Four Beauties
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Xi Shi - Wang Zhaojun - Diaochan - Yang Guifei
The Four Beauties or Four Great Beauties (Chinese: 四大美女; pinyin: sì dà měi nǚ) are four ancient Chinese women, renowned for their beauty. Three of these women were genuine historical figures, but the scarcity of historical records concerning them meant that much of what is known of them today has been greatly embellished by legend.
According to legend, the Four Great Beauties are the most beautiful women of ancient China. They gained their reputation from the influence they exercised over kings and emperors and consequently, the way their actions impacted Chinese history. Three of the Four Great Beauties brought kingdoms to their knees, and the lives of all four ended in tragic or under mysterious circumstances.
The Four Great Beauties lived in four different dynasties, each hundreds of years apart. In chronological order, they are:
- Xi Shi (c. seventh to sixth century BC, Spring and Autumn Period), said to be so entrancingly beautiful that fish would forget to swim and sink away from the surface when she walks by.
- Wang Zhaojun (c. first century BC, Western Han Dynasty), said to be so beautiful that her appearance would entice birds in flight to fall from the sky.
- Diaochan (c. third century, Three Kingdoms period), said to be so luminously lovely that the moon itself would shy away in embarrassment when compared to her face.
- Yang Guifei (719–56, Tang Dynasty), said to have a face that puts all flowers to shame.
According to some Chinese literature, the Four Great Beauties each had their own uniquely human qualities. For instance, Xi Shi reputedly suffered from constant chest pains, although the face she made when she winced in pain made her more distinctively lovely than ever. She was also said to have foot size that is larger than any Chinese women at that time. Yang Guifei supposedly suffered from overpowering axillary malodor, which she attempted to wash away with lavish baths and cover up with scented powder, in addition to being rather plump by today's standards. Wang Zhaojun had a very proud and inflexible temperament, which caused her to anger palace officials of the Chinese court and resulted in her designation as a political bride/peace offering to what was viewed at the time as a barbarian tribe.
It should be noted that no historical accounts mention a person named Diaochan, unlike the other three of the Four Great Beauties. Her claim to the pantheon of feminine pulchritude was that her affair with the famous warrior Lü Bu brought about a rift between him and his godfather, Dong Zhuo, stopping the latter's unpopular attempts to overthrow the Han Emperor. These deeds were recorded, however, more than a thousand years after her death, in the Ming Dynasty novel "Three Kingdoms", itself one of the Four Great Classical Novels of China. No contemporary records mention Diaochan. While the official history of the Han dynasty, Hou Han Shu, discusses a servant girl of Dong Zhuo's with whom Lü Bu had an affair, she was not named. Diaochan may have been that girl, but there is no historical evidence linking the two. Moreover, "Diao" is not a common Chinese last name. (Diaochan was a term commonly used to describe top officials' hat decorations during the subsequent Jin Dynasty). She is the only one of the Four Great Beauties who possibly never actually existed.
