By all accounts, he was a dedicated and driven monarch, handling one hundred and twenty pounds of reports (written on bamboo slips) daily. Life was not all work, however, because Shiji states that the First Emperor used to keep jesters at his court to amuse him.
Like many powerful conquerors, the First Emperor was terrified of death. He filled his days with work, consulted astrologers, and became obsessed with orderliness and uniformity. Deeply superstitious, he came under the influence of Taoism and the School of Five Elements. Shiji relates:
The First Emperor believed in the theory of the cyclic rotation of the Five Elements [earth, wood, metal, fire, and water]. This school of thought claimed that each period of history is dominated by one of the five elements, which will then be succeeded by the next element in a fixed and endless cycle. For example, if metal is the dominant element at any one time, it will inevitably be replaced sooner or later by the next element in the series, which is fire [ fire melts metal]. After a certain period, fire in its turn will be replaced by water, since fire is extinguished by water. This process will continue in an endless cycle, which will determine the course of history. Because the authority of the previous unifier of China [the Zhou dynasty] had been replaced by that of his Qin dynasty, the First Emperor concluded that Zhou’s element was fire and Qin’s was water. He considered his reign the era of the Power of Water. The New Year was changed from the first day of the First Month to the first day of the Tenth Month. Black became the chief color of court dress, banners, and pennants because black was the color of water. Condemned criminals and prisoners of war were dressed in red since red was the color of fire. The number six was his favorite number because it had the same pronunciation as the word current. Official tallies and headgear were six inches long. Chariots were six feet wide. One pace was a measure of six feet, and the imperial carriage was drawn by six horses.
He renamed the Yellow River the Powerful Water. In order to inaugurate this new era of the Power of Water, he ruthlessly repressed everything that did not conform with his laws. He believed that only the most implacable severity could harmonize the Five Elements. Thus his reign was harsh and devoid of amnesties.
The First Emperor issued a decree to his ministers, ordering them to unify all laws into a single, coherent, universally applicable system throughout his empire. He vigorously and compulsively standardized every aspect of his subjects’ lives, reducing all in a uniform manner. Weights and measures, size of acreage, agricultural implements, and even the axles and wheels of wagons had to be made of a standard gauge. The “knife” money of Qi, “spade” coins of Haan, Zhao, Wei, and Yan, and the “checker” pieces of Chu were all replaced by the “round money” of Qin. Local customs and writing that did not conform to the new system were vigorously repressed.
To further clarify his laws and make them understood throughout the land, the First Emperor, with the help of Li Si, also standardized the system of writing. Previously, there was such great divergence that men from one state could hardly understand the written language of men from the other states. Besides establishing a common tie between people from all parts of the empire, it also secured a line of communication with the literature of the past.
To this day, modern Chinese writing is based on the system proposed by Li Si over 2000 years ago. The script has changed so little that I, who left China at the age of fourteen, am still able to read and understand the ancient Chinese classics with the help of a dictionary. The literature of millennia is thus open to anyone who can read Chinese. The oldest Chinese dictionary, shuo wen, was published in 100 C.E. It is still in print, for it is the basis of every Chinese dictionary that followed. It never fails to thrill me to be able to open my copy of Shiji and be stirred by the same words written by a historian who lived 2100 years ago.
Because of the First Emperor’s standardization of the written Chinese language, China has maintained its cultural continuity ever since. Of all the great civilizations that used to exist, such as Egyptian, Greek, or Roman, China’s is the only one to have survived intact. Many attribute this to the immutability and universality of the written Chinese language.
Recently, my husband and I visited Vietnam. On the streets of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), I noticed that the billboards and shop signs were all lettered in the French alphabet but with Vietnamese spelling. I asked the young Vietnamese tour guide who was showing us around, “Mr. Nguyen, when did the French colonize Vietnam?”
“Nineteenth century,” he replied.
“What was the written language of Vietnam before the French came?” I wondered.
Mr. Nguyen would not answer. He shrugged his shoulders and walked away. At first I thought he did not hear me, but after being rebuffed twice more, I finally understood that his silence was intentional. For some reason he did not wish to answer me.
Two days later we were taken by bus to visit the ancient imperial city of Hue. One of our destinations was an ancient pagoda built in the sixteenth century.
“Surely,” I told Bob, “we will be shown monuments with ancient Vietnamese writing at the pagoda. I’m really curious to see some samples of Vietnamese writing before the French arrived on the scene.”
The Thien Mu Pagoda was built in the style of a Ming dynasty Chinese tower. On its surface were many engraved sayings, well preserved and perfectly legible. To my astonishment, I could read every word because they were all written in Chinese. It dawned on me that before the French came the written language of Vietnam was Chinese. Our tour guide knew this. When I questioned him, he had remained silent precisely because he could see that I was Chinese. For reasons of his own, he did not wish to admit that historically, Vietnamese culture was the same as that of China’s.
A brochure informed me that the very name of Vietnam was derived from two Chinese characters, yue and nan. The word yue is pronounced “viet,” and nan is pronounced “nam” in Vietnam, but they are written the same way and have the same meaning as Chinese. Yue means “to cross” or “climb over.” Nan means “south.” Thus Vietnam or Yue Nan means “to climb over the south.” Alternately, it can also mean “south of the state of Yue.”
During the Warring States period, the state of Yue used to be an independent kingdom south of the Yangtze River. Later, it was absorbed into Chu, which in turn was conquered by King Zheng in 223 B.C.E. From then on, the word Yue was used to describe the southern coastal provinces of China such as Guangzhou (Canton). Shiji states that after unification, the First Emperor elevated the status of farmers but deported “merchants, vagabonds, and other useless people” to populate the distant and “barbaric” region known as Yue. Vietnam is immediately south (nam) of Yue (Viet); hence its name.
If the First Emperor had not united the seven states, today’s China would probably be more like Europe, consisting of a collection of different countries, each with its own government, spoken and written language, currency, laws, religious beliefs, customs, grievances, and perhaps wars.
The First Emperor built thousands of miles of straight, tree-lined imperial highways radiating from Xianyang toward the outposts of his empire. He inaugurated regular tours of inspection, traveling over his new roads and impressing the people by giving them a glimpse of the pomp and majesty of his entourage.
He came under the influence of Xu Fu, a Taoist scholar-magician from Qi, who was a skillful navigator. The seaman convinced the emperor to finance an excursion to the three islands of Penglai. On these isles in the Eastern Sea, according to Xu Fu, dwelled celestial beings in possession of a magic elixir that rendered them immortal. Equipped with many ships containing food, water, tools, and weapons, and amid high expectations, Xu Fu set out on an expedition with thousands of virgin maidens and youths of good family. They never returned. Historians believe that Xu Fu and his entourage set sail for Japan and settled there.
After waiting in vain for Xu Fu, the First Emperor reluctantly began his journey home. As he reached the Yangtze River, the weather suddenly changed. Gale-force winds ch
urned the river water into giant waves and delayed his passage. Blaming the inclement weather on the river goddess whose temple stood on a hill nearby, the infuriated monarch ordered 3000 convicts to cut down all the trees on the hillside bordering the riverbank in retaliation. As further punishment, he demanded that the mountain be painted red, since red was the color worn by condemned criminals.
A year later, in 218 B.C.E., the First Emperor narrowly escaped another assassination attempt while on his second tour of inspection.
Zhang Liang was descended from an aristocratic family from Haan. His father and grandfather had both been prime ministers of Haan at one time. In 230 B.C.E. Qin had defeated Haan and the King of Haan had been captured. Qin soldiers had killed many Haan nobles and deliberately left their bodies lying on the ground unburied. Seeking revenge, Zhang Liang had sold all the valuables he could lay his hands on and carefully made his plans.
He engaged a powerful weight lifter renowned for his strength and built for him a heavy metal cone weighing 120 jin (132 pounds). The two young men hid among the mountain bushes along the First Emperor’s route and watched the impressive procession as it went by beneath them. At a signal from Zhang Liang, the muscular assassin hurled the cone at the First Emperor’s carriage, shattering it to smithereens.
The First Emperor, however, had planned for just such an event. He was traveling in the second of two identical royal carriages, and the assassins had ambushed the wrong coach. Once again he escaped unscathed.
Despite an extensive search, the assassins were never captured, but the First Emperor did discover that Zhang Liang was the instigator. He placed a price on the young man’s head, but his close brush with death troubled him. He realized that the feudal nobility of the six conquered states had not disappeared. They were lying in wait, like a many-headed hydra, to do him harm. Anger and fear deepened his paranoia and spurred him on in his search for immortality. He became increasingly reclusive, trusting no one except those who filled his mind with tales of the supernatural.
Three years later the First Emperor embarked on his third tour. Still yearning for the elixir of immortality, he dispatched a number of seafarers to search for the elusive mariner, Xu Fu. One of the search party returned and presented the monarch with a five-character message purportedly written by the immortals. The note predicted, “Qin’s demise will be brought about by hu.”
The word hu was another name for Hun. Both were collective terms for the barbarian tribes that lived beyond China’s northwest frontier. Unlike the Chinese, who considered themselves civilized and lived by cultivating the land, the Huns were nomads and lived by hunting, fishing, and raiding. Before returning to his capital, the First Emperor inspected this border and saw for himself the devastation, disease, mutilation, and death inflicted on his people by the savagery of his northern neighbors.
On reaching Xianyang, the First Emperor dispatched one of his ablest generals, Meng Tian, with a force of 300,000 men to clear the Huns from the Ordos Desert. When this had been accomplished, he further ordered Meng Tian to transform his army into a labor force and build a great wall to keep out the nomads for good. He called this wan li chang cheng (Great Wall of Ten Thousand Li), “the most warlike fortification in the world.”
Extending thousands of miles and visible to astronauts circling the earth from outer space, the Great Wall stretches across three main regions. The first area lies close to Beijing, climbs across convoluted mountains, and ends at the Gulf of Liaodong near Korea. The second runs across the Ordos Steppes and traverses miles of quicksand within the loop of the Yellow River. The third strides across the western edge of China separating the Tibetan frontier from the Gobi Desert. Portions of the Great Wall are twenty-five feet tall and stand at an elevation of six thousand feet.
Never in the history of humankind before or since has labor been mobilized on such a grand scale. Working conditions were deplorable. Much of the northwestern frontier was desolate and wild, with endless sand dunes, deadly quicksand, plunging chasms, and precipitous mountains. During the building of the wall, it is estimated that 400,000 people died from disease, pestilence, malnutrition, and poor working conditions. Although they were not buried within the wall but only close to the wall, the Great Wall became known as the “longest cemetery in the world.”
When workers died, the labor crews were replenished by conscripts and convicts. After unification, the First Emperor posted new codified laws throughout his empire and handed out harsh retribution for those who disobeyed. Even those who deviated merely from his laws of weights and measures were sent off to work on one of his endless building projects: the Great Wall, imperial road system, canals and bridges, palaces in Xianyang, and his mausoleum.
To pay for and staff his projects, the First Emperor levied heavy taxes and instituted compulsory service. He divided families in every village into left and right halves and decreed that every man living on the left side of the village gate was to report to the frontier for work under General Meng Tian. As more and more workers perished, the remaining peasants were unable to cultivate the land as required. Villages suffered from lack of laborers, shortage of food, and general discontent.
Shiji tells us that in the year 213 B.C.E. the First Emperor held a banquet at his palace in Xianyang to celebrate that year’s bountiful harvest and Meng Tian’s victory over the Huns. Led by the senior minister, all the officials rose to drink a toast to the emperor and were full of praise for His Majesty’s accomplishments. Among the din of congratulations, however, was a single voice of dissent. One of the guests, a Confucian scholar named Chun from the former state of Qi, rashly and openly criticized the emperor. He started by saying that unlike the male relatives of the ancient kings, the sons and brothers of the First Emperor remained commoners without fiefs. He then sounded a warning that “no empire can endure for long unless it is modeled on antiquity.”
Perceiving this to be an attack on himself, Li Si was outraged. By then, he was prime minister and enjoyed the full confidence of the emperor. He rose to rebut Chun and said accusingly, “There are some who study the past only in order to discredit the present. If this type of behavior is allowed to continue, the imperial power will decline. We must stop this at once.”
Playing on the emperor’s paranoia and megalomania, Li Si submitted a throne memorial. Wishing to preserve forever his sovereign’s power and, by extension, his own power, he recommended the erection of a permanent barrier between past and present by destroying the past. To all future generations, the world was to begin with the First Emperor, who now issued a decree that all books in the bureau of history, save for the records of Qin, were to be burned. “These Confucian scholars,” said Li Si, “use their learning to refute our laws and confuse the people. By destroying their books and all historical records except for those of Qin, dangerous thoughts would no longer exist and nobody could use the past to discredit the present anymore.”
At that time paper had not yet been invented. Books were written on bamboo slips about nine inches long, tied together with silk threads, and rolled into bundles with leather thongs like the shutters of a window. Words were written with a brush or engraved vertically onto the bamboo with a knife. General Meng Tian, who built the Great Wall, supposedly first invented the writing brush by binding rabbit or camel hair to a wooden shaft with string and glue and using pine soot as ink. As more and more people chose brush and ink over the knife for writing, the script itself lost its angularity and adopted more flowing lines.
Calligraphy is considered the mother of art in China. Accomplished calligraphers are revered, and beautiful script is cherished as great paintings are in the West. Words are written with a brush, and a writer’s emotions are captured and transmitted through the direction, speed, and power of the brush strokes. My grandfather used to adorn his room with proverbs written in large black characters on rectangular sheets of paper, hung vertically. Once he told me that there is an intimate connection between Chinese words and paintings, that liter
ature and art are inextricably linked. When I was a little girl in Shanghai 2200 years after the time of the First Emperor, my first task when I got home from school was to put water in the receptacle portion of my inkstone and make fresh ink by grinding an ink stick against the stone’s moistened flat surface, probably in the same way as was done since the time of Meng Tian. Then I would start my homework by writing ten different characters into a special exercise book with brush and ink, copying each word five times in an attempt to improve my handwriting.
Since printing was also unknown during the time of the First Emperor, books were laboriously engraved (or “brushed”) separately by hand. The educated treated them with reverence and treasured them above all else. Now they were suddenly told to burn the books within thirty days of the emperor’s order being issued. The only exceptions were books on medicine, divination, and agriculture. “As for those who wish to learn,” added Li Si, in an attempt to impose imperial control on thought as well as education, “let them learn from the state officials.”
Some scholars simply could not bear to burn their books. To those who loved to read, books enshrined the wisdom and knowledge of great writers who came before them. They were not lifeless stacks of bamboo slips but fascinating minds beckoning with their magic wands. A few did hide their precious rolls of bamboo underground or between walls, but those who were discovered were killed outright or branded on the face as convicts and sent to work on the Great Wall.
According to Shiji,
The scholars believed that burning the works of Confucius and the other great philosophers was akin to destroying their very own heart…. Some refused to go along with the order and chose to die rather than betray their books…. But many more brought their books to Xianyang out of fear…. And the fires burned day and night….
A Thousand Pieces of Gold Page 9