Royals › Monarch / Emperor
Guo Wei
Founder of the Later Zhou, a soldier from Yaoshan who rose to head the Later Han military bureau, took the throne in 951 and abolished harsh levies before leaving it to his adopted son Chai Rong
In a side chamber of a palace, a yellow ceremonial robe embroidered with a dragon hangs on a wooden stand, its hem worked with waves and rocks, before a carved folding screen, while a black lacquer chest sits on a low table by a lattice window and no person is in view.
Also known as Guo Queer · Houzhou Taizu · Sheng Shen Gong Su Wen Wu Xiao Huang Di
Guo Wei, courtesy name Wenzhong, was born in 904 at Yaoshan in Xingzhou. Orphaned young, he enlisted at Luzhou as a youth, and a sparrow tattooed on his neck earned him the nickname Sparrow Guo. He served Liu Zhiyuan, and after the Later Han was founded he became deputy and then head of the Bureau of Military Affairs, crushing a rising by Li Shouzhen at Hezhong and two other provinces. In 950 the young Han emperor executed the senior ministers Yang Bin and Shi Hongzhao and slaughtered Guo's family in the capital; Guo marched on Kaifeng, and the emperor was killed in the fighting. In the first month of 951 he took the throne himself as ruler of Zhou, abolishing the tax on oxhide and other harsh levies and handing state farmland to its tenants as permanent holdings. He died in early 954 after ordering a burial in paper clothes and a pottery coffin, and was succeeded by his adopted son Chai Rong, Emperor Shizong.
Life and times
Dates 904 CE–954 CE