Week Five

 

Class 9:  Zhang Er and Chen Yu seemed so close that when they gave advice, Sima attributed the advice not to either but to both (132b). They made a pact to “be true to each other” (139t) and “die for each other” (131mb): but do they know what the other one means? When a captured Zhang (138b) calls on Chen for rescue (139t), Chen refuses and Zhang’s messenger retorts, “is this the way you die for your friend…for honor…” (139mt). When Zhang thinks of a friend dying for him, he wants “honor”, even if his friend is only to “die with us” (139mt) in a suicide pact, a death for death’s sake deal in which two friends die for each other without any sort of gain—except honor.

The messenger reports a glimmer of hope, a “one chance in ten”, (139mt) but Chen thinks the chances are zero—and he wants to know how this attack would “profit anyone?” (139m) It might “profit” Zhang his honor, but fundamentally, Chen does not see honor as a profit—better to avenge (139mt). Zhang presses harder, ordering: “It is imperative that you die…for the sake of honor.” (139m). Here, the same message: honor is more important than life—it’s an order he die for honor: But Chen, again, “see[s] no profit in [his] death,” (139mb). Though Chen sees Zhang as a father (131mb), Zhang’s actual son arrives with an army (139mb), and he too won’t attack. Sima relates no angst from the father to his actual son: To Zhang, the promise of dying for a friend is stronger than an actual son’s filial responsibility.

What breaks the friendship, however, is Zhang doesn’t trust Chen sent troops and accuses him of hatred (140t). Under duress, the friends’ differing values were exposed: honor versus profit, a mere misunderstanding, but here, Zhang is a bad friend in his mistrust. Chen then has “deep resentment that Zhang” (140m) accepted his insincere offer (140m). Zhang could have known better. The friends may have loved each other when the going was easy, but when the going got tough, it became clear how little they actually knew each other and their values.

Class 10: Sima shows us that the “means employed to seize an empire differ from those needed to guard it” (Q81mb). While Empress Lü had “aided Gaozu in the conquest of his empire” (267b), she then figured out a way to keep the empire afterwards.

The most brutal ruler event we’ve read in the Shi ji was the “human pig” on 269mt. This is the first chapter we have read centered on a woman and throughout it is highlighted by violent acts: starving a king to death (274mb), poisoning a beloved concubine (275b), and child murder (276mt). Though Sima paints a grim portrait of her rule, he concludes that the “people applied themselves to the tasks of farming, and food and clothing became abundant”. (284mt) He has written of two worlds: a powerful class, beaten ruthlessly into a submission where “the Lüs order all affairs” (274mb) and a common class who have stability for the first time since “the age of the Warring States” (284 mt). While Sima shows us the horrid things she does, he himself closes the chapter telling us how great her behavior was for the commoners. Not everyone loses.

Despite this success, the way in which she did it weighed on her. She “loathes” herself for the wicked deeds she has done and she is “uneasy” (275mt) for Heaven, by the eclipse, shows its disapproval of her methods. She knew her emperor son, “compassionate by nature” (268mb) would not be able to do the dastardly deeds needed to guard the empire. He might try to protect those who would do the empire harm, as he does Lady Qi’s son (268b)—an action, were the boy to grow, which could lead to civil war and more strife for the empire. She saw an empire made by people dying. To keep an empire, she extrapolates, people must die. But, fortunately for the commoners, those who would have filled the rank and file of armies, Empress Lü sees there is another way to kill: poison, torture, and murder. Though she suffers emotionally and is warned by an ecliptic warning (275mt), she murders again (276mt), and becomes herself, victim to a slow death by an “evil spirit.” (276mb). This is not the Way of Heaven.