Talk:Wanli Emperor

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[edit] Disputed neutrality

The current article presents a stereotyped and one-sided view of the Wanli Emperor as "unmotivated and avaricious" without considering the greater picture, in particular, the inherent problems of the Ming governing system and the difficulties faced by an Emperor confined to the Forbidden City, educated, cloistered and frustrated by a fractious and moralistic bureaucracy. The view presented in this article is heavily slanted towards the Fairbanks article cited. For a different view, I suggest the book "1587: A Year of No Significance" [1] by Ray Huang. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bathrobe (talk • contribs)

A note on the Chinese historiographical pattern of praising founding emperors at the expense of their predecessors (who were often characterized in stock terms like "unmotivated and avaricious") might at least alert readers to the origins of this story, which bears a questionable relation to the historical Wanli emperor and emerges from a different set of rules than encyclopedia history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.249.103.94 (talk)

The article presents a fairly standard narrative of the Wanli Emperor. Actually Fairbank's narratve is based on Ray Huang, who is very negative in his appraisal of the Wanli Emperor. I have consequently removed the POV tag.--Niohe 05:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Belated response: I've read 1587, and it does not adopt the 'very negative' appraisal of the Wanli Emperor that Niohe claims it does. Unless there is other material by Ray Huang that does. 1587 is essentially a condemnation of Chinese traditional governance based on Confucianism and tries to excuse a lot of what Wanli did.

Bathrobe 08:32, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The interwiki links to his two consorts leads to two later years Qing empresses, which obviously could not have been his consorts. BTW I agree that this article is far from neutral. Example, this sentence "this personal rebellion against the bureaucracy was not only bankruptcy but treason." Also this article is suffering from unnecessary repetitions, missing links (the “Middle Reign“ section and “Late Reign” have none) and missing information (like stating that “The Yang Yin Long rebelled” without explaining what is The Yang Yin Long). Avihu 17:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

By the way, who the heck is Tony Wanli? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.29.0.150 (talk) 18:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of posthumous name

What on earth is the deal with translating "Emperor" in the posthumous name and nothing else? We should give the full Chinese posthumous name, and then give the English translation. john k (talk) 22:26, 28 November 2007 (UTC)