The "Four Great Beauties" of ancient China are legendary figures celebrated not only for their extraordinary physical allure but also for their profound influence on Chinese history and culture. Each woman embodies a unique blend of beauty, tragedy, and symbolism, immortalized in poetry, art, and folklore.
The story of a beauty who causes wild geese to fall:
During the Western Han Dynasty, the empire sent a great beauty, Wang Zhaojun, to marry the Emir of a northern tribe. On their way to the north, some wild geese were flying overhead and saw Zhaojun. They were so startled by her beauty that they forgot to flap their wings. Tragically they all fell out of the sky. After this incident, people came to call Zhaojun "The beauty who caused the wild geese to fall out of the sky".