A Thousand Pieces of Gold: A Memoir of China’s Past Through its Proverbs - Adeline Mah Yen

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book is still in print. The phrase yi zi qian jin (one written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold) has become a proverb, used nowadays to describe any literary work of exceptional merit.

      During the eight years that he ruled the country, Merchant Lü successfully waged war and annexed various territories from Han, Wei and Zhao, thereby increasing the size, wealth and prestige of Qin.

      In 238 BC King Zheng reached the age of twenty-one and began to take the reins of government into his own hands. Meanwhile, the ex-servant Lao Ai was becoming increasingly boastful while the besotted Queen Mother continued to shower him with riches and titles. At a dinner party, a drunken Lao Ai was heard openly bragging about his influence over the Queen Mother and claiming to be the stepfather of the young King. His comments were duly reported back to His Majesty.

      King Zheng now learnt that Lao Ai was not a eunuch at all but his mother’s lover. ‘Your mother has borne Lao Ai two sons who are being kept hidden,’ he was told. ‘As soon as Your Majesty passes on, they have agreed between themselves that one of their sons will succeed you.’

      The King investigated and discovered that the lovers had been brought together by Merchant Lü. He was still uncovering evidence when he set off to the ancient capital of Yong to undergo the capping ceremony (equivalent to the coronation), and to perform ritual sacrifices to his ancestors. While he was away from Xianyang, Lao Ai made his move. He seized the Queen Mother’s seal without her permission, forged the King’s seal, mobilised the army in the outlying counties and ordered them to rebel in the name of the Queen Mother. Swiftly and resolutely, King Zheng commanded his officers to attack the rebels. At the sight of the army under the young King’s flag, Lao Ai’s troops laid down their arms and refused to fight. The few who remained loyal to Lao Ai fled for their lives along with their ringleader.

      King Zheng placed a price of one million copper coins on Lao Ai’s head if taken alive, and half a million if dead. Lao Ai and his supporters were captured while fleeing. Twenty of his fellow plotters were beheaded and their heads exposed in the market-place, while Lao Ai was torn in two by carriages and his entire family were executed to the third degree. The young King also put to death the Queen Mother’s two young sons by Lao Ai.

      The Queen Mother was at first banished into exile. Later, King Zheng brought her back to Xianyang on the advice of his ministers, who recommended that he should keep up the appearance of being a filial son. He built his mother a palace but placed her under house arrest until her death seventeen years later.

      As for Merchant Lü, King Zheng never forgave him for his part in the plot against the throne. Although there was no evidence that the ex-merchant was directly involved in the rebellion, his power was such that he must have had some knowledge that he never shared with the King.

      Shiji says, ‘The King wished to kill the Prime Minister, but because he had done much for the preceding ruler, and because his retainers and scholarly supporters were numerous, the King did not allow the law to be applied.’

      Merchant Lü was relieved of his office and ordered to retire to his fief in Luoyang (Henan province). In no time at all, emissaries and ministers from the other six states were beating a path to Lü’s door. So many came that their carriages were never out of each other’s sight on the road to Luoyang. They asked Lü for advice, pumped him for information, inundated him with offers of high office and tempted him with fresh opportunities. King Zheng was not pleased when he heard this, but found himself in a dilemma. He distrusted Lü and could never use him again but feared that the ex-Prime Minister knew too much that might prove useful to someone else.

      After due deliberation, the King penned Merchant Lü a personal letter in 235 BC. The tone of his letter was accusatory and cold: ‘What have you contributed to Qin lately? Yet you have retained your noble title and continue to receive the revenue from one hundred thousand households in the province of Henan. I order you and your family to move to Shu [presently Sichuan province but at that time a remote, farming area] immediately.’

      On reading this, Lü knew that King Zheng would never forgive him. Fearful of involving the other members of his family (who would also be punished if he were given the death penalty to the third degree), but unable to reveal that he was the young King’s true father, the merchant took the only path that remained. One chilly autumn morning, he drank a cup of poisoned wine and committed suicide.

      Sima Qian frequently wrote a commentary at the end of his biographical sketches. In the case of Merchant Lü, he wrote, ‘Confucius said, “Famous men often give the appearance of virtue but act very differently in practice.” This comment can be aptly applied to the life of Merchant Lü, can it not?’

      Isn’t it fascinating, in the year AD 2002 to be reading the remarks of a historian living so many years earlier, making comments on the writing of Confucius who lived four hundred years before him? Besides putting things in perspective, it brings home the concept that writing is immortal.

      Among ancient tombs discovered in Shuihudi, Hubei province, in AD 1975, was one coffin from the third century BC that differed from the rest. Besides the usual assortment of precious objects such as bronzes, gold, jade, silks, lacquered vessels and pottery, this tomb also contained a number of bamboo ‘books’ next to the skeleton. Over the centuries, the silk threads binding the books together had rotted away and the deceased was found covered by a tangle of over one thousand narrow bamboo slips. The writing on them was still clearly legible and these books ranged from legal texts to historical writings.

      I find it very poignant that even during the Warring States period, there was already someone who refused to be parted from his beloved books, even by death. What was this man’s motivation? Rolled up like a pillow under his head was a separate bundle of bamboo slips that contained brief biographical notices of a man named Xi, probably the deceased. These notices were interspersed with a chronological table of yearly events in the state of Qin between 306–217 BC. Xi was born in 262 BC, worked as a bureaucrat in the Qin government, and died in 217 BC. At his death, Xi chose to make sense of his own life by recording his personal milestones in the context of Qin’s history. Apparently, history was his anchor as well as giving his life its meaning.

      Since ancient times, it has been a Chinese tradition to revere zi (the written word). Erudition is still considered to be the epitome of virtue in China. As noted above, some ancient scholars refused to be parted from their books even at death, considering them to be their most precious possessions. Xi was not alone in choosing to be buried with his books. Well-known classics such as The Art of War, Book of Tao and

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