The First Empires 33
or alive, helps explain why so many tombs of the Han elite were fi lled
with household and luxury goods.
In addition to elaborate tombs for the dead,^4 in the later Han period
some members of the elite began building large aboveground shrines to
their dead ancestors. These served as public gathering places for ancestral
sacrifi ces. The largest and most complete of these shrines from the Han
was dedicated to Wu Liang, a man who had refused to accept appoint-
ment in an offi cialdom he saw as corrupt. The walls of his shrine were
decorated with stone carvings that aimed to depict the entire history of
the world, from the deep mythological past right up to the present and
from the most mundane details of daily life to the heavenly realm of
the immortals. A popular deity in Han times was the Queen Mother of
the West, who presided over the yin realm of the immortals on Kunlun
Mountain, where the golden peaches of immortality ripened only once
every 3,000 years.^5 Her less revered counterpart, the King Father of the
East, presided over the yang realm of the immortals.
The wall carvings of the Wu Liang Shrine depict a wide variety of
people, including ancient kings, fi lial sons and virtuous men, wise min-
isters, famous assassins, and eminent women. Among the latter were
women who exemplifi ed the highest Confucian virtues of self-sacrifi ce
for the sake of morality. One was a beautiful Zhou dynasty widow,
Gaoxing, of the state of Liang, who was so determined to remain a
chaste widow that she cut off her own nose to discourage any men from
seeking her hand in marriage. Another was the Virtuous Aunt of Liang,
who intended to save her brother’s son from a fi re but in the excitement
of the moment picked up and saved her own son instead. Discovering
her mistake, she was so chagrined that she ran back into the fl ames to
her death, claiming that she could not face the shame of having saved
her own son instead of her brother’s.
Although most written historical records from the Han period focus
on men to the exclusion of women, the most famous female scholar in all
of Chinese history lived in the Han dynasty. This was Ban Zhao, whose
father, Ban Biao, had vowed to continue the great history of China that
Sima Qian had begun. When Ban Biao died prematurely, his son Ban
Gu, Ban Zhao’s brother, took up the challenge and completed the Book
of Han, the offi cial history of the Han dynasty. Ban Gu’s twin brother
achieved equal prominence as a military general and conqueror of many
formerly independent kingdoms in Central Asia. Despite her subordinate
position as a woman, Ban Zhao matched the accomplishments of her
brothers. Married to a prominent offi cial who died as a young man, she
devoted herself to raising her one son and to a life of study and writing.