Conclusion

Nienhauser: Why can’t King Wu sleep? King Wu can’t sleep (63m) because he hasn’t “secured Heaven’s protection.” (63mb) At least according to Sima, it seems that he has done nothing but good works to the benefit of many. There is a hint on 62m that the area had been “pacified and the situation was not yet settled,” and so he sets to settling. He “cleared the roads and repaired…altars”, (62t) had his RectifierScribe read Chow’s crimes to Heaven (62mt), and claims he has been charged to, among other things, “receive the great mandate of heaven”. (62m) There are many more things he does on 62b-63t: He feeds the poor, honors the dead, makes records on behalf of the government, and rewarded the meritorious. These deeds are not enough, as nearing his own death, Sima relates that “the world was not yet settled.” (64m)

Yin had failed as “heaven didn’t enjoy the Yin offerings” (63m): this left them vulnerable and led to King Wu’s “success.” (ibid.) Is Heaven hard to please, or is Wu missing something? The Yin are destroyed while the new ruler can’t sleep as he tries to secure “Heaven’s protection” hoping that by building a “Heavenly residence” (ibid.) he might be at peace. But how does he know that this will appease Heaven? Heaven seems to him to be a demanding yet vague boss. It’s no wonder he can’t sleep. He adds to his to do list that he must go on “singl[ing] out the evil people” to “reward and comfort the people” (63mb). To what extents must he go to do so? Where is he getting his information from—how does he know what Heaven wants of him—other than that he knows what Yin did was wrong and so he tries to reverse their works. Or does he know this: It takes him two years to ask why Yin had been destroyed and how to preserve a state (64m). He himself is to blame. He was “embarrassed” (64mt) by his own question, realizing his folly that if only he had sought these answers before doing these deeds, if only he had relied on his advisors to help guide him, he may have rested easier, sooner. Instead, he dies (64m) with the job undone.

 

END: What I didn’t love and what I did love about Sima’s Shi ji, are the different sides of the same movement of his writing. The former are the dry parts of paragraphs of rulers siring sons then dying (Q4mt-m): “Qin Hou…died after ten years of rule…sired Gongbo.” (Q4mt). What did Qin Hou spend his days doing? Did he have no noteworthy conversations, no uprisings nor changes? Sima’s records feel like just that: records. A bunch of these paragraphs in a row makes for dry reading. But then…

 Sima fluidly moves to the juicy. “Duke Xiang succeeded him as ruler”; (Q4b) but then Sima’s lens focuses us in on “in the first year of his rule” (Q4b). And we know, this guy is going to be important. I am intrigued. Xiang ruled and “the Rong besieged”, (Q5t) and I don’t even notice the smooth shift inward. Sima continues to flesh out the history: Xiang changes from name to a human when he speaks, “the Rong have behaved in an unprincipled manner” (Q5m). We as the reader, within one page, dive in from skimming the surface of history, covering generations in a paragraph to hanging on the words of long dead ruler. I am at the edge of my seat—what will Xiang do? Will I side with him? Will Sima? The element of dialogue draws me fully in, and I become invested in the long past happenings and the details that sell me further. Although in this overview of the Qin, Xiang has less than a page, we zoom in so closely as to see that he sacrificed “a red colt with a black mane.” (Q5mb) This is the last detail before he goes on his final campaign, the one on which he dies. (Q5m) Why this detail, Sima?

It’s not until page 85mt that we get an answer: “here one can see the beginnings of usurpation.” The records are meant to be read holistically—the individual’s story isn’t completed on its own—we need to and get to see how it ties in with the rest. Xiang’s story, we find when we zoom back out to read of the rise of the Qin. We see that Sima’s histories aren’t histories plural, but a single, huge history in which one man’s juicy story turns into the dry details of another’s.