This is the story of Yi River from the villain’s perspective -- Ying Zheng, King of Qin, first emperor of the united China, the legendary Qin Shi Huang Di.
Ying Zheng grew up the child of an escaped hostage prince in enemy land. Whether this hostage prince of Qin, or the opportunistic merchant who offered the prince his courtesan, was his true father, remained a mystery till this very day.
He eventually returned to Qin and ascended the throne when he was only thirteen. As adulthood approached, his mother and her lover conspired to overthrow him in favor of his half-brothers, two toddlers raised in secrecy. He foiled the plot, had the lover torn apart alive by five horses, placed his mother under house arrest, and murdered his two half-brothers.
By age 39, with the surrender of the last state of Qi, Ying Zheng had finally conquered all six kingdoms and united the world under heaven. The former king of Qi had been left to starve and die amid conifer trees. Songs were sung about this.
So great he deemed his achievements, greater than the god-like sovereigns of the mythical ages, the three “Huang” and five “Di” (三皇五帝), he titled himself “Shi Huang Di” (始皇帝; “Shi” - the beginning). The Heirloom Seal of the Realm (传国玉玺), made of the sacred jade Heshibi, embodied the ultimate authority of the emperor. Qin Shi Huang thereby decreed, his son, and the son of his son, till the thousandth, ten thousandth generation, shall succeed this great, everlasting empire.
Heirloom Seal of the Realm, as illustrated in the video.
To ward off nomadic invaders from the north, he built the first Great Wall. People said the wall was built with the skeletons of its laborers. Better that than barbarian’s hooves, some argue. He unified written language, measurement standards, currency, laws, across China, setting the foundation of what will come to be the Chinese empire for the next few thousands of years.
He lived through numerous assassination attempts. His closest ever to death was the attempt by the emissary of Yan, Jing Ke. Thus borne the saying, “exhaust the picture scroll and the dagger shows” (图穷匕见). He had managed to tear his sleeve away from the assassin’s grip just as the poisoned dagger came down on him. The attacker was utterly vicious and relentless. Forced to run for his life round the pillars, realizing he was the only one armed in the great hall, he struggled to unsheath his long sword. If it wasn’t for the precious few seconds his doctor earned him by hurling a medicine kit at the assassin, he would’ve most likely been dead. He severed Jing Ke’s left thigh and stabbed him a further eight times. The assassin threw the dagger at him as a last ditch attempt, which ended with the dagger’s strike against a pillar behind him. Even as Jing Ke met his death, the man had the audacity to sit with his thighs (what’s remaining of it) insolently apart, laughing in scorn.
After that came the close friend of Jing Ke, the blind musician, Gao Jian Li, who hurled his lead-filled zither in bitter vengeance. That was, of course, handled swiftly and appropriately. Then at Bo Lang Sha, there’s the huge iron mallet intended for him, but instead crushed one of his accompanying carriage. Those conspirators got away with it.
It had been a hard-won victory, the world under heaven was his reward. The first emperor was determined to run it well. He went through thousands of bamboo scrolls worth of government documents himself, often late into the night, every night.
But there’s one more foe left undefeated. Death. Death would take away everything he had. Death was something not even the greatest men who lived can escape. He will find a way to overcome such improbability; after all, it was just one more challenge, isn’t it? Those self-proclaimed sages and alchemists would not be so daft as to dismiss his ambitions. As per their advice, he sent out ships with six thousand virgin boys and girls to the Eastern Sea, hoping they’d retrieve for him the “elixir of immortality” from the mystical islands where deities and gods live. The ships never returned.
In the year 211 BCE, the star of “Illuminating Doubt”, the red star of death, war and destruction, lingered near the star of “Heart”, symbolizing the king*. The following year, during Ying Zheng’s fifth journey across his realm, the critically ill first emperor of China left orders for his banished eldest son, Fu Su, to return from the borders and succeed the throne. At age 49, the ancestor of dragons was dead.
News of his death were kept secret, the stench of his rotting body masked with a cart of dried seafood, till the travelling entourage returned to the capital. Ying Zheng’s younger son, Hu Hai, with the aid of his co-conspirators, the chief eunuch and the prime minister, falsified the emperor’s will and ordered Fu Su to commit suicide. To consolidate power upon his usurped throne, Hu Hai had more than thirty of his brothers and sisters brutally murdered. Hu Hai’s ruthlessness may be on par with his father, but his capability simply cannot match. Uprisings broke out across the empire. Just three years after Hu Hai’s succession as the second emperor of Qin, the Qin dynasty came to a bloody end.
Great conqueror, legendary emperor, monstrous tyrant. Qin Shi Huang Di’s legacy stays close to us till this day. His virtues and vices, facts and fiction, many questions remain, debates still rage on. Who was his father? Aside from the book burnings, did he actually order to have Confucianist scholars buried alive? Was he as cruel and insane as the historical records say, or was it a smear campaign by the dynasty that replaced his? Why hadn’t he appointed an empress and a crown prince? What does his tomb look like? Is it truly made in the likeness of the landscape of the empire, with precious stones as the stars and flowing mercury its rivers and seas?
One thing is certain however. This enigmatic man, almost larger than life itself, left us plenty of room for imagination within this spectacular chapter in history.
Portrait of Qin Shi Huang from a later dynasty.
Photo source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qinshihuang.jpg
*In the lyrics “protecting the heart and illuminating doubt” is a wordplay on the celestial event (荧惑守心) around the time of Qin Shi Huang Di’s death. “守” can mean protect, keep, or stay. The red star of “Illuminating Doubt” (萤惑) is actually Mars. If it lingers arounds a certain position, as in this case, it’s considered a bad omen.
