Kublai Khan wanted to support agriculture and he created an Office for Stimulation of Agriculture. Although Genghis Khan used some Chinese in lower positions in his government, he abolished the civil service exams, kept separate laws for Mongols and for the Chinese, and preferred to employ foreigners rather than Chinese in his bureaucracy as he thought they would be more trustworthy than the Chinese. The Mongols could not have ruled China without the help of some of the Chinese elite and yet they were reluctant to use the Chinese, particular the Southern Song, in their government. Kublai Khan made a census of the population, dividing the people intofour categories: Mongols Miscellaneous aliens (which included West Asian Muslims who performed important services for the Mongols) North Chinese called Han people, those who had been under the Chin state and their descendants, including Chinese, Jurchen, Khitans and Loreans and finally Southern Chinese, subjects of the Southern Sung, whom the Mongols considered the least trustworthy. His capital, present-day Beijing, became a cosmopolitan and wealthy city. On the other hand, although he used some Chinese in low positions in the government, he abolished the civil service exams, preferred to use Chinese in his bureaucracy and established separate rules for the Mongols and for the Chinese. Kublai Khan followed a tentative policy of Sinicization, that is, he adapted to the Chinese way of governing and when you look at his portrait, he looks very much like other Chinese rulers. In 1271 Kublai Khan named his dynasty Yuan which means "origin of the universe." The Yuan dynasty in China lasted from 1279 to 1368. Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, defeated the Chinese Southern Song in 1279, and for the first time all of China was under foreign rule. Hisson Ogodei conquered all of North China by 1234 and ruled it from 1229 to 1241. Butterfly, which was made into a film in 1993.Genghis Khan moved his troops into the quasi-Chinese Chin-ruled north China in 1211, and in 1215 they destroyed the capital city. Shi’s story is forever immortalized in the play M. It is unclear if Shi ever identified as a woman, but he lived most of his life as one, and what an incredible life it was.
During the 2o-year affair, Shi adopted a son, whom he convinced Bouriscot was their biological child. Through Shi, Bouriscot released over 150 classified French documents to the Chinese government, for which both were arrested and charged with espionage in 1983. The two started a love affair, in which Shi was able to maintain his ruse that he was a woman. The two met when Shi was dressed as a man, but Shi successfully convinced Bouriscot that he was actually a woman being forced to dress as a man to satisfy his father’s desire to have a son. Shi was an opera singer in Beijing in the 1950s when he met a Frenchman named Bernard Bouriscot, an employee at the French Embassy in Beijing.
Though not a woman by birth, Shi Peipu deserves a place on this list for his remarkable story, which involves romance, intrigue, and deception. Though a controversial figure, Wu Zetian helped extend China’s boundaries far west into Central Asia and is seen by some as one of the great leaders of ancient China. She gained power without a title and ruled from behind the scenes until Li’s death, after which she declared herself Empress and changed the name of the dynasty to Zhou. Li Zhi had already fallen in love with her, however, and beckoned her back to court, where she rose to Li’s greatest favor, sparking jealousy in his wife and first concubine. Upon Taizong’s death, Wu shaved her head and was sent to live out the rest of her days in a temple, as was customary at the time. Though pledged to the emperor, she quickly started an affair with his son, Li Zhi. Wu’s rise to power began when she was serving as a young concubine of Emperor Taizong. The only woman to ever single-handedly run China, Empress Wu Zetian from the Tang Dynasty steals a lot of the focus when it comes to China’s badass historical women.