Sui Dynasty (581-618)

Made a Unified China after 300 Years of Separation, But Sui was Shortly-Lived

58 Emperor Yangdi of Sui Dynasty

A Hideous Tyrant Who Dug the Grand Canal

Emperor Yangdi (589-618) of Sui Dynasty, also named Yang Guang, (surnamed Yang) was an out-and-out notorious tyrant in history. Sui Dynasty shortly lived for only 37 years, and the collapse attributed mainly to his vicious and cruel ruling.

Yang Guang at first had hatched a plot to seize power. Yang Guang’s father, the founder of Sui Empire, had two sons, he chose his elder son to be the crowned prince, but Yang Guang, the younger, pretended himself as a superly noble man. When the father appointed him as the successor, he showed up his true color. One day, he raped his father’s favorite concubine. When the father blamed him, he threw a quit over father’s head and suffocated him to death. He also killed his elder brother at once.

As soon as Yang Guang took the power, he ordered to dig a canal providing him to make a pleasure tour to Yangzhou, a city situated at the north bank of Yangtze. Yangzhou then was a star town of Qiong Flower, as well as a site abounded in beautiful girls. In the past, people made trip mainly by water, but the rivers in China like Yangtze and Yellow River were all west-to-east oriented, so Yangdi wanted to open up a north to south water way. The regime forced hundred thousand farmers to do the unbearable labor in construction sites, with a large amount of them dying of exhausting, starvation and epidemic diseases everyday. It took only 6 years to complete such a tremendous project. The tyrant, regardless of the nation-wide rebellions rising up one after another, was busy to get ready for his journey. When a court official tied to stop him, the tyrant cut off his mouth and beheaded him. In the emperor’s journey, the pavilion-like boats lined up as long as 100 km, and the number of boatmen reached 80,000. The making of sails and raincoats of the boats had consumed out all silk and brocade in the country. At night, Yangdi stayed at the one-night-stay palace decorated as splendid as that in the capital. Yangdi visited Yangzhou City for three times in three years. But at the last time, he was fleeing into the city to take refuge, and was killed by his chief military commander.

But the Grand Canal since then became a north-to-south traffic thorough fare, and alongside the water there sprang up many important cities. In following Tang Dynasty Yangzhou had become an outstanding and prosperous commercial and cultural center in south China.