Chinese characters of Empress Wu

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Chinese characters
Chinese family of scripts Written Chinese Kanji Hanja Chữ Hán
Historical forms and styles Neolithic symbols in China Oracle bone Bronze Seal (Bird-worm Large Small) Clerical Cursive Semi-cursive Regular Flat brush Typefaces Fangsong Ming Sans-serif
Properties and classification Components Strokes (order) Radical
Collation and standards Character-form standards Jiu zixing Xin zixing Kangxi Dictionary forms (1716) General Standard Chinese Characters (mainland China, 2013) Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese characters (Hong Kong, 2007) Standard Form of National Characters (Taiwan, 1982) Grapheme-usage standards General Standard Characters (PRC, 2013) Jōyō kanji (Japan, 2010) Other standards Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC, 2002) Nan Min Recommended Characters (Taiwan, 2009) Previous standards Commonly-used Characters (PRC, 1988) Tōyō kanji (Japan, 1946)
Reforms China Clerical reforms Traditional characters Simplified characters (first round second round) Debate Japan Kyūjitai Shinjitai Ryakuji Korea Yakja Singapore Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs and readings Literary and colloquial readings
Variants Graphemic variants Zetian characters
Derived systems Slavonic transcription Nüshu Kana ( Man'yōgana Hiragana Katakana ) Jurchen script Khitan ( Large Small ) Idu script Bopomofo Sawndip Chữ Nôm
Transliteration of Chinese
v t e

The Chinese characters of Empress Wu, or the Zetian characters (Chinese: 則天文字; pinyin: Zétiān wénzì), are Chinese characters introduced by Empress Wu Zetian, the only empress regnant in the history of China, in order to demonstrate her power. The characters were not created by the Empress herself, but were suggested by an official named Zong Qinke, the son of one of her cousins, in December, 689 AD. The number of characters varies between 12, 17, 19, or 30. Her subjects were forced to use them during her reign, but they fell into disuse immediately after her death, so they help to determine dates of printed materials.

A few of the surviving characters are preserved in the written histories of Wu Zetian, and a few have found themselves incorporated into modern-day computer standards, classified as either variant or dialect-specific characters.

The form of the characters varies depending on where they are printed. For instance, Empress Wu's own name 照 zhào was replaced with one of two new characters created through her: 瞾 or 曌;^[1] looking in the Kangxi Dictionary, one finds the description of the former, having two 目 ("eye") characters, being the proper character, rather than 明 míng ("bright").