Zhenzong

(968 - 1022)

Following a string of humiliating military losses to the Khitan of Inner Mongolia early in his reign, the Song dynasty emperor Zhenzong dedicated himself to his subjects’ religious and cultural development. Seven centuries later the Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling wrote a short story about a young man who, taking literally the promises in Zhenzong’s exhortation to study, falls in love with an illustration of a woman in a book. Coming to life, the woman introduces herself as Miss Jadesmooth Cheek.