Emperor Kangxi
became emperor when he was 8 years old, soon after his father passed away. He
ruled from 1662 to 1722, the longest time ruled in the history of china up to
then.
He had many things
done in his time of ruling. When he was still a child, Kangxi was very hard
working, and he showed great talent in writing and literature. When his father
fell ill and realized that his son was going to be put into rule as a child, he
chose four ministers to help him to control the country, one of whom, named Ao
Bai, secretly raised his own corps against the young emperor and planned to
bring him down. Luckily, when Kangxi was old enough to rule the nation, he
cleverly smashed Ao Bai's plot. So started a very successful 61 years for
china, and ended to be the most prosperous 100 years in Chinas history. Kangxi
brought about much advancement in the technology of ancient china. Under his
rule, they established a dictionary, and encyclopedias of knowledge as well as
many, many books. He also allowed Western methods of painting to be made, and
greatly increased China’s art industry. Kangxi also hired
many accomplished scholars to help him compile The Ming-shi. The Ming-Shi,
or Ming Shi-lu was the common name for all of the emperors records of their
reign during the Ming Dynasty. Every emperor had his own Shi-lu, which
contained an account of that emperors reign and was written after that
emperor's death. All those pieces together, which combined are to close to
40,000 pages of ungrammatically correct writing, are a treasure trove of events
and memories, unrecorded anywhere else. The scholars stayed
after they finished the compilation of the Ming shi and became the Imperial
study, which produced many famous works of literature and art in the
order of Kangxi. Under Kangxi's reign, the society accumulated huge wealth and
most of the time enjoyed peace and prosperity.
