A place to list significant individuals who lived during Imperial China.
Shang
- Tang of Shang: The first official thing to a monarch of China, is said to have overthrown Jie, the last ruler of the Xia dynasty.
- Fu Hao: One of the many wives of King Wu Ding of the Shang dynasty who also served as a military general and high priestess. There is very little evidence describing her life that survives today. Her tomb famously has hundreds of bronze and bone objects, sixteen humans that were sacrified, and six killed dogs.
- King Zhou of Shang: Last emperor of the Shang Dynasty. Was seen as decadent and corrupt and infamously filled an entire pool with alcohol with tree branches made of roasted meat. Gathered all his treasures around himself in the Palace, set fire to his palace and committed suicide.
Zhou
Spring and Autumn Period
- Confucius: The Chinese philosopher. The impact the man had on the Chinese civilization can only be outmatched by Qin Shi Huangdi, if anyone at all. The very era he lived in is named after a chronicle he had a hand in compiling.
- Xi Shi: A peasant girl turned spy that was tasked by King Goujian of Yue state to seduce and weaken King Fuchai of Wu, thereby allowing him to retake the lands of Yue. Xi Shi is known as one of the earlier uses of sexpionage (using female seduction in order to spy on foes) in Ancient China, and was said to be so beautiful that she's considered the first of the Four Beauties of Ancient China.
Warring States Period
- Sun Tzu: There are some controversies when exactly the man lived, or even if he existed at all, but he is associated with this period, and if he did, it was then.
- Sun Bin: Said to be Sun Tzu's descendant, also a general and a military theorist who produced his own book on war — more detailed, but less known. There might have been some conflation of the two men, which is one of the reasons why there are disputed on the existence of Sun Tzu.
Qin
- Qin Shi Huangdi: First emperor of China. Coined the Chinese word for "Emperor" and indirectly named China itself. See his page for more information.
- Jing Ke: Retainer of the Crown Prince of Dan, and one of China's most notorious assassins. He came up with a rather meticulous plan to assassinate the aforementioned Qin Shi Huangdi in order to save his land, and by all means, he would have succeeded if it wasn't for a loyal physician named Xia Wuju saving his liege in the nick of time. Jing Ke was killed on spot, but he was recorded as the person that went the closest to kill off the Emperor. Historians agreed that had Jing Ke succeeded, the history of China would have been radically different.
Han
- Emperor Wu Of Han (Not to be confused with Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty): His reign resulted in a vast expansion of geopolitical influence for the Chinese civilization, and the development of a strong centralized state , economical reorganization and promotion of a hybrid Legalist–Confucian doctrine. Became increasingly paranoid after a nightmare of being whipped by tiny stick-wielding puppets and a sighting of a traceless assassin (possibly a hallucination), and ordered extensive investigations with harsh punishments. Large numbers of people, many of them high officials, were accused of witchcraft and executed, usually along with their entire clans.
- Ban Zhao: The first known female Chinese historian and philosopher who completed her brother Ban Gu's work on the history of the Western Han, the Book of Han. She also wrote Lessons for Women , an influential work on women's conduct.
Three Kingdoms
- Most of the characters in Romance of the Three Kingdoms are at least based on real people who lived in this period, but take note — their depictions can differ a lot compared to what historians know of them.
- Liu Bei: Founder of Shu Han and greatly revered in Chinese history partly due to being the hero of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Jin
- Ge Hong: A Chinese linguist and Taoist practitioner who taught emphasized loyalty to the emperor as a Taoist virtue
Northern & Southern Dynasties
- Hou Jing: A rogue general whose rebellion greatly devastated the south. His massacre of the southern clans also permanently removed their political influence from the region.
- The Ballad of Mulan is generally attributed to this time period.
Sui
- Emperor Wen of Sui: Has a reign was so prestigious that he left a powerful army and a prosperous economy behind him with enough food stocks to last 50 years. Constructed the Grand Canal and is thought to be the only king in the history of Chinese civilization to have only two concubines.
- Emperor Yang of Sui: The Second Emperor of the Sui Dynasty, who notably the completed the Grand Canal and the reconstruction of the Great Wall. Disastrously failed to take over Goguryeo, which left the empire bankrupt and the populace in revolt. Was strangled to death in a coup led by his general.
Tang
- Princess Pingyang: The daughter of Emperor Gaozu and sister of Emperor Taizong, she played a significant role in her father's rebellion against Sui and founding of Tang. When she died, she was buried in a grand military funeral, which no other princess had before.
- Emperor Taizong of Tang: One of the Tang's greatest rulers and China's greatest and most famous emperors. He acknowledged the power of the peasants and enacted measures to help them. Many goods were traded internationally during his reign and extended China to as far as Korea and even Russia.
- Wu Zetian: China's only empress to rule on her own right. See her page for more information.
- Empress Wei: Wife of Emperor Zhongzong who poisoned the emperor and hid his body and concealed his death to place a pliable junior son of Zhongzong, Li Chongmao, on the throne with an eye of one day seizing the throne for herself and her daughter Princess Anle. Was eventually captured and executed along with the rest of her family.
- Princess Taiping: Similar to Wu & Wei, she tried to manipulate her brother Emperor Ruizong after leading the coup that overthrew Empress Dowager Wei. She would later come into conflict with her nephew Li Longji when he became Crown Prince and tried to depose him, but would commit suicide when these efforts failed.
- Emperor Xuanzong: The Tang Dynasty reached the peak of its power under his reign. Abolished the death penalty, improved the economy through security on the Silk Road, increased maritime trading, decreed financial reforms, constructed temples and administrative complexes, built roads, and improved industry. Woodblock printing, which began on a large scale under Taizong, was improved, and more books became available, which led to greater literacy and better jobs for the lower classes. Was infamously betrayed by chancellor Li Linfu.
- Li Bai: One of the most prominent figures in the flourishing of Chinese poetry in the Tang dynasty who wrote over 1000 poems.
- Du Fu: Another prominent poet who came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages.
- An Lushan: A general of non-Han descent who rebelled against the dynasty to no accomplishment and a huge loss of life. Since China has always been populous, An Lushan's rebellion is regarded as probably the deadliest ever single war waged by mankind, in terms of the percentage of global population lost.
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms
- Wang Jian: a military general who founded the Later Shu dynasty.
- Ma Yin:founder of the Chu Kingdom, known for his military prowess and ambition.
- Guo Wei:founder of the Later Zhou dynasty, who rose from poverty to become one of the most powerful figures of his time.
- Yang Xingmi: founder of the Huainan Kingdom, who established a stable and prosperous realm in the southeast of China.
Song
- Genghis Khan: Famously conquered most of China & slaughtered an estimated 30 million people, and the population of China fell by half in fifty years of Mongol rule.
- Emperor Taizu of Song: the founder of the Song Dynasty who reunited China after the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
- Su Shi: a poet, writer, and politician who is considered one of the greatest poets of the Song Dynasty.
- Fan Zhongyan: a politician, writer, and reformer who played a key role in the reforms during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song.
- Wang Anshi: a statesman, economist, and reformer who attempted to improve the government's finances, military, and agriculture.
- Shen Kuo: a scientist, statesman, and astronomer who made significant contributions to the field of geology and cartography.
- Zeng Gong: a scholar, poet, and historian who is best known for his work "New Discourses on the Taiping Era."
- Liu Xie: a literary critic and writer who is regarded as the father of literary criticism in China.
Liao
- Emperor Taizu of Liao: Founded the Liao Dynasty in the late 10th century and expanded the empire through military conquests
- Yelü Abaoji: The grandfather of Taizu, who was a prominent general and leader in the Khitan people, the ethnicity that established the Liao Dynasty
- Emperor Tianzuo of Liao: ruled during the late 11th and early 12th centuries and was known for his diplomatic efforts with neighboring countries
- Liu Jiqun: A Liao Dynasty official and historian who wrote the "Old History of the Five Dynasties," which provides valuable insights into the history and culture of the Liao Dynasty.
Jurchen Jinnote
- Wu Jing: Wrote "The Art Of The War"note
- Ruan Ji: Famous poet and scholar
Western Xia.
- Li Jiqian: A general who served Emperor Renzong and was known for his military tactics and victories.
- Liu Xun: aApoet and philosopher who was influential in the cultural and intellectual developments of the Western Xia.
Yuan
- Kublai Khan: The man met by Marco Polo and perhaps for this reason one of the go-to names for "wonders of the Orient" in Western European culture.
Ming
Zhu Yuanzhang was many things: born a poor peasant, he would emerge as one of China's foremost warlords. With brutal cunning, he managed to get the upper hand over his rivals, seized the throne, and with increasing age, ended up becoming more and more paranoid and murderous. That's at least Rags to Royalty and Despotism Justifies the Means rolled into one.
Qing
The Qing government attempted a program of reform to make China more Western and hopefully save it from further humiliation. It failed, partly because the reformers actively squabbled with each other instead of the foreigners, partly because even the reformers thought all China needed was a better military and the rest could stay the same, partly because the Empress was rumored to have taken the program's funds to build herself a boat made out of marble (and the Summer Palace in Beijing, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), and finally because Chinese armies and fleets equipped with modern weapons but not properly trained in their use were soundly thrashed by the upstart Japanese who had modernized more thoroughly in the First Sino-Japanese War.
That Empress' name was Cixi (pronounced 'Tsih-shee'), and if there was ever a real life Dragon Lady, Cixi was it. Originally a concubine to the late emperor Xianfeng, Cixi stayed in power as regent for 48 years, originally in non-romantic union with fellow empress C'ian. This regency covered the 'rule' of multiple emperors. One was her son, who resisted her iron grasp by refusing to study, sneaking out to brothels, and finally dying of smallpox without having had the courtesy to sire a son. Lacking a traditional heir, the two empresses named Cixi's young nephewnote as the new Emperor. While all this was distracting everyone, however, modernisation was definitely not happening.
Finally the new Guangxu Emperor reached his majority and started trying to get things moving on his own. With the assistance of a man named Kang Youwei, they came up with a plan to massively shake up the social structure of China. This is known as the Hundred Days Reform. However, a lot of people currently in power didn't particularly appreciate having their jobs cut out from under them. Also, there was a plot underfoot to trick the Emperor into signing away control of China to Japan. Kang Youwei, hoping to get more people on his side, appointed a man named Yuan Shikai as leader of his forces. Yuan Shikai proceeded to tell Cixi exactly what was going on. Kang Youwei ran to Hong Kong to escape Cixi, and Guangxu abdicated and was put under house arrest for the remainder of his (and her) life - when she apparently had him poisoned as she was dying to ensure he wouldn't outlive her. Harsh, Cixi. Harsh.
Second, the lower classes of China were very annoyed at the Western incursions, and one group of peasants got it into their heads that it was their destiny to save China by getting rid of all the Westerners. They also believed that they were Immune to Bullets. Despite this, this group, known fully as the Harmonious Society of Righteous Fists but more commonly as the 'Boxers', travelled across China attacking the foreign powers until they reached Beijing. There they besieged foreign buildings (primarily the embassies), opposed by the foreign-power armies called the League of 8. Cixi supported the Boxers; she even demanded that the Chinese armies come to Beijing to help them fight the foreigners. By this point, the armies were all 'suuure, right' and did virtually nothing to help out.
In 1901, the Boxer Protocol was signed, and Cixi finally started an actual reform program. Unfortunately, while the reforms were in more sweeping than the failed Hundred Days Reform had been, they still weren't enough to make much visible difference.
Thirdly, a man named Sun Yixian (you may know him as Sun Yat-sen or Sun Zhongshan) realised that China was still way behind, and that Cixi was taking China down a highway to Diyu, make no mistake. He summarily started to support revolutionary ideas to turn China into a parliamentary democracy. Many of these ideas grew in popularity, particularly amongst China's armies.
To make a now extremely long summary short, Cixi's program failed and Sun Yixian's revolution got underway just as the Qing were setting up a provisional parliament. The rebels were powerful; in the intervening years China's armies had been filled with Sun Yixian's ideas. Whatever the army wanted was going to stick, and the Qing knew it. Realising that Yuan Shikai had the support of at least some of the army, Prince Chun,note father of the last emperor of China, asked him to lead the fight against the rebels. Yuan Shikai happily did so, on the proviso that he got to be the undisputed leader of the armed forces. Yuan then went to negotiations with the rebels and was persuaded to support the newly formed republic...so long as he got to be the undisputed leader of the country.
