding its fragrance, than ever be blown down by the north wind.)
These lines come from “Cold Chrysanthemum” (寒菊, also titled “Painted Chrysanthemum,” 画菊) by Zheng Sixiao, a poet who lived through the fall of the Song dynasty and the rise of the Yuan. The full poem reads:
花開不併百花叢 獨立疏籬趣未窮 寧可枝頭抱香死 何曾吹落北風中
It does not bloom among the crowd of a hundred flowers; it stands alone by a sparse fence, its charm never exhausted. Better to die on the branch, still holding its fragrance, than ever be blown down by the north wind.
A chrysanthemum does not drop its petals. It withers while still on the branch. “Dying while holding its fragrance” describes this nature, and it becomes a metaphor for Meizhuang’s integrity.
The emperor saw “the flower that does not compete.” Meizhuang spoke of “the flower that does not yield.”
However calm she appeared, inside her lived a pride that would never bend.
My Reading: Who Is the North Wind?
I see another layer here.
Zheng Sixiao was no ordinary poet. He was a student at the Imperial Academy in the final years of the Southern Song. When the Yuan armies advanced south, he submitted proposals urging the court to resist, but they were not adopted. After the Song fell, he changed his name to Sixiao (思肖). The character 肖 is part of 趙 (Zhao), the family name of the Song emperors, so his new name meant “longing for Zhao.” His courtesy name, Yiweng (憶翁), means “the old man who remembers,” and his art name, Suonan (所南), “facing south.” It is said that whether sitting or lying down, he always faced south and kept his back to the north.
When he painted orchids in ink, he drew neither roots nor soil. Asked why, he is said to have replied: “The land has been taken by others. Don’t you know?”
Commentaries read the “north wind” in this poem as a double meaning. It is the cold wind, and it is also the conquerors who came from the north: the Mongols of the Yuan. To wither while holding its fragrance was a declaration: better to die than bow to the new dynasty.
So what happens when, in the inner palace of the Qing dynasty, a Han Chinese noblewoman recites this poem to a Manchu emperor?
“I will not yield to those who came from the north.”
The drama never shows Meizhuang intending any political meaning. She most likely quoted it simply as a metaphor for integrity. And the emperor received it as “my flower.”
Yet from the audience’s seat, the scene is a double misreading. The emperor misreads her as “a woman who does not compete,” and he never realizes that the poem itself was written to reject a dynasty of northern conquerors, a dynasty like his own.
The False Pregnancy: The Day Love Was Tested
The arrogant Consort Hua had never been able to tolerate Shen Meizhuang. She saw the strong friendship between Meizhuang and Zhen Huan as a threat. By driving Meizhuang out, she hoped to cut off Zhen Huan’s right arm, and if possible, to push Zhen Huan out of the palace as well.
Then a scheme devised by Noble Lady Cao came to light: Meizhuang’s pregnancy was false. The emperor flew into a rage and condemned her.
Part of her wanted to protest. But looking at the cold eyes of the man before her, she calmly understood the truth.
This man, who had once seemed so fond of her, now declared her guilty without asking for any explanation. He did not trust her in the slightest.
The emperor had never truly loved her.
When she first entered the palace, Meizhuang had won his favor before anyone else. Now, when she was falsely accused, that same emperor not only failed to protect her; he would not even believe in her innocence.
On that day, everything she had believed in was shattered. From that moment on, Meizhuang treated the emperor with icy coldness.
Her Heart Died, but She Remained Rational and Noble
Disillusioned with the emperor, her heart dead, Meizhuang still had to go on living.
From the moment she entered the palace, she was not just one woman. She carried the whole Shen clan on her shoulders.
She withdrew from the struggle for power and found her purpose in serving the Empress Dowager. At the same time, she firmly refused ever to seek the emperor’s affection again.
Just as in the poem: exposed to the cold north wind, yet proud and clear-minded.
Wen Shichu: Another Kind of Love
The one who truly moved Meizhuang’s heart was the imperial physician, Wen Shichu.
Sincere, gentle, courteous, sensitive, and caring, he was the emperor’s exact opposite.
But he had a complicated past. He had once proposed marriage to Zhen Huan and vowed to protect her for the rest of his life.
Whatever Zhen Huan wished for, Wen Shichu tried to make it happen. Even though the marriage never came to be, he used his medical skill to protect her in the palace, and saved her again and again.
A deep, quiet love that asked nothing in return.
Ironically, what drew Meizhuang to Wen Shichu was that very devotion to Zhen Huan. She was struck by it, and could not help comparing it with the emperor’s shallow, false love.
Wen Shichu, in turn, received Meizhuang’s thoughtful kindness and was torn inside. He was clearly falling for her. But his honest nature made him feel he was betraying his feelings for Zhen Huan, and he felt guilty.
Yet the woman Wen Shichu had loved was Zhen Huan before she entered the palace: a young woman untouched by anything, who wished only for peaceful days. The Zhen Huan who kept fighting in the inner palace drifted further and further from that girl. Meizhuang, on the other hand, kept that wish for peaceful days alive inside her until the very end.
Perhaps when his heart turned toward Meizhuang, it was not a change of heart at all.
The Fateful Night
In time, Meizhuang came to wish to live for her own love.
The Empress Dowager, knowing nothing, hoped to bring her favorite Meizhuang and the emperor back together, and prepared a wine laced with an aphrodisiac. But Meizhuang deliberately poured that wine for Wen Shichu.
The two of them spent one night together. Meizhuang believed it had been the drug.
The Bracelet: Meizhuang the Strategist
Once she was carrying Wen Shichu’s child, Meizhuang gave a truly masterful performance.
She found out the route the Yongzheng Emperor always took when leaving court, and waited there with her maids. She was searching, she said, for a bracelet the emperor had given her with his own hands years before, which she had lost.
With tears in her eyes, she said:
“I can bear to lose the bracelet, but I cannot bear to lose the feeling it holds.”
Those words struck the emperor straight to the heart, and he began to favor her once more.
From then on, she wore the bracelet to every palace banquet. The emperor saw it again and again. That one small bracelet kept a story playing in his mind: “Meizhuang’s heart belongs to me alone.”
The Empress Dowager: The Strongest Ally
At the same time, she won over the highest figure in the inner palace.
She played board games with the Empress Dowager and made nourishing sweets with her own hands. Even while pregnant, she was devoted in every way; whenever the Empress Dowager coughed, she was there at once with tea and medicine.
Moved by such care, the Empress Dowager went so far as to declare, “I will name Meizhuang’s child myself.”
Zhen Huan as a Shield
When Zhen Huan returned to the palace from Ganlu Temple, pregnant, Meizhuang immediately announced that she, too, was with child.
The Empress’s faction had first intended to target Meizhuang. But Zhen Huan’s child was the greater threat, so their attacks turned toward her instead.
She used her dearest friend as a shield to protect her own child.
For Meizhuang, integrity and ruthlessness did not contradict each other. What she was protecting was her child.
Protecting Her Child Through Death: The Final Strategy
On the day she gave birth, Wen Shichu castrated himself to prove his innocence, and Meizhuang collapsed on the spot.
Before losing consciousness, she held Zhen Huan’s hand tightly and entrusted her daughter to her.
Then, as she lay dying, she placed that bracelet on her daughter’s wrist.
It would remind the emperor of the love between them and deepen his affection for the child. It would show her loyalty and erase any suspicion that the emperor was not the father.
Even more ingenious was the outcome: the child remained, and the mother did not.
With the mother gone, no one could look into the child’s origins. And the father had castrated himself.
Jinghe: A Wish That Never Changed by a Single Word
As she lay dying, Meizhuang gave her newborn daughter a name.
“温和従容、歳月静好”: may your days be gentle, unhurried, and calm.
“Isn’t this exactly the life we always wished for?”
Princess Jinghe (静和). Meizhuang died without changing a single word of the wish she had carried since the day she entered the palace.
Honoring her dying wish, Zhen Huan raised Jinghe as if she were her own daughter. With that support, Jinghe grew up to be the most beloved princess in the palace.
The Last Confession
As Meizhuang lay dying, Wen Shichu at last told her the truth.
“That drug was not strong enough to move me. What happened that night was my true feeling.”
With that confession, Meizhuang knew, at the very end, what true love was.
A pure and sincere love, the very opposite of the emperor’s false one.
My Reading: Holding the Fragrance to the End
Meizhuang’s final act of resistance against the emperor was to have a child with the man she truly loved.
To the very end, the emperor never knew what he had failed to win. What he loved was his own fantasy of “the flower that does not compete,” not the woman standing in front of him.
However fiercely the north wind blew, Meizhuang never fell from the branch.
I believe she even counted her own death into her plan. The moment she knew she was dying, she held Zhen Huan’s hand and entrusted her daughter to her. She left Wen Shichu a reason to protect the child with his life. On her daughter’s wrist, she placed the bracelet the emperor had given her. She bound Zhen Huan and Wen Shichu to the child, and tied the emperor’s heart to her with the bracelet. She used her own death as her final move.
Even if she died, her heart would remain.
That child was the fruit of her love for the man she loved. But not only that. It was Meizhuang herself who chose Wen Shichu over the emperor. And so the child was also Meizhuang herself: the woman who never yielded, however hard the north wind blew.
“Better to die on the branch, still holding its fragrance.” Perhaps the fragrance she held on to until the very end was this child.
My Reading: Zhen Huan and Karma
Zhen Huan dirtied her own hands in the struggles of the inner palace and, in the end, rose to the very top. But can that truly be called winning? Having given up love, having given up who she once was, what was left in her hands?
To survive in that inner palace, she had no choice but to become what she became. That is what I always thought. And yet, in the very same place, there was someone who never changed her wish.
Even so, I cannot blame Zhen Huan. What did a good person have to become in order to win? When I think about that, I begin to see the weight of what Zhen Huan carried.
Meizhuang withdrew from the competition for favor early on and found a place under the Empress Dowager. All that time, it was Zhen Huan who fought on the front line and dirtied her hands. Wasn’t Meizhuang able to keep her wish partly because Zhen Huan was dirtied in her place?
Here I think of karma once more: an action, and the consequence it brings. Zhen Huan had to become a demon in order to protect everything. As the consequence, she lost love. And yet, because that demon existed, Meizhuang was able to find love.
That may be why Meizhuang put the days the two of them had once wished for into her daughter’s name, and entrusted that daughter to Zhen Huan. To me, Princess Jinghe seems to have been a daughter left behind for Zhen Huan, too.
Closing
In the hell of the inner palace, so many lost themselves. Among them, Shen Meizhuang never lost herself, to the very end. That is what I believe now.
Like the chrysanthemum, she never lost her fragrance, and she lived proudly until her last breath.
Her life was the poem itself: “Better to die on the branch, still holding its fragrance.”