24 Facts About Shunzhi Emperor

The Shunzhi Emperor, known by his temple name Emperor Shizu of Qing, personal name Fulin, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper.

Shunzhi Emperor tried, with mixed success, to fight corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Manchu nobility.

The Shunzhi Emperor died at the age of 22 of smallpox, a disease endemic in China, but against which the Manchus had no immunity.

Shunzhi Emperor was succeeded by his third son who assumed the throne as the Kangxi Emperor and went on to reign for sixty years.

Shunzhi Emperor had to repeal this command three weeks later after several peasant rebellions erupted around Beijing, threatening Qing control over the capital region.

Shunzhi Emperor was joined by another Muslim named Ding Guodong.

Shunzhi Emperor was even allowed to draft imperial edicts just as Ming Grand Secretaries used to.

Still in 1653, the Shunzhi Emperor decided to recall the disgraced Feng Quan, but instead of balancing the influence of northern and southern Chinese officials at court as the emperor had intended, Feng Quan's return only intensified factional strife.

Shunzhi Emperor discussed history, classics, and politics with grand academicians such as Chen Mingxia and surrounded himself with new men such as Wang Xi, a young northern Chinese who was fluent in Manchu.

In 1659, just as the Shunzhi Emperor was preparing to hold a special examination to celebrate the glories of his reign and the success of the southwestern campaigns, Zheng sailed up the Yangtze River with a well-armed fleet, took several cities from Qing hands, and went so far as to threaten Nanjing.

Shunzhi Emperor's descendants resisted Qing rule until 1683, when the Kangxi Emperor successfully took the island.

The Shunzhi Emperor was an open-minded emperor and relied on the advice of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a Jesuit missionary from Cologne in the Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire, for guidance on matters ranging from astronomy and technology to religion and government.

At the height of his influence in 1656 and 1657, Schall reports that the Shunzhi Emperor often visited his house and talked to him late into the night.

Shunzhi Emperor was excused from prostrating himself in the presence of the emperor, was granted land to build a church in Beijing, and was even given imperial permission to adopt a son, but the Jesuits' hope of converting the Qing sovereign to Christianity was crushed when the Shunzhi Emperor became a devout follower of Chan Buddhism in 1657.

The Shunzhi Emperor was particularly fearful of the disease, because he was young and lived in a large city, near sources of contagion.

Shunzhi Emperor was interred in what later came to be known as the Eastern Qing Tombs, 125 kilometers northeast of Beijing, one of two Qing imperial cemeteries.

Shunzhi Emperor's tomb is part of the Xiao mausoleum complex, which was the first mausoleum to be erected on that site.

The fake will in which the Shunzhi Emperor had supposedly expressed regret for abandoning Manchu traditions gave authority to the nativist policies of the Kangxi Emperor's four regents.

Shunzhi Emperor restored institutions his father had favored, including the Grand Secretariat, through which Chinese officials gained an important voice in government.

Shunzhi Emperor defeated the rebellion of the Three Feudatories, three Chinese military commanders who had played key military roles in the Qing conquest, but had now become entrenched rulers of enormous domains in southern China.

The rebellion was defeated in 1681, the same year the Kangxi Shunzhi Emperor initiated the use of variolation to inoculate children of the imperial family against smallpox.

Shunzhi Emperor had a total of fourteen children, but only four sons and one daughter lived to be old enough to marry.

Unlike later Qing emperors, the names of the Shunzhi Emperor's sons did not include a generational character.

In 1644, the Shunzhi Emperor began to rule over China proper, replacing the Ming dynasty.