Clio Walker · A source-checked, AI-assisted contemporary historical narrative, not a Zhao woman’s memoir or the original ancient texts. “Hede” is the name that the later Separate Biography of Zhao Feiyan gives the younger sister. In the relevant Book of Han passages, she is Consort Zhao, with the title zhaoyi. That identity is used below for her court life.

A eunuch came to the prison of the women's quarters with an imperial note and handed the prison officer, Ji Wu, a single line: Is the child dead yet? Answer in your own hand on the back of the tablet.

Ji Wu took up his brush and wrote: The child is here. Not dead.

This tablet comes to us retold in a memorial. The memorial set out to trace the children who vanished from Emperor Cheng's inner palace; the person it pointed to was Zhao Feiyan's younger sister, the zhaoyi Lady Zhao.

1. The Zhaoyang Lodge

After Zhao Feiyan became empress, the emperor's favor shifted to her younger sister.

The sister was made zhaoyi, a rank created under Emperor Yuan and placed above jieyu. She moved into the Zhaoyang Lodge: a vermilion courtyard, gilded thresholds, white jade steps, walls set with gold rings, jade discs from Lantian, bright pearls, and kingfisher feathers. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the inner palace.

The later Unofficial Biography of Zhao Feiyan named her Hede, and later readers have called her that ever since. In the Book of Han she has no name, only a rank.

The two sisters monopolized the emperor's favor for more than ten years, and neither bore a child.

The Zhaoyang Lodge could be decorated as no palace had been before. But there was no room in it for a baby who was not a Zhao.

2. Cao Gong

In 7 BCE Emperor Cheng died suddenly, and the zhaoyi killed herself. A few months into Emperor Ai's reign, the Colonel of the Capital, Xie Guang, submitted a memorial. He had heard, he wrote, that Beauty Xu and Cao Gong, a former official of the empress's quarters, had both been favored by Emperor Cheng and borne him children, and the children had vanished.

First, Cao Gong.

Her mother, Cao Xiao, was a government slave in the palace. Cao Gong herself served in the empress's quarters as an instructress. She knew the Book of Songs and taught the empress to read.

In the first year of Yuanyan, she told Daofang, a palace maid who shared her room, that the emperor had favored her. A few months later her mother came into the hall, saw that her daughter's belly had grown, and asked. Cao Gong said she was carrying the emperor's child.

In the tenth month of that year, Cao Gong gave birth in the quarters of the Director of Cattle in the women's quarters, with six maids around her.

The palace eunuch Tian Ke brought Ji Wu an imperial note in a green silk bag sealed with the seal of the Palace Assistant Censor. It ordered him to take the woman who had just given birth in the Cattle Director's quarters, the newborn, and the six maids, and put them all in the palace prison. Do not ask whether the child is a boy or a girl, or whose it is!

Ji Wu took them into the prison.

Cao Gong said to him: Keep my child's afterbirth safe. You know what kind of child this is!

3. The Tablet

Three days later Tian Ke came back with that line: is the child dead yet? Answer in your own hand on the back of the tablet.

Ji Wu wrote: The child is here. Not dead.

After a while Tian Ke came out and said: The emperor and the zhaoyi are furious. Why haven't you killed it?

Ji Wu knocked his head on the ground and wept. If I don't kill the child, he said, I know I must die. If I kill it, I die as well.

He asked Tian Ke to pass on a sealed memorial: Your Majesty has no heir yet. Whatever the child's rank, please consider it!

The memorial went in.

The next imperial note changed direction. At the fifth mark of the night's water clock, hand the child over to Wang Shun at the Dongjiao side gate. Wang Shun carried the child into the palace and chose a government slave, Zhang Qi, as wet nurse.

The child lived. For the moment.

4. The Green Box

Another imperial note reached Ji Wu. Sealed inside it was a small green box, and he was ordered to give its contents to the woman in the prison and watch her drink them himself.

In the box were two packets of medicine and a letter written on thin silk: To Weineng. Make yourself drink this medicine. You may not come back in. You know why!

Weineng was Cao Gong.

When she had read the letter, Cao Gong said: So it's true. The sisters want the whole realm to themselves! My child is a boy, with thick hair on his forehead, like Emperor Yuan. Where is my child now? They must have killed him! How can I let the Empress Dowager in the Changxin Palace know?

Cao Gong drank the medicine and died.

The six maids were summoned inside. When they came out, they told Ji Wu what the zhaoyi had said: You have done nothing wrong. Will you kill yourselves, or die outside? They said they would kill themselves.

The six hanged themselves.

Ji Wu wrote up everything that had happened and reported it.

Zhang Qi nursed the child for eleven days. Then Li Nan, a palace overseer, came with an edict and took the child away. Where it was taken, no one knew.

5. The Reed Box

Now, Beauty Xu.

She lived in the Zhuomu Lodge in the Shanglin Park and was called into the palace two or three times a year, each time staying several months or even half a year. In the second year of Yuanyan she became pregnant, and in the eleventh month she gave birth. Emperor Cheng sent the palace eunuch Jin Yan to bring her a midwife-physician and three pills.

Three of the zhaoyi's attendants, Yu Kezi, Wang Pian, and Zang Jian, later testified that they heard the zhaoyi say to the emperor: You always fool me, saying you've come from the palace, from the empress's quarters. If you were with the empress, how did Beauty Xu come to have a child? Is the Xu family going to be put back on the empress's throne?

She beat herself with her fists, struck her head against the walls and pillars, threw herself from the bed to the floor, and wept and refused to eat. What will you do with me now? she said. I want to go home!

The emperor said: I told you on purpose, and you get angry instead. I simply can't understand you.

The emperor stopped eating too.

The zhaoyi said: Your Majesty knows you're in the right, so why aren't you eating? You always said you had promised never to let me down. Now the Beauty has a child. You've broken your promise after all. What do you say to that?

The emperor said: The promise was made to the Zhaos, which is why I won't make a Xu empress. I'll see to it that no one in the realm is placed above the Zhaos. Don't worry!

His answer did not mention the child.

Then the emperor sent Jin Yan to Beauty Xu with a letter in a green pouch: the Beauty will give you something. Bring it back and put it south of the curtain in the dressing room.

Beauty Xu placed her child in a woven reed box, sealed it, and gave it to Jin Yan with her reply.

The emperor and the zhaoyi sat together and had Yu Kezi undo the seal on the box. Before he had finished, the emperor ordered all three attendants out, shut the door himself, and was left alone in the room with the zhaoyi.

After a while the door opened. They called the attendants back in, had the box sealed again, and pushed it to the east side of the screen.

Next, Ji Wu received an order sealed with the Palace Assistant Censor's seal: To Wu. There is a dead child in the box. Bury it somewhere hidden. Let no one know.

Ji Wu dug a pit beneath the wall of the prison tower and buried it.

What happened while the door was shut, the memorial has no eyewitness to tell. We cannot add a scene behind that door just to make the story more thrilling.

6. Wuqiu Zun

The memorial also records words that never got out.

In the fifth month of the second year of Yuanyan, Wuqiu Zun, a former Director of the women's quarters, came to Ji Wu. Every official from the deputy director down, he said, is in league with the zhaoyi. There is no one to talk to; I want to talk only to you. I have no sons, but you have a son. Perhaps your family wouldn't dare?

He said: In the women's quarters, every woman the emperor favors who bears a child, the child always dies. And those who have been forced to drink drugs to end a pregnancy are beyond counting. I want to go with you and tell the high ministers. But the General of Agile Cavalry is greedy for money and can't be trusted with anything important. How can we let the Changxin Palace know?

Later, when Wuqiu Zun was gravely ill, he said to Ji Wu: I am dying now. What we discussed, you can't do alone. Be careful what you say!

Only after Emperor Cheng's death did Ji Wu repeat this to the men Xie Guang sent.

7. Emperor Cheng

In the memorial, the orders went out one after another, sealed with the Palace Assistant Censor's seal, from the emperor and the zhaoyi.

Later tellings of this affair often lay all the blame on "Hede," as though a seductive favorite had killed the emperor's heirs on her own. But in Xie Guang's memorial, the one who gave the orders, who shut the door, who said "don't worry," was the emperor himself.

The court counselor Geng Yu later wrote a memorial defending Emperor Cheng instead, arguing that the late emperor had made these extraordinary arrangements for fear that a child would take the throne and a woman would hold power. The same horrors were, for one man, a favorite's crime, and for another, an emperor's far-sighted plan.

Emperor Ai stripped two Zhao men of their marquisates and moved the family to Liaoxi. But as heir apparent he had been helped by Empress Dowager Zhao, so he did not pursue the matter to the end. The inquiry stopped there.

8. Epilogue

On the morning Emperor Cheng died, the capital was in an uproar and people laid the blame on the zhaoyi. She killed herself. She did not live to see Xie Guang's memorial, and she left not a word in her own defense.

The Unofficial Biography later gave her a name, Hede, along with a beauty that could topple cities and a lurid ending.

But in the Book of Han, the faces that come through most clearly are not hers.

They belong to an instructress who knew the Book of Songs and, about to die, described the hair on her child's forehead; to a prison officer who wrote "The child is here. Not dead" on the back of a tablet, and knocked his head on the ground saying that if he killed the child he would die as well; to an old director of the women's quarters, dying of illness, who left behind the words "Be careful what you say."

None of them is the protagonist of this story. But it is they who told it.

Sources and narrative boundaries

1. Main material: [Book of Han, chapter 97B, Biographies of Imperial Affines](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/漢書/卷097下). The Zhao, Ban Jieyu, and Fu sections were read, especially the origin of the zhaoyi rank, Zhaoyang, the complete case sequences in Xie Guang’s memorial, Wuqiu Zun’s conversations, Geng Yu’s memorial, and the incomplete investigation. This is a public-domain classical text in electronic transcription. No original Han order, seal, complete witness deposition, or medical dossier was examined. Lady Xu’s case, Cao Gong’s case, and Wuqiu’s conversation and final warning retain their distinct positions within the memorial’s reported testimony. No scene behind the closed door or final destination for Cao Gong’s son is supplied. The memorial’s judgments about the consort’s awareness and fears are not expanded into an interior monologue. 2. Chronology: [chapter 10, Annals of Emperor Cheng](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/漢書/卷010). Yongshi 1 is 16 BCE; Yuanyan 1 and 2 are 12 and 11 BCE; Suihe 1 and 2 are 8 and 7 BCE. The ancient tenth, eleventh, and fifth months are not converted into modern Gregorian months. No exact dates are imposed for the consort’s promotion, Zhaoyang’s construction, palace entry, birth, or suicide. The annals and biography belong to one history, rather than two independent eyewitness sources. Xie’s memorial was presented in 7 BCE; that is not the date of the earlier cases. Relative days concerning Cao Gong’s infant are retained without manufacturing absolute dates. 3. Later reconstruction: [Separate Biography of Zhao Feiyan and its appended Four Treasuries catalogue notice](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/趙飛燕外傳). The names, alternative genealogy, sister’s summons token, makeup, “water extinguishing fire,” and bibliographical critiques of attribution, prefaces, possible knowledge, and the Mirror’s borrowing were read. The fiction consulted names Ling Xuan; the appended catalogue transcription has the variant Ling Yuan. These versions are not silently homogenised. The fiction does not authenticate bodily characteristics, medicines, cause of death, or Han dialogue. Its actual author and composition date are not settled here. 4. Reception: [Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, chapter 31, Hongjia 3](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/資治通鑑/卷031). The actual incorporation of Nao Fangcheng’s words into the Zhao palace-entry narrative was read as evidence of Northern Song historical writing. A borrowed story does not gain independence, and its adoption does not make it contemporary testimony. 5. Geography: [Xi’an Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau, Han Chang’an heritage description](https://wwj.xa.gov.cn/xwzx/gzdt/62d51305f8fd1c4c210a03bb.html), and [National Institute of Informatics, Digital Silk Road gazetteer, Han Chang’an](https://dsr.nii.ac.jp/digital-maps/dsr/place-names/0133.html.ja). The capital corresponds to the Han city-site area northwest of modern Xi’an. The point 34.3036N, 108.8589E is an area reference. Only Cheng’s death at Weiyang in 7 BCE is linked to it; no bed, site of the consort’s death, or interrogation room is located. Exact positions of Zhaoyang, the Eastern Jiaoye Gate, Baoshi prison, Zhuomu lodge, and Changxin remain unresolved. Shanglin was a park area, not a single modern point. Liaoxi concerns the relatives’ exile, not the consort’s travels. Fictional residences, tokens, and makeup are not indexed as Han events. 6. Copyright and adaptation: the ancient Book of Han, Song Mirror, old fiction, and Qing catalogue are public-domain texts. Brief quotations and paraphrases retain attribution. The narrative, title, and complete English version are original contemporary work by Clio Walker. Modern institutional webpages are used for factual location and briefly paraphrased; no images, protected research, or modern translations are reproduced. Unknowns, accusations, defences, and later inventions are kept distinct, rather than replaced by a label attached to a person.