Day 3 Zhongfu Lu Buwei and an Emperor’s Character

Although the Qin Dynasty was undeniably supremely successful at unification, standardization, and ending violence, Sima Qian seems to seek to discredit Emperor Zheng by throwing dirt on his parentage through the story of the rise and fall of Lu Buwei (Q Shi Ji 85). Recall Sima Qian’s calumnious claims:

Lu Buwei is a great merchant (159t) which makes him rich, powerful, and ambitious but of low rank. Lu Buwei impregnates a very beautiful dancing girl (161b), the daughter of a wealthy family in Zhao (162m), and gives his pregnant girlfriend to Zichu in a drinking bout (161b-162t). She becomes Zichu’s consort and in time bears Lu Buwei’s son to Zichu, concealing the fact of her pregnancy from Zichu (162t).

The lowborn merchant cuckoo has laid its egg in the nest of a future crown prince.

Lu Buwei schemes successfully with Zichu, an imperial grandson “about halfway down the line” of age (Q160m) to get him adopted by the Crown Prince as his heir (Q160-161). In gratitude, Zichu names Lu Buwei chancellor and enfeoffs him when he ascends as King Zhuangxiang (Q162m). In short order, Zichu/King Zhuangxiang dies, and Zichu’s son Zheng from Lu Buwei ascends to the throne, bestowing on his true (per Sima Qian) father Lu Buwei the titles of Prime Minister and Zhongfu (“Uncle”) (Q162b).

How does Sima Qian know this outlandish tale of stolen birthright? Does he tell it to slander, or invent it to explain a vicious character? Does Zheng know, or care? Is this why Zheng disrespects the past, scorns scholar-sages, and overthrows ancient lineages, because he knows he is the son of an upstart merchant and a dancing girl of wanton behavior (Lao Ai adventures, Q163m – 164m) but likes being emperor? Is the tale true, or Han slander? Is Zheng’s self-aggrandizement (names Q43m, Epang palace project Q57t), taste for vengeance (killed enemies of his mother’s family), and inability to tolerate dissent (book burnings Q55m, scholarly dissent Q54b) due to insecurity about his own lineage? How does Zheng feel when he is forced to execute his half-brothers (Q164m) and drive his true father Lu Wubei to suicide (Q164b – Q)165m? Does he fear overthrow as an illegitimate ruler if the truth is discovered (Q58m)?

Day 4   A Curious Encounter with the Mistress of the Xiang (49b-50t).

Who, in a society with such reverence for ancestors and the distant past, would spend the labor of 3,000 workers to destroy a forest built around the purported burial site of such an important figure, daughter of one and wife to another of the Five Emperors? Emperor Zheng, of course, but why? He brooks no opposition from anyone, as we see in his rant about each of the kings he was forced to punish for their defiance (Q42) as he unified the state. So perhaps he was just angry at the winds and executed punishment upon the Mistress of Xiang as he would on anyone else who opposed him.

However, his response seems so extreme. Forests were fruitful, productive, beautiful places that fed the people and provided wood for ships, palaces, and cottages. In any age or culture, to convert a lovely mountain forest into a sea of stumps would be viewed with horror, by accountants and poets alike. The commoner laborers would surely have known that erosion and mudslides would follow when the rains came, sending the Emperor’s sign of water (Q43b) cascading down the mountain of stumps, carrying all before it. Accepting for the moment at face value his belief that the ghost of an Empress past was afflicting him, was his response misogynist, as in “how dare a woman defy ME?”

Maybe, but the Mistress of the Xiang was a very particular woman, of the highest rank and impeccable character, from a mythological time. She obeyed her father Emperor Yao when he commanded her to marry the talented commoner Shun as his agent for a sort of job interview for Emperor and served as an exemplary wife to Emperor Shun (N8b). Zheng’s act was not merely punishment or misogyny, but deliberate desecration of a sacred place, revered by scholars, the people, and all who anchored their family lineages in the distant mythical past. This was a political act, casting down the hero sage-kings of the past, overthrowing them in favor of his new regime and dynasty, and washing away all traces of their existence with his water. Not even the ancient emperors outranked him or matched his power, and Qin Shi Huangdi wanted all to know it. He did, however, return home by a different route (Q50t)…

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