Among their demands was the death of Lady Yang, she of the ‘mothlike eyebrows’. In the end the emperor gave in and she was strangled in the courtyard of a small Buddhist temple, out in the countryside, at the Mawei postal station on the main road towards the west. The emperor’s heart was broken. Later, in extreme grief, he had her exhumed, but her body had decayed and was kept from him. Instead, a perfumed pomade buried with her was sent back to him.
