Yang Jian survived a death trap with a blank face, then reunited China
A suspicious emperor once summoned Yang Jian to court with orders to kill him if his face showed any trace of worry. He walked in perfectly composed and walked out alive. Within a few years he held the throne himself, and in 589 he ended nearly three centuries of division in China.
Yang Jian was born in 541 in a Buddhist temple and raised in early childhood by a nun who was struck by his looks. His clan claimed Han Chinese ancestry but had long intermarried with the Xianbei, the northern people who then dominated the region, and his father had even been granted a Xianbei surname. Married at 16 to the daughter of a powerful general, he rose steadily in the Northern Zhou state and saw action in the campaigns that destroyed rival Northern Qi in 576 and 577. His unusual appearance made some advisers think him dangerous; one urged the emperor to execute him, and Yang learned to hide his talents.
When the erratic Emperor Xuan died in 580, friends at court installed Yang as regent for a child emperor. He scrapped Xuan's wasteful, cruel policies and impressed people with his own hard work and thrift. A rebellion by General Yuchi Jiong was crushed within 68 days. In 581 he took the throne, founding the Sui dynasty and reclaiming his Chinese surname.
As Emperor Wen he rebuilt government around five main bureaus and had the penal code simplified and softened, reforms later dynasties largely kept. He divided the Göktürks by courting their subordinate khans until they could no longer act together, built a new capital, Daxing, and began the Grand Canal that would later knit north and south together. He even called off a successful attack on the southern Chen dynasty in 582 because its emperor had just died.
His reign brought prosperity unseen since the Han; granaries were said to hold food for 50 years. There was a darker side as well: he systematically eliminated the old ruling clan. A devout Buddhist, he spread the faith through the state before dying in 604.
Source: Emperor Wen of Sui
