Emperor Wendi

Yang Jian (楊堅), known as Emperor Wen of Sui or Wendi, founded the Sui Dynasty. A leading official of the Northern Zhou, he seized the throne in 581, and in 589 he conquered the Chen dynasty in the south, reuniting China after nearly three centuries of division. His temple name is Gaozu, and he reigned under two era names, Kaihuang (581–600) and Renshou (601–604).

The Sui lasted only thirty-seven years, from 581 to 618, but its achievements were lasting. Wendi rebuilt the institutions of central government, issued a new law code and began a canal system that his son would greatly extend. The Tang Dynasty, which followed, inherited much of what he built.

Rise to Power

Yang Jian was born in 541 into a powerful family of the north-western aristocracy. His father, Yang Zhong, was a senior general of the Western Wei and Northern Zhou, and Yang Jian inherited his title of Duke of Sui. He married Dugu Qieluo, the daughter of another great general, and his own daughter became empress to Emperor Xuan of Northern Zhou.

When Emperor Xuan died in 580, leaving a young son on the throne, Yang Jian took control of the government as regent. He crushed a rising by the general Yuchi Jiong and other Zhou loyalists, and early in 581 he accepted the abdication of the boy emperor and proclaimed the Sui dynasty. Members of the Zhou imperial family were then put to death.

Character

Wendi was a tireless administrator who read reports late into the night and took a close interest in the details of government. He was frugal, suspicious of his officials and at times harsh in punishment. He was a devout Buddhist, but he drew freely on Confucian ideas of government and on the legal traditions of earlier states.

His marriage was unusually close. Empress Dugu was a powerful partner in government, and during her lifetime he took no other consorts. After her death in 602 he took two.

The Legacy of Wendi

Government

Wendi organised the central government around three departments and six ministries, a structure the Tang adopted and later dynasties modified. In the provinces he abolished the commandery level and reduced local government from three tiers to two, prefectures and counties, cutting the number of officials and bringing local administration under closer control from the capital.

He also began to recruit officials by examination and recommendation rather than by family standing alone. The Sui is usually regarded as the starting point of the civil service examination system, which his son extended.

The Kaihuang Code

The Kaihuang Code, issued in 581 and revised in 583, simplified the law and reduced the harshest punishments. It became the model for the Tang Code, which in turn shaped Chinese law for the rest of the imperial era.

Capital and Canals

Wendi built a new capital, Daxing, beside the old city of Chang'an, laid out on a grand grid plan that the Tang would inherit. To supply it with grain he had the Guangtong Canal dug from the capital to the Yellow River in 584, and in 587 he opened a canal linking the Huai and the Yangzi. These works were the first stages of the Grand Canal, which his son, Emperor Yang, completed on a far larger scale. Wendi also repaired and extended the Great Wall against the Turks.

Land and Taxation

The Sui continued the equal-field system of the northern dynasties, under which the state allotted land to households according to their size and levied tax and labour service in return. Wendi reduced the period of labour service, took registers of the population to bring hidden households back onto the tax rolls, and built great state granaries. By the end of his reign the granaries were full and the treasury was in surplus.

Buddhism

Wendi presented himself as a Buddhist ruler. He sponsored the building of monasteries, and in 601, 602 and 604 he had relics of the Buddha distributed to stupas across the empire, following the example of the Indian emperor Ashoka.

Wars and Frontiers

The conquest of Chen in 589 was the great military achievement of the reign. A force said to number more than half a million men crossed the Yangzi under the nominal command of Wendi's son Yang Guang, and the southern capital at Jiankang, modern Nanjing, fell within weeks.

In the north the main threat came from the Turks. Wendi's generals and diplomats exploited quarrels among the Turkish khans and helped to divide their empire into eastern and western halves. In 602 a Sui army restored Chinese control over the Red River delta, in modern northern Vietnam. A campaign against the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo in 598, however, ended in disaster, with great losses from disease and storms.

The End of the Reign

In 600 Wendi deposed his eldest son, Yang Yong, as crown prince in favour of his second son, Yang Guang. He died in 604 at the Renshou Palace, after a reign of twenty-three years. The official histories hint that Yang Guang had a hand in his father's death, and many historians have suspected murder, but it cannot be proved. Yang Guang succeeded him as Emperor Yang.

Emperor Yang's costly wars and building projects exhausted the empire, and the Sui fell in 618. The last two Sui rulers, Yang Tong and Emperor Gong, were puppets of the generals who fought over the dynasty's remains, and the Tang emerged as victors.

Sui Ceramics

For collectors, the Sui is a short but important chapter in Chinese ceramics. Green-glazed stonewares continued in both north and south, and northern potters made some of the earliest true white porcelain, a development the Xing kilns carried forward under the Tang. Our guide to identifying antique Chinese porcelain covers the wider tradition.