The split of the Northern Wei

After Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei moved the capital to Luoyang, he mobilized large armies twice to attack Southern Qi. Due to the resistance of the Southern Qi soldiers and people, there was no victory. In 499 A.D., Southern Qi sent troops to attack Northern Wei. Emperor Xiaowen of Wei resisted with sickness and repelled the Qi soldiers. Soon after, Emperor Xiaowen also fell ill and died.

After the death of Emperor Xiaowen, Emperor Xuanwu of Wei succeeded on the throne and Northern Wei started to decline again. When Emperor Xiaoming of Wei came to the throne, because he was too young, his mother, Empress Dowager Hu, was in charge. Empress Dowager Hu was a tyrannical and extravagant person. She believed in Buddhism and thought that it could alleviate her sins. She built a magnificent Yongning Temple next to the imperial palace. The temple was dedicated to Buddha statues made of gold or carved of white jade, the tallest of which was eight feet tall. Next to the temple built a ninety feet high nine-story pagoda. Whenever the night is late, the wind blows the bell on the pagoda, and the sound can be heard from ten miles away. There were 1,000 monks' rooms in the temple, all of which were decorated with pearls and jades and embroidery, dazzling people's eyes. It is said that since Buddhism was introduced to China, there has never been such a magnificent monastery.

The rulers of the Northern Wei Dynasty also used a lot of manpower and resources to excavate caves and build Buddha statues. They spent more than thirty years before the establishment of the capital of Luoyang, leaving Yungang (in present-day Wuzhou Mountain in Datong, Shanxi) to excavate a large number of grottoes with more than 100,000 statues of Buddha, large and small. From Emperor Xuanwu to Empress Hu, they also excavated grottoes and built Buddhist shrines (yin kān) in Longmen Mountain in Iqui, Luoyang. It took twenty-four years and more than 800,000 man-hours to excavate. These grottoes and Buddha statues demonstrated the high level of sculptural art of our ancient people, but they also greatly increased the burden on the working people of the time.together and called them millions, and prepared to march to Luoyang with great power. At this time, there was a tribal chief Er Zhurong in Xiurong (in present-day Shanxi Province) who had 8,000 strong cavalries under his command, and he was specifically fighting against the peasant army. The Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei used the strength of Er Zhurong to deal with Ge Rong.

Ge Rong thought that Er Zhurong had fewer men and horses and was easy to deal with. He spread out his soldiers in a position of dozens of miles and prepared to surround Er Zhurong. He did not expect Erzhurong to ambush his soldiers in the valley and launch an elite assault, scattering Ge Rong's soldiers and then attacking them back and forth. The uprising army was defeated and Ge Rong himself was killed.

After the failure of Ge Rong's uprising, there was great turmoil within Northern Wei. Erzhurong, Empress Dowager Hu, and Emperor Xiaoming killed each other in the civil unrest. Finally, the real power of Northern Wei fell into the hands of two great generals, Gao Huan and Yu Wentai. In 534 A.D., Emperor Xiaowu of Northern Wei fled to Chang'an to join Yu Wentai. The next year, Yu Wen Tai killed Emperor Xiaowu and installed Emperor Wen; Gao Huan installed Emperor Xiaojing and moved the capital to Yecheng. From that time on, Northern Wei split into two dynasties. History calls the one with its capital in Chang'an Western Wei and the one with its capital in Yecheng Eastern Wei.