THIS BOOK OFFERS READERS A FIRSTHAND glimpse of China in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. It is based upon more than 200 translated, annotated, and contextualized vignettes from Zhang Zhuo’s eighth-century miscellany, Collected Records of Court and Country (Chaoye qianzai 朝野僉載; hereafter Court and Country). Few sources can deliver such an immediate and authentic sense and feel for the empire during the reign of Wu Zhao 武曌 (624–705, also known as Empress Wu and Wu Zetian), China’s first and only female emperor.

Beginning from Wu Zhao’s inner palace, this book expands in ever-wider concentric circles. While the opening chapter centers on the woman sovereign’s inner quarters, where her male favorites dressed up in polychrome garments and rode wooden cranes, the second chapter moves to the outer court, examining the culture of the elite officials charged with administering the government. From Zhang Zhuo, we learn how these court denizens devised derisive nicknames for each other and tried to one-up one another at intricate word games. The third chapter looks at Wu Zhao’s “cruel officials” (kuli 酷吏), henchmen who took an aesthetic delight in their bloodsport. Next, we leave the capital and travel into the prefectures and counties in a chapter that examines a full gamut of local officials—from conscientious magistrates to clerks who preyed on the citizens in their jurisdictions. Subsequently, a chapter on the common people surveys a wide range of clever artisans (including a master painter whose trompe l’oeil birds of prey were so realistic they scared pigeons from roosting on the rafters of a Buddhist temple), wealthy merchants literally risen from the muck, hospitable peasants, gamesmen, day laborers, and street performers. Chapter 6 investigates stories of men, women, and relationships—many featuring contraventions or abuses of patriarchal and Confucian norms—with a close eye on gender and power dynamics. The ensuing chapter explores accounts of generals and military men charged with defense against border threats from the Turks, the Khitan, and the Tibetans; these defenders ranged from men with consummate martial skill, to brilliant strategists, to craven and incompetent leaders who brought down disasters upon their men.