China. John Keay
Ever by her side, Lao Ai was showered with gifts, acquired an entourage of several thousand and became a power in the land. When the Queen Dowager found herself pregnant again, the couple discreetly retired to the country. Their chances of living happily ever after received a setback, however, when in 238 BC their sons (there were two) were identified as a threat to the succession. The just-enthroned King Zheng ordered an investigation and ‘all the facts were brought to light, including those that implicated the [now] prime minister Lu Buwei’.9
Lu Buwei found others to plead his cause. But the unfortunate Lao Ai raised the standard of revolt. His forces were easily defeated, his family annihilated, ‘several hundred heads were cut off in Xianyang’, and the rest of his supporters – some 4,000 families – were transported to Sichuan. Lao Ai himself was torn apart by carriages, their wheels no doubt of paulownia wood. The Queen Dowager and Lu Buwei were merely banished from court. But in 235 BC a pardon saw Her Majesty’s return to Xianyang, while Lu Buwei was consigned to exile, also in Sichuan. Fearing this was the prelude to a death sentence, the merchant prince ‘drank poison and died’.
The Shiji spares no detail in the telling of the affair. There is, though, some doubt about the extent to which Sima Qian, the Shiji’s main author, was responsible. Throughout his text, the ‘Grand Historian’ paints a somewhat ambiguous picture of the First Emperor. Writing under the Han dynasty just over a century later, he had every reason to denigrate Qin; the Han founder had overthrown the house of Qin, whose one credible emperor must therefore be shown as lacking in the legitimacy and virtue on which Heaven’s Mandate depended. Sima Qian accordingly quoted with approval a long diatribe against the First Emperor. He was ‘greedy and short-sighted’, dismissive of advice and precedent, ignorant of the masses, and ‘led the whole world in violence and cruelty’; his laws were harsh and his conduct deceitful – all of which, though excusable in the context of Qin’s seizure of power, was not conducive to the establishment of a just and permanent empire. The First Emperor’s main fault, therefore, was that of ‘not changing with the times’.10
On the other hand, as will be seen, Sima Qian had excellent reasons of a delicate nature for not gratifying his Han patron. He may therefore have been reluctant to demonise the preceding dynasty. In fact he gives it as his own opinion that, though ‘Qin’s seizure of power was accompanied by much violence, yet [the Qin dynasty] did manage to change with the times and its accomplishments were great’.11 Taken in conjunction with certain linguistic incongruities in the relevant section of his text, this has led scholars to suppose that the story of Lu Buwei being the father of Zheng was added later by others keen to ingratiate themselves with the Han. Yet the account of the rise and fall of the wretched Lao Ai appears genuine enough. Like later emperors, the first emperor found that he could best demonstrate his legitimacy by disposing of all who might question it.
Another telling preliminary to the First Emperor’s personal reign was his announcement, immediately after assuming the imperial title, that Qin ‘ruled by the power of water’. This was a reference not to the success of Li Bing’s Sichuan sluices but to the ‘Five Phases’ (or sometimes ‘Five Powers’ or ‘Five Elements’), whose sequential ascendancy supposedly controlled the course of history. While Confucians attributed a dynasty’s power to Heaven’s Mandate, others of a less orthodox (or more Daoist) persuasion attributed it to one of the five elemental Phases/Elements – earth, wood, metal, fire and water. Lending potency to successive dynasties, these phases rotated in an endless cycle based on the idea that each overcame its predecessor; thus wood floated on water, metal felled wood, fire melted metal, water quenched fire, earth dammed water, and so on. Since the Zhou had apparently espoused fire, the Qin must adopt that which overcame it; thus ‘the power of water now began its period of dominance’, says the Shiji; and since, to the credulous ruler, a whole school of ‘Five Phases’ philosophy was now available, Qin’s adoption of the new element had significant ramifications.
For to each of the Five Phases/Elements was awarded an auspicious correlate from among the colours, the numbers, the seasons (an extra one was added) and much else besides. In the case of water, the appropriate colour was black, the number was six, and the season was winter. Winter was also the cruellest season, a time of darkness, death and executions (which were held over until then). Through no fault of his own other than that of endorsing a widespread tradition, the First Emperor’s destiny was tied to watery associations that, especially for those living in the Yellow River’s flood-prone ‘central plain’, were of the grimmest. Even if he had been the most indulgent and fun-loving of princes – which he was not – the First Emperor’s reign could scarcely have engendered either fond feelings or lustrous associations.
He nevertheless embraced his watery lot with typical thoroughness. He himself wore black, while his troops in black armour issued from black-flagged fortifications beneath black-emblazoned standards. Obviously the Yellow River had to be renamed. But as Sima Qian explains, because it was credited with being the source and embodiment of all water, merely calling it the ‘Black River’ was not good enough. Rather did it become te shui, ‘the Water of Power’. The number six posed no problem. The interlocking tally-sticks that signified an imperial commission (the emperor kept one half, the commissioned official the other) were ordered to be six ‘inches’ long. Likewise official caps became six ‘inches’ wide; and the length of a ‘pace’ was calculated as exactly six ‘feet’ (it was a double pace, or two strides). Six ‘feet’ was also the prescribed width for official carriages, which were to be drawn by six horses, presumably black ones. When similar specifications were extended to chariots and carts, six ‘feet’ became the standard gauge for Chinese wheel ruts, so ensuring a tram-like ride on the empire’s deeply scored highways. The calendar was also realigned and recalibrated. This was a ritual responsibility for every new ruler but one that, in this case, saw the New Year and its celebrations being put back to the tenth month so that they coincided not with the solstice or the beginning of spring but with the onset of winter.
Such meticulous attention to detail, to quantification, standardisation and regulation, advertised dynastic regard for the ‘Five Phases/Elements’ while according neatly with what was the most obvious feature of the legalist state. It was once supposed that oppressive laws, accompanied by their tariff of graded rewards and draconian punishments, were what distinguished legalism. But the 1970s recovery of a cache of bamboo documents from a tomb outside Wuhan deep in what had been Chu territory (Hubei province) prompted qualification. In part constituting a local official’s handbook of Qin statutes and legal practice, the documents did not exactly dispel the idea of a ferocious justice. Under some circumstances the theft of a single coin could result in the amputation of a foot, plus tattooing of the torso (a particularly degrading form of disfigurement) and hard labour. But straight fines or short spells of unpaid corvée service appear to have been the more usual punishments; and whatever the case, justice was anything but arbitrary. The nature of the offence, the degree of intent, any extenuating circumstances, and the bureaucratic procedures to be observed throughout the legal process, were minutely addressed even for misdemeanours of little apparent consequence. Likewise statutes dealing with agriculture clearly listed not only the different types of cereal crop to be sown but the quantity of seed required to sow a given area with each. Reports on the state of the fields were to be submitted whenever there was anything to report – when it rained, when it didn’t rain, when pests were detected and so on. There were also annual prizes for the overseer, stockman and labourer responsible for the district’s best ox, plus of course penalties for the worst (typically two months corvée).12
As originally in the state of Qin, then in Sichuan, in conquered parts of Chu, Wei and Zhao, and now throughout the empire, the emphasis was on ‘efficiency, precision, and fixed routine in administrative procedure…[plus] exact quantification of data, and attention to the improvement of agricultural production and conserving of natural resources’.13 Households were registered for taxation purposes, and the population organised into grouped families for military and civil conscription. All newly acquired territories were reconstituted as directly administered ‘commanderies’, of which there were thirty-six in 221 BC, each of them further divided into ‘counties’. Lest the former ruling families of the no longer ‘warring states’ cause trouble in the commanderies, their scions were