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whereupon he changed his surname He grew up to be a tall, heavily built, clever fellow, and a good judge of character.
He spoke the various frontier dialects well, a point which once saved his life when condemned to death for sheep-stealing He began to be employed in repressing the raids of the Kitan Tatars, in which occupation he made quite a name for himself, and was at length taken to the capital. The emperor T'ang Ming Huang took a great fancy to him, and the emperor's concubine, Yang Kuei-fei, called him her adopted son, making him do obeisance to her first and to the emperor afterwards, on the ground that such was the Turkic custom.
Despatched upon an expedition against the Kitans, he was so successful that he was ennobled as Duke. Then, with inflated pride and ambition, he rebelled, and added to the general confusion which was surrounding the wretched Ming Huang, who had been repeatedly warned of this new danger. An called himself Emperor Hsiung Wu of the Great Yen dynasty, and for a time carried everything before him. He was assassinated by his own son, An Ch'ing-hsu, who feared that he was going to be deprived of the succession in favour of the offspring of a concubine. And within three years of the first rising, the son too had been put to death by Shih Ssu-ming.
This rebellion was one of several eras in Chinese history which has provided a popular theme for opera and tea-house story tellers' tales providing Chinese with a familiarity with the dramatic events of the times and details of the lives and times of well-known heroes and villains of the time.
The same can also be said of traditional stories told within popular religion temples where tales are told and retold of a select number of the deified heroes of the victorious Tang imperial forces whose images are on altars. We shall be examining the roles of the emperor, his personal doctor and six generals loyal to the emperor during the campaign to suppress the rebellion and their eventual role in the celestial bureaucracy.
156
whereupon he changed his surname He grew up to be a tall, heavily built, clever fellow, and a good judge of character.
He spoke the various frontier dialects well, a point which once saved his life when condemned to death for sheep- stealing He began to be employed in iepressing the raids of the Kitan Tatars, in which occupation he made quite a name for himself, and was at length taken to the capital. The emperor T'ang Ming Huang took a great fancy to him, and the emperor's concubine, Yang Kuei-fei, called him her adopted son, making him do obeisance to her first and to the
emperor afterwards, on the ground that such was the Turkic custom.
Despatched upon an expedition against the Kitans, he was so successful that he was ennobled as Duke. Then, with inflated pride and ambition, he rebelled, and added to the general confusion which was surtounding the wretched Ming Huang, who had been repeatedly warned of this new danger. An called himself Emperor Hsiung Wu of the Great Yen dynasty, and for a time carried everything before him. He was assassinated by his own son, An Ch'ing-hsu, who feared that he was going to be deprived of the succession in favour of the offspring of a concubine. And within three years of the first rising, the son too had been put to death by Shih Ssu-ming.
This rebellion was one of several eras in Chinese history which has provided a popular theme for opera and tea-house story tellers" tales providing Chinese with a familiarity with the dramatic events of the times and details of the lives and times of well-known heroes and villains of the time.
The same can also be said of traditional stories told within popular religion temples where tales are told and retold of a select number of the deified heroes of the victorious Tang imperial forces whose images are on altars. We shall be examining the roles of the emperor, his personal doctor and six generals loyal to the emperor during the campaign to suppress the rebellion and their eventual role in the celestial bureaucracy.
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