Song Huizong ascends in earnest

1101

The young Chinese emperor, a painter of birds and a calligrapher of genius, settled into a reign that would produce porcelain of unmatched delicacy and a court bankrupted by its own exquisite taste. Across the northern frontier, the Jurchen were already watching. Huizong's Slender Gold calligraphic style survives as one of the most distinctive scripts in the Chinese tradition, a monument to an emperor who excelled at everything except governing.