Reunified Empires 57
religious life lay not in ritual, expensive icons, or works of art but in the
common tasks of daily life. With its emphasis on spontaneity and the
love of nature, Chan Buddhism helped to inspire much great poetry and
painting in China from Tang times onward.
The economic consequences of Buddhism were at least as great as
the religious and artistic consequences. Buddhist monasteries engaged
in many economic activities, including sophisticated fund-raising, mon-
eylending, and the running of pawnshops, fl our mills, oil presses, and
some of the world’s fi rst hotels, where travelers could fi nd a hot meal
and warm bed for a modest fee. Buddhism also stimulated a thriving
market for religious icons and other paraphernalia, and Buddhist pil-
grimages and festivals stimulated what became a vibrant tourist indus-
try. Auctions, savings accounts with compound interest, and the sale of
equities and bonds all originated with the entrepreneurship of Buddhist
temples and monasteries.^2
If the prevalence of Buddhism was one major indication of foreign
infl uence in Tang times, another was the relatively powerful position of
women. In the nomadic societies of the north, women rode on horse-
back as much as men, and when men were away tending livestock on
far-fl ung pasturelands, women naturally supervised the running of their
households. In Tang paintings, one can see robust, even chubby, women
with rosy cheeks and full fi gures that evoke western European Renais-
sance depictions of female beauty, except that the Chinese women are
fully clothed. We also see paintings of elite women riding horseback and
even playing polo.
Given the relatively high status of women in Tang high society, it
is not mere coincidence that the most powerful woman in all of Chi-
nese history was Empress Wu of the Tang (her given name was Zhao,
and she is most popularly known as Wu Zetian). She entered the impe-
rial palace in about 640 to become one of Tang Taizong’s concubines
when she was only thirteen. When he died in 649, all of his concubines
were to shave their heads and enter a Buddhist nunnery, but Wu Zhao
managed to escape that fate and was soon back in the palace as a low-
ranking concubine of the young Emperor Gaozong.
By the end of 652, Wu Zhao had borne the emperor a son and
was promoted to a higher rank in the imperial harem. Within a few
years, Emperor Gaozong deposed Empress Wang and replaced her with
Empress Wu. Wu Zhao’s critics claim that she fi rst framed Empress
Wang for the murder of her own (Wu Zhao’s) daughter and then framed
her again for the attempted murder of her husband, the emperor. In any
case, Wu Zhao became empress in 656, and after Gaozong suffered the