Interactions between Official Records and Folk Discourses: A Study around the Mysterious Stories about WU Ze-tian

The stories concerning WU Ze-tian has gone through the change from history to literature. Her image has changed from an ordinary person to a goddess. The attitude toward her has undergone alternation from depreciation to sincere compliment. As for the content, there were only a few words at first, but now the stories about her can be found anywhere. The mysterious stories concerning the empress are mainly from the official records and folk tales. The different standing leads to different inclination of depreciation and compliment. And the official records are largely depreciated, whereas the folk legends are mostly commendatory.