Patricia Buckley Ebrey

A book for those interested in the Song Dynasty, the fall of the 'Northern' Song, and the emperor who reigned from 1100-1126, Huizong. Meticulous in detail--albeit not always as captivating or entertaining as one had hoped for--and a much-needed work on both Huizong and the Song in part because this was a game-changing period in Chinese history and in part because of the many stories that are known about Huizong. Historians have been more fascinated with the more marshal personalities of China's history--the First Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, Genghis and Khubilai Khan, Kangxi and Qianlong--than its more pacifist emperors. Yet we do know quite a bit about Huizong--his expertise in the arts, his great collections, the building of one of the most famous gardens in history, his fascination with (and belief in?) Daoism, and his final years in exile as a hostage of the northern Jin. Now we know even more, a lot more, thanks to the 600 pages of this volume.

Emperor Huizong is a dense book and slow-going. I pondered at several points giving in to the temptation to skim ahead, but dutifully read every page. There are pages and pages of facts surrounding the man's life but only rarely does one get a glimpse into what he may have been like. For example, he had a lot of children-- did he really enjoy the pleasures of his many wives and consorts and palace women or did he feel it was his duty to produce as many descendants as possible, or did he just feel sorry for all those lonely women waiting for their one opportunity to rise in status by fathering an imperial child? Did he raise his inked brush with a heavy or light heart? Did he really collect and collect passionately, or just accumulate? Chinese history never records such personal details, only the meetings, the communications, the transactions, the petitions...yet such (impossible) insights are the very details that would have given breath to the sturdy bones of this solid work.
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