隋文帝
作為他幼小孫子的攝政王，他在581年奪取了北周王位，並在589年征服了陳，結束了中國歷史上最長的分裂時期。他建立的制度——三省六部制、科舉考試入仕的途徑、均田制、糧倉、重建的大運河——被唐朝完全沿用，並延續了一千年。
隋文帝
“Put China back together after two hundred and seventy-three years”
Regent for his infant grandson, he took the Northern Zhou throne in 581 and conquered the Chen in 589, ending the longest division in Chinese history. The institutions he built — the Three Departments and Six Ministries, an examination route into office, the equal-field system, granaries, a rebuilt Grand Canal — were taken over wholesale by the Tang and lasted a thousand years.
He was also frugal to the point of meanness and deeply suspicious, and he chose the wrong son at the end of his life.
Empress Wenxian — Dugu Qieluo — made him swear at fourteen that he would father no child by another woman, and he never did. She sat in on government, and the court called them the Two Sages, a century before the phrase was used of Wu Zetian.
The empress of this reign
Painted on silk in gemstone mineral pigments by Xiang Li.
About this page
Written for this site to place Wen's reign around the paintings. For the full biography, the dynastic histories and the scholarship behind them, start at Wikipedia.