one of the most despised professions throughout the Xia states and a heavily penalised one under Qin’s ‘legalist’ regulations.
Contempt for such an upstart may account for the Shiji’s decidedly racy biographical note on Lu Buwei. Like most of Qin’s ministers, he was not a native of that state, and before arriving there in c. 251 BC had enjoyed the favours of a celebrated concubine. Her name is not mentioned, only her ‘matchless beauty and great skill in dancing’, which attracted other admirers, including the then crown prince of Qin. The crown prince prevailed on Lu Buwei to part with her, ‘she concealed the fact that she was already pregnant’, and her baby, a son born in the fullness of time, had therefore been assumed to be the offspring of the Qin crown prince. Meanwhile the crown prince had succeeded as king of Qin; the matchless concubine had been recognised as his official consort; and her infant had been declared heir apparent. This was the young Zheng. If the story was true, the future First Emperor was an impostor. Illegitimacy could, and had been, rectified by making his mother a royal consort; but there could be no redemption for the issue of a barely mentionable relationship between a common concubine and a market trader.
Nor was that the end of the affair. When the thirteen-year-old Zheng succeeded on the death of his father, his mother, now Dowager Queen and soon to be Dowager Empress, resumed her relationship with Lu Buwei. He, though, seems to have tired of her attentions and grown anxious lest the affair become public.
He therefore searched about in secret until he found a man named Lao Ai who had an unusually large penis, and made him a servant in his household. Then, when an occasion arose, he had suggestive music performed and, instructing Lao Ai to stick his penis through the centre of a wheel made of paulownia wood, had him walk about with it, making certain that the report of this reached the ears of the Queen Dowager so as to excite her interest.8
It did. Her Majesty’s interest was royally excited and Lao Ai, the stud, found himself the unwitting beneficiary of this none-too-subtle ploy. Accused of some misdemeanour, he was sentenced to a mock castration (only his whiskers and eyebrows were removed) and then consigned to the Queen Dowager’s apartments as a certified eunuch. ‘She grew to love him greatly,’ says the Shiji, as well she might considering he was not a eunuch at all. 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’
