He touted this new proposition more or less full-time between the years 732 and 745, as he traveled about North China and got to know the officials of the T'ang regime. His political standing gradually improved and he was eventually invited (in 745, at age seventy-seven) to Loyang to assume leadership of the great Ho-tse temple. Although the particular object of his criticism, Shen-hsiu's disciple P'u-chi, had died in 739, Shen-hui's attacks on the lineage continued undiminished. Politics finally caught up with him, however, when a follower of Shen- hsiu's "Northern" Ch'an named Lu I, who just happened to be chief of imperial censors, accused him of plotting against the government (citing as evidence the large crowds he routinely attracted). Finally, Emperor Hsuan-tsung (grandson of Empress Wu) himself summoned Shen-hui from Loyang to Ch'ang-an, where he questioned the master and finally sent him into exile in the deep south. This was about 753. It was at this point that Chinese political history and Ch'an collide, for the throne was soon to need Shen-hui's help. Emperor Hsuan-tsung (reigned 712-756) has been credited by many with the wreck of the T'ang Dynasty. At the beginning of his reign the capital had been in the east at Loyang (where Empress Wu had moved it. to escape her memories), but the aristocracy in the west successfully pressured him to bring it back to Ch'ang-an. In his declining years Hsuan-tsung became infatuated with the wife of his son, a lady now infamous in Chinese history as Yang Kuei-fei. She subsequently was divorced by her husband and became a member of the emperor's harem in 738, coming to enjoy enormous influence in affairs of state. She had first been brought to the emperor's attention by one of her relatives, and in typical Chinese style she procured government posts for all available members of her family. As the poet Tu Fu (712-770) described her machinations: _So many courtiers now throng around the court That honest men must tremble; And it's said that the gold plate from the treasury Has gone to the kinsmen of Lady Yang.7 _Although none of these blood relatives ever rose to the rich opportunities the situation afforded, another of her favorites compensated abundantly for their political ineptitude. His name was An Lu-shan, a "barbarian" of Turkish extraction, born in 703, who first entered China as a slave to an officer in a northern garrison of the empire. After distinguishing himself as a soldier, he came to the attention of Yang Kuei-fei, who was so charmed by the man that she adopted him as her son. Before long he was a familiar figure at the court, reportedly very fat and possessing a flair for entertaining the bored aristocracy by his flippancy. Eventually he was made governor of a frontier province, where under pretense of a foreign threat he proceeded to recruit an army of alarming proportions and questionable allegiance.