subject: Chinese Emperors -- A Long History And Deep Culture [print this page] According to the Chinese culture, the socialism of China has ever experienced several other periods, primitive society, slave society, feudalism society, semi-colony and semi-feudal society.
For the thousands years of China, the system of emperor (HuangDi) which hold the right of legislative, administrative, judicial and all other powers existed for a long time until feudalism society. Actually, before the "emperor (HuangDi)", the supreme ruler of China called "Wang""Huang" or "Di", such as "ZhouWenWang""ZhouWuWang""Three Huang" and "Five Di". The first emperor could date back to the Qin Shihuang who is the first Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. of feudal society. Of cause, he is the first emperor of China.
Why Qing ShiHuang was the first emperor of China?
About 221B.C. the king of Qin, Zheng Zhao, beat other six countries which included Qi, Chu, Yan, Zhao, Wei and Han and unified them to one country that is the basic of China. So Zheng Zhao thought he was so great that the "Three Huang" and "Wu Di" could not compare with him.
And then, he wanted to change his title to show his great quality and be remembered by generations. So the emperor "HuanDi" were created from Qin.
The emperor system lasted for about two thousand years. According to the statistics, since 221 BC, China has a total of 348 orthodox emperors, and if plus those non-orthodox emperors, there are about 494 emperors in history. It still includes some baby emperors. The last emperor is "PuYi" also named "XuanTong" of Qing Dynasty. It declares that the end of Qing Dynasty when he abdicated on Feb, 12, 1912.
Following are the emperor of the top in various categories:
The oldest emperor in history is a non-orthodox emperor ZhaoTuo who was died when he was over 100 years old.
The shortest lived emperor is Shang of East Han Dynasty who was died when 2 years old.
The youngest emperor is also Shang of East Han Dynasty who became emperor when he was 100 days after born.
KangXi of Qing Dynasty governs longest for 61 years among these emperors.
The emperor of JinWu has the most concubines about 10000.
