Top 10 insane emperors in ancient China
- By Zhang Junmian
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 2, 2011
Zhao Ji 宋徽宗趙佶
Zhao Ji (1082-1135), Emperor Huizong, was the eighth emperor of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). His reign lasted 16 years from 1100 to 1126. What Zhao desired was luxury life, literature and art. He was remembered as a talented painter and calligrapher, but a foolish emperor whose incompetence and ignorance of state affairs boosted the collapse of the Northern Song (960-1127).
The giddy and dissolute emperor entrusted the ruling of the state to six treacherous advisors who schemed against faithful officials and encouraged Zhao to pursue great pleasures. Zhao was busy wandering from one woman to another. Unsatisfied with the concubines in the palace, he often went to the brothels in ordinary clothes to seek for new stimulations. He was a regular client of the famous prostitute Li Shishi at that time.
In 1126, seeing that the capital Kaifeng was in great danger of falling to the invasion of the Jin troops from the north, the emperor, severely frightened, abdicated the throne to his son Zhao Huan, Emperor Qinzong. In 1127, the Jin troops captured Kaifeng and seized Huizong and Qinzong. The father and his son were taken to Wuguocheng in today's Yilan of Heilongjiang Province, where they were brought under house arrest and suffered great humiliation. Huizong was tortured to death in 1135.
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