The first emperor of China – Qin Shi Huang
- Introduction
Qin Shi Huang (259 BC – September 10, 210 BC), given name Yíng Zhèng, was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 247 BCE to 221 BCE. He became the first emperor of a unified China in 221 BCE. He ruled until his death in 210 BCE, calling himself the First Emperor. The given name was never used except by close relatives. As a ruler, he was referred to as the "King of Qin". He was known for the introduction of Legalism and also for unifying China.
- Reign of Qinshihuang
Qin Shi Huang remains a controversial figure in Chinese history. After unifying China, he and his chief adviser Li Si passed a series of major reforms meant to preserve unification. Together, they undertook gigantic projects, including the first version of the current Great Wall of China, the now famous city-sized mausoleum guarded by a life-sized Terracotta Army, and a massive national road system, all at the expense of many lives. To ensure stability, Qin Shi Huang outlawed Confucianism and is purported to have buried alive many of its scholars. All books other than those officially decreed were banned and burned. Despite the tyranny of his autocratic rule, Qin Shi Huang is regarded as a pivotal figure in Chinese history whose unification of China has endured for more than two thousand years.
At the time of the young Zheng's birth, China was divided into antagonistic feudal states, so this era of Chinese history is referred to as the Warring States Period. The competition was extremely fierce and by 260 BCE there were only a handful of states left, including Zheng's state, Qin, which was the most powerful. It was governed by a Legalist government and focused earnestly on military matters. Zheng was born in Handan, the capital of the enemy State of Zhao, so he had the name Zhao Zheng. He was the son of Zichu (子楚), a prince of the royal house of Qin who served as a hostage in the State of Zhao under an agreement between the states of Qin and Zhao. Zichu later returned to Qin after many adventures and with the help of a rich merchant called Lü Buwei, and he managed to ascend the throne of Qin, Lü Buwei becoming chancellor (prime minister) of Qin. According to a widespread story, Zheng was not the actual son of Zichu, but the son of the powerful chancellor Lü Buwei. This tale arose because Zheng's mother had originally been a concubine of Lü Buwei before he gave her to his good friend Zichu shortly before Zheng's birth.
Zheng ascended the throne in 245 BCE at the age of 13, and was king under a regent until 238 BCE when, at the age of 21 and a half, he staged a palace coup and assumed full power. Contrary to the accepted rules of war of the time, he ordered the execution of prisoners of war. He continued the tradition of tenaciously attacking and defeating the feudal states and finally took control of the whole of China in 221 BCE by defeating the last independent Chinese state, the State of Qi.
Then in that same year, at the age of 38, the king of Qin proclaimed himself First Emperor of the unified states of China, making him the most powerful man in China. Qin Shi Huang commanded all the members of the former royal houses of the conquered states to move to Xianyang, the capital of Qin, in modern day Shaanxi province, so they could be kept under tight surveillance for rebellious activities. Qin Shi Huang also ordered most previously existing books burned, excepting some medical and agricultural texts held in the palace archives.
Qin Shi Huang and Li Si unified China economically by standardizing the Chinese units of measurements such as weights and measures, the currency, the length of the axles of carts (so every cart could run smoothly in the ruts of the new roads), the legal system, and so on. The emperor also developed an extensive network of roads and canals connecting the provinces to improve trade between them and to accelerate military marches to revolting provinces. Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese script was unified. Under Li Si, the seal script of the state of Qin, which had already evolved organically during the Eastern Zhou out of the Zhou dynasty script, was standardized through removal of variant forms within the Qin script itself. This newly standardized script was then made official throughout all the conquered regions, thus doing away with all the regional scripts and becoming the official script for all of China. Contrary to popular belief, Li Si did not invent the script, nor was it completely new at the time. Edicts written in the new script were carved on the walls of sacred mountains around China, such as the famous carved edicts of Mount Taishan, to let Heaven know of the unification of Earth under an emperor, and also to propagate the new script among people.
Qin Shi Huang continued military expansion during his reign, annexing regions to the south (what is now Guangdong province was penetrated by Chinese armies for the first time) and fighting nomadic tribes to the north and northwest. These tribes (the Xiongnu) were subdued, but the campaign was essentially inconclusive, and to prevent the Xiongnu from encroaching on the northern frontier any longer, the emperor ordered the construction of an immense defensive wall, linking several walls already existing since the time of the Warring States. This wall, for whose construction hundreds of thousands of men were mobilized, and an unknown number died, is a precursor of the current Great Wall of China. It was built much further north than the current Great Wall, which was built during the Ming Dynasty, and when more than a century was devoted to building the wall Very little survives today of the great wall built by the First Emperor.
Later in his life, Qin Shi Huang feared death and desperately sought the fabled elixir of life, visiting Zhifu Island several times in order to achieve this end. He even sent a Zhifu islander Xu Fu with ships carrying hundreds of young men and women in search of Mount Penglai, where the Eight Immortals lived. These people never returned, because they knew that if they returned without the promised elixir, they would surely be executed. Legends claim that they settled down on one of the Japanese islands, a view that many Chinese and Japanese people are familiar with today.
The emperor often took tours of major cities in his empire to inspect the efficiency of the bureaucracy and to symbolize the presence of Qin's prestige.
- The reason of Qingshihuang death
The emperor died while on one of his tours of Eastern China, on September 10, 210 BCE at the palace in Shaqiu, about two months away by road from the capital Xianyang. Reportedly, he died of swallowing mercury (poison)pills, made by his court scientists and doctors, which contained too much mercury. Ironically, these pills were meant to make Qin Shi Huang immortal. The "theory", devised by alchemists, was that if mercury could even absorb gold, then if eaten, it would give that person its own powers, making him immortal. Mercury compounds were mixed with some food so as to make it edible.
Prime Minister Li Si, who accompanied him, was extremely worried that the news of his death could trigger a general uprising in the empire, given the brutal policies of the government, and the resentment of the population forced to work on Herculean projects such as the Great Wall in Northern China or the mausoleum of the emperor.
It would take two months for the government to reach the capital, and it would not be possible to stop the uprising. Li Si decided to hide the death of the emperor, and return to Xianyang. Most of the imperial entourage accompanying the emperor was left uninformed of the emperor's death, and each day Li Si entered the wagon where the emperor was supposed to be traveling in, pretending to discuss affairs of state. The secretive nature of the emperor while he was alive allowed this stratagem to work, and it did not raise doubts among his courtiers. Li Si also ordered that two carts containing rotten fish be carried immediately before and after the wagon of the emperor. The idea behind this was to prevent people from noticing the foul smell emanating from the wagon of the emperor, where his body was starting to decompose severely.
- Mausoleum of Qinshihuang
Qin Shi Huang was buried in his mausoleum. Located approximately 30 km outside of the present-day capital, X'ian of the Shaanxi province of modern China, the tomb remains a symbol of the infinite power and ego of China's first Emperor. The Chinese historian Sima Qian, writing a century after the First Emperor's death, wrote that it took 700,000 men to construct it. The British historian John Man points out that this figure is larger than any city of the world at that time and calculates that the foundations could have been built by 16,000 men in two years. Sima Qian's description of the tomb includes replicas of palaces and scenic towers, 'rare utensils and wonderful objects', 100 rivers made with mercury, representations of 'the heavenly bodies', and crossbows rigged to shoot anyone who tried to break in.
Recently discovered in 1974 by Chinese peasants who were drilling a well, the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi proved to be one of the greatest archaeological finds in both historical importance and in sheer physical bulk. Archaeologists were uncertain when the excavations began of the great magnitude of this site. The although the tomb itself is, according to legend, very elaborate and beautiful, the center piece of Shi Huangdi's mausoleum is the terra-cotta army of approximately 8,000 life-sized men and horses.