This move allowed her to wield even more power. It was she, not Emperor Ruizong, to whom all the officials reported their work, kowtowing under the golden throne. Emperor Ruizong had no power at all to take care of things at the imperial court.

  It was understandable that some members of the Li imperial clan were distressed at Emperor Zhongzong’s removal, and dreaded possible future developments under Empress Wu’s rule. More alarmingly, Empress Wu started talking about founding a different empire, one called the Zhou Empire instead of the Tang Empire.

  It was at that historical conjuncture that General Xu Jingye was demoted, together with a group of people closely affiliated with the Li family. There were various accusations, which appeared to be ungrounded and unjustifiable in historical accounts.

  In 684, General Xu Jingye gathered those people around himself, ready to rise in rebellion against Empress Wu. Among them was Luo Binwang. He too had been demoted from his position as a secretary at the county government of Chang’an County (one of the two major counties making up the capital Chang’an) to that of a much smaller county with hardly any political significance.

  Frustrated over their demotions, they started the uprising in the name of ‘Emperor Zhongzong’s Restoration’. General Xu Jingye mobilized the troops in Yangzhou and declared the restor­ation of Emperor Zhongzong’s era name. Instead of letting people view it as a rebellion, he wanted to convince the people that it was a rally for the worthy, justifiable cause of the Tang Empire.

  He quickly gathered over a hundred thousand men in about ten days, and he also asked Luo Binwang to draft a poetic ‘Call to Arms’, to convince more people to join in. It was said that Luo’s composition, which laid out the reasons the uprising was necessary, succeeded in winning even more people over, the numbers growing with astonishing momentum.

  After several victorious battles that took place in the initial stage of the uprising, however, the military situation changed dramatically overnight. Losing one opportunity after another, General Xu’s forces were irrecoverably defeated. General Xu and his close associates fled away helter-skelter, planning to head out to the sea, and then to the Korean Peninsula, but they were intercepted and killed.

  What happened to Luo Binwang, however, turned into one of the most controversial mysteries in the Tang dynasty. There were several different versions of the story. According to The Old Tang History, Luo was killed along with other participants in the unsuccessful uprising, but according to The New Tang History, which was composed later with a lot of new, and more reliable, material, Luo ran away after the rebellion ended with a whimper. It was possible that Luo’s body was not discovered, decaying in a forgotten corner of the battlefield, but it was also possible that Luo ran away, managing to keep himself hidden somewhere unknown.

  Anyway, after the failure of General Xu’s rebellion, it was understandable that Empress Wu was anxious to find out whether Luo was killed or was in hiding. She made a show of being eager to search for a talent like Luo, but no one could tell the ulterior agenda behind the investigation. Luo was no longer a threat to the empress, so why such a frantic search?

  The empress was incapable of bearing the suspense for very long. So it was logical for her to dispatch Judge Dee, her most capable investigator, to look into the mystery.

  As I mentioned earlier in the postscript, Judge Dee exhibited an ambivalent stance toward the cruel struggle for power between the Wu section and the Li section at the top of the Tang Empire. Nonetheless, he’d made a courageous suggestion to the empress at the court, arguing it was imperative to keep the Lis in line for the succession. He was seen by people as a pro-Li intellectual and official, but he remained loyal to Empress Wu, working in her interests.

  Judge Dee could not but have had similar ambiguous feelings toward the fight between General Xu’s rebellious army and Empress Wu’s forces. Not to mention the additional factor that, as a lesser poet, Judge Dee might well have had sympathetic feelings toward Luo Binwang, a brilliant poet with such ill-starred luck, and more pressing anxiety about the collateral damage caused by the investigation into his disappearance.

  So, Judge Dee had no choice but to end his investigation with a conclusion not that convincing even to himself.

  In the history books, of course, Luo Binwang’s fate was not uncovered by Judge Dee. Theories about Luo Binwang’s fate after the failed rebellion roughly fall into two main versions: Luo was killed or Luo ran away. The second version somehow became more popular, with a number of variations on the theme.

  One such version recorded in official Tang dynasty history states that, in 705, Emperor Zhongzong came back to the throne, with Empress Wu finally relinquishing her grasp on power. One of the first things the new emperor did was to issue an imperial order throughout the empire to collect Luo Binwang’s poems for posterity. It was commonly seen as a lame excuse to search for the still-missing Luo. After contacting Luo’s friends and relatives and searching all over the country, Emperor Zhongzong’s efforts drew a blank, but more and more people became inclined toward the idea that Luo Binwang was not killed at the end of the tragic uprising. Emperor Zhongzong must have had information from his own surveillance channels to make him believe so.

  Speculation about this Tang dynasty mystery continues in China among academics who study that period of history. Professor Luo Xiangfa of Zhejiang Normal University, allegedly a descendant of Luo Binwang after more than a thousand years, has done a special study of the issue. The theory that Luo Binwang survived is eloquently supported by Professor Luo in his analysis of a poem titled ‘Lingyin Temple’ by Song Zhiwen, an early Tang dynasty poet (655–712), who was actively writing in the same period as Luo Binwang.

  The poem is about a night Song Zhiwen spent in the well-known Lingyin Temple in Zhejiang Province. It was the convention among classic Chinese poets to write lines of poetry after visiting a well-known historical tourist attraction. The first couplet of his poem reads like this:

  The flying-over-peak verdant in the high mountains,

  the dragon palace locking in the solitude.

  ‘The flying-over-peak’ was so called because a celebrated Indian monk had exclaimed at the sight of the peak, ‘Oh, it must have flown over from India. It looks exactly the same.’

  According to some historical records, Song Zhiwen wrote the first couplet but did not know how to go on, in spite of repeatedly racking his brains. It was then that an old, white-bearded monk suddenly appeared out of the blue, standing behind Song and reading out the second couplet for him in a sonorous voice:

  ‘The pavilion overlooks the sun rising over the sea.

  The temple gate faces the roaring tide in Zhejiang.’

  The mysterious monk then vanished into the surrounding darkness, but the couplet instantly elevated the vision of the whole poem. It would have taken a poet of Luo Binwang’s caliber, as argued by a number of poetry critics at the time, to come up with such a masterful couplet – so could he have been the mysterious monk in question?

  Those critics held fast to the theory that Luo Binwang was hiding in the temple and had helped Song with the poem. Stylistically, the sensibility and diction of the second couplet do mark a huge difference from those of the first couplet.

  Another clue ferreted out by Professor Luo is even more convincing, more credible. It originated from essayist Zhang Zhuo’s Anecdotes at the Court and in the Countryside, a well-reviewed collection that is often quoted in serious Tang history works. According to the collection, General Xu Jingye was betrayed, all of a sudden, while mooring by Zhoushan at night. In the chaos, General Xu’s close associates jumped into the water. Some were drowned, some were killed and some escaped. And as Luo Binwang’s name was not mentioned as one who was drowned or killed, logic dictates that he must belong to the last group – those who escaped.

  That theory was further backed up by another Tang dynasty scholar named Xi Yunqing, who wrote the preface to the second edition of The Collection of Xu Jingye. It was a project endorsed, in a sense, by Emperor Zhongzong, to whom Luo Binwang had actually done a great favor. The ‘Call to Arms’ rallied people to the emperor in the uprising and, years later, made it eventually possible for his reign to be gloriously restored. So Xi Yunqing understood that the new emperor wanted him to carry out the assignment in all seriousness. He laboriously did much research and collected a lot of new material into Luo’s disappearance, to enable him to rewrite the preface.

  In the original preface to the collection, Luo Binwang was said to have been killed by the Tang royal army at the end of the rebellion, but in the revised preface – a much longer one – Luo Binwang was said to have successfully escaped after the disastrous failure of the uprising. So the significant change spoke volumes about Luo Binning’s ending, enveloped by the historical, political, cultural mist.

  Another Tang dynasty poet’s lines could be applied to Judge Dee at the end of his investigation of Luo Binwang’s case:

  Alas, the gray clouds are obscuring the sun,

  I’m getting so worried, unable to see

  the great capital of Chang’an in the distance.

  There was no transparency at all in the great, glorious Tang Empire. Everything was clouded and couched in these sinister, scandalous conspiracies of the time.

  China changes, China does not change, as I said at the end of my first Judge Dee investigation, The Shadow of the Empire, and I still have to say so today for the second Judge investigation, The Conspiracy of the Empire.

  In fact, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce put it so well: ‘All history is contemporary history.’ That means history is written from the point of view of contemporary preoccupations.

  So is The Conspiracies of the Empire, at least to a fairly large extent. This historical novel by a Chinese-born American author, written in contemporary times, cannot claim to be an exception from it.

  In the light of Benedetto Croce’s brilliant observation, we may come to find it far from surprising that Chairman Mao wanted Chinese people to sing the praises of ambitious emperors in Chinese history, such as the first Qing dynasty emperor, the Han dynasty warrior emperor, the first Tang dynasty emperor, and the first Song dynasty emperor. He did not mince his words in his poem titled ‘Snow’.

  And it’s little wonder, too, that during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Madam Mao wanted Chinese people to sing the praises of Empress Wu of the Tang Empire. It was to pave the way for Madam Mao to eventually become a red empress after Mao’s death. And the current would-be emperor in contemporary Beijing’s Forbidden City not only has had China’s constitution changed to clear his way to the ‘throne’, but also wants people to sing the praises of the first Qing dynasty emperor, with a newly made TV series extolling that Qing emperor and his grand achievements to the skies.

  Such an ‘emperor complex’ deeply worries me. It is an apparition of a complex that has haunted China’s history for thousands of years. All the leaders of peasant uprisings from time immemorial in China, if successful, ended up becoming emperors of different empires. There’s no exception. Not to mention the historical fact that the first president of the Republic of China, Yuan Shikai, almost immediately attempted to reinstate the monarchy and named himself the first emperor of the Empire of China, though his reign was short-lived. Ironically, Chinese netizens have nicknamed the Forbidden City’s current emperor ‘Yuan the second’ or ‘Yuan the idiot’. The Chinese character er could mean both the ‘second’ and ‘idiot’. Hence, Yuan Shikai becomes too sensitive a word, which can cause an online blog to be removed instantly, with all the ‘net cops’ keeping airtight surveillance. So to call attention to this serious issue is the least, I think, I can and should do in The Conspiracies of the Empire.

  Back to Benedetto Croce’s insightful observation: ‘All history is contemporary history’ – that is, history is written from the point of view of contemporary preoccupations. Much as I admire Robert van Gulik’s historical novels, I cannot but have my point of view of contemporary preoccupations.

  And Judge Dee is living in the moment of the great Tang Empire that Du Fu described.

  Lost in the sentimental recollection

  about the long history of a thousand autumns,

  I’m shedding my tears in profusion:

  The different dynasties, the same melancholy.

  APPENDIX

  Here is a group of selected poems by the ‘four excellent poets of the early Tang dynasty’ – Luo Binwang, Jiong Yang, Wang Bo and Lu Zhaoling. As poets, they were active around roughly the same period. Some of Luo Binwang’s poems, or parts of poems, already included in the text of the present mystery, reappear in this appendix. I hope the translation of these poems might make it a bit easier for readers to understand their comprehensive, complex poetic as well as linguistic sensibilities, and to understand their background in Tang Empire culture and politics too. (Poetry translation is, of course, an impossible mission, but for this book in the Judge Dee series, I have tried my level best.) After all, the development of The Conspiracies of the Empire hinged on Luo Binwang’s poems, which provide the essential clues for Judge Dee’s investigation.

  Also included are a couple of pieces by Empress Wu, including one about her ‘incestuous’ affair with Emperor Gaozong, and one about her appreciation of Dee as a high-ranking official. Ironic as it may seem, Judge Dee had only one – mediocre – poem, left behind in The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty. It was written to commemorate the occasion he accompanied Empress Wu to present an imperial offering to the High Heavens on top of the Tai Mountains.

  Toward the end of The Conspiracies of the Empire, Judge Dee himself was also disgusted with the fact that, like others, he had to write the investigation report to Empress Wu in such an obsequious way, full of fulsome flatteries to the female dictator. Hence, the above-mentioned poem is excluded from this appendix – except for the one poem supposedly written by Judge Dee at the end of his investigation of the Luo Binwang case, though the authorship remains open to question.

  The other inclusion is a poem written by Tang dynasty poet Chen Tao. Chen’s lines influenced Judge Dee’s decision as he maneuvered through this difficult investigation.

  Call to Arms

  Luo Binwang (626–687?)

  This despicable woman surnamed Wu, an illegal usurper of the throne of the great Tang Empire, is evil incarnate. Born of a low-class family, she once served as a palace lady and took outrageous advantage of being close to Emperor Taizhong in private. After Taizhong’s death, disregarding any ethical considerations, and concealing the favor the late emperor had showered on her, she shamelessly developed a scandalous relationship with Gaozong – the crown prince turned emperor – in secret.

  Envious of all the other palace women, she became coquettish, bewitching, vindictive and wanton like a female fox. She soon secured the new emperor’s exclusive favor in bed. Eventually, she seduced Gaozong into promoting her to the position of empress, with all its splendors, thereby precipitating him into an ugly incestuous situation.

  She had a heart as venomous as a devilish snake, gathering vicious people around her, persecuting the royal and the noble, killing the brothers and sisters of the Li family, conspiring against the princes and poisoning the former Empress Wang.

  Wu is consumed by her wicked ambition to become the supreme, unchallengeable ruler of the whole empire. She has imprisoned the crown prince in the palace and placed her own relatives, and the Wu family’s running dogs, in the empire’s most important positions.

  Alas, a loyal premier, like Huo Guang of the Han Empire, will never appear again, and mighty royal family members, like Liu Zhang, have vanished out of sight. When the folk song ‘Swallows Pecking at the Princes’ was heard all over the country, people knew for sure that the Han Empire was coming to an end. When an evil dragon began drooling around the palace, it was an unmistakable harbinger of the demise of the Jin Empire.

  I, Xue Jinye, a devoted and dutiful subject of the Tang Empire, have been long bathing in its graces, and as the eldest son of a noble family, I have long been observing the precious instructions left by the late emperor.

  In ancient times, Song Weizi was not wrong to feel sad over the ruins of his country, and Huan Tan was not without his reasons to weep for losing his noble status. So now, full of indignation, I am determined to do something for the stability of the grand Tang Empire.

  With the general disappointment about her rule prevailing under the sun, with warm support coming from all over our immense land, I raise high the flag of justice. And I pledge to sweep out the evils harming the great Tang Empire.

  From faraway Baiyu in the south to the Three Rivers in the north, our numerous iron-clad steeds and chariots are stretching out all the way to the distant horizon. Corn is piling up high in storage in Hailing, and the grains are fermenting and turning red; the supplies in our warehouses are truly boundless. With flags streaming, over by the great river, how can the glorious achievement of restoring the grand Tang Empire still be far away? Stallions are neighing in the north wind, swords are shining up to the stars, and our soldiers’ shouting is shaking the mountains and astonishing the skies. When we fight the enemies with all this, what enemies cannot be beaten by us? When we launch our brave attacks with all this, what cities cannot be taken by us?