Unification

The year 221 BC marked the true dawn of the imperial era.

The First Emperor of Qin, hailed as the "Emperor Through the Ages," unified all under heaven. He abolished the feudal system of enfeoffment, established commanderies and counties, and standardized writing, laws, weights and measures, and axle widths. He built the imperial highways and the Great Wall, forging a unified Chinese empire with a single, united heart.

From that moment onward, the Chinese people, endowed with profound political wisdom and a unique cultural heritage, embraced the ideology of grand unification as the supreme ideal for both society and the individual. It became permanently etched into the blood and genes of every Chinese person.

The First Emperor of Qin was entirely deserving of the title of the First Emperor of the Chinese Empire. The very designation of "Emperor" began with him; he styled himself the First Emperor of Qin in the hope that there would be a Second Emperor, a Third Emperor, and so on for ten thousand generations, ensuring that the Great Qin Empire would be passed down forever.

Although the descendants of the First Emperor failed to achieve this, in another sense, every subsequent emperor who sat upon the dragon throne and ruled the realm was a successor to the First Emperor—differing in surname alone.

Historians often speak of the Han dynasty inheriting the institutions of Qin. This means that after Liu Bang established the Han dynasty, he inherited and developed the unified institutional framework of the Qin dynasty. In this sense, Liu Bang was the very first successor to the First Emperor of Qin.

At the end of the Qin dynasty, the world fell into chaos, and the struggle between Chu and Han concluded with the triumph of the rogue over the hero. Xiang Yu was the first to emerge victorious in the contest for hegemony over the realm. Regrettably, however, Xiang Yu possessed no concept of establishing a centralized government; instead, he enfeoffed all the feudal lords into their respective territories. His actions were, in effect, a regression to the era of the Warring States. Unquestionably, this amounted to a historical step backward, which made his eventual defeat by Liu Bang hardly surprising.

From this perspective, rather than saying Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu, it is more accurate to say that unity triumphed over division.

The Chu-Han contention also established another rule of the imperial game: emperors take turns on the throne, and heroes are not judged by their origins. The ultimate outcome of this rule was the principle that "winners are kings and losers are bandits," which neatly resolved the issue of dynastic legitimacy within the empire. To a certain extent, this ensured that the most capable individuals would become founding emperors, leading the empire toward glory time and time again through continuous renewal.

"Unity" is the master key to Chinese civilization.

Ever since the First Emperor of Qin achieved unification in 221 BC, local regimes in China have never again been able to politically rival the central government. Regardless of which founding monarch arose in later eras, striving for unification or safeguarding unity was an irresistible temptation and an inescapable destiny. Thus, the protagonist of our story, Yuan Xi, was also destined to tread the same path of unification as his forebears—a path destined to be bloody, violent, and glorious.

Such was the journey of Yuan Xi, the Grand Ancestor of Jin and Emperor Xuanwu.

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The System of Recommendation (Cha ju zhi)

Examining the modes of public opinion expression in ancient times, they can be broadly divided into several categories.

The first is the beating of the grievance drum, where ordinary citizens primarily appealed to officials at various levels regarding specific personal injustices.

The second consists of folk songs and ballads, through which the common people expressed their opinions on general social phenomena.

The third is official remonstrance by ministers, serving as the government's internal system for oversight and error correction.

The fourth is public discussion in village schools, as seen in the episode of "Zi Chan Not Destroying the Village School." This primarily involved lower-level intellectuals discussing the merits and flaws of court policies, constituting unofficial criticism.

Because public discussions were mostly participated in by the intellectual class, they probed problems more deeply than folk songs and ballads. Furthermore, since the discussions largely centered on metaphysical questions, they were more rational than the case-by-case grievances brought before the drum. Because these were grassroots discussions and evaluations, they naturally possessed a greater degree of freedom than ministerial remonstrance. Compared to the first three forms, public discussion appeared more detached and was better capable of representing the mainstream value orientation of the society of that time.

As mentioned in Dream of the Red Chamber: "The institutions of the Han era are truly lamentable, while we withered trees should be ashamed of eternal disgrace."

Ever since Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty proscribed the hundred schools of thought and established Confucianism as the sole state ideology, scholars of the Han and Tang dynasties regarded core Confucian values as their highest ideals: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness, accompanied by gentleness, kindness, respectfulness, frugality, and yielding; remaining incorruptible amidst wealth and rank, unyielding amidst poverty and lowliness, and unsubdued by force.

During the Han dynasty, Confucian scholars attained an unprecedented and peerless level of nobility and purity, while society developed a profound atmosphere of mutual critique. Powerful public opinion gradually evolved into an intangible political force, prompting Han scholars to place a high value on moral cultivation. Aside from this, the author believes this phenomenon was also brought about by the contemporary system of official selection and society's overarching emphasis on moral strength.

The selection of officials at that time was based on election and recruitment; only those who possessed a reputation built upon public discussion could be summoned to office. It frequently happened that a single word of evaluation could elevate someone from a commoner to a minister, or conversely, strip them of their rank and office. This method of appointment effectively entrusted the power of recommending officials entirely to society, ensuring that honest and genuinely talented individuals were selected for government departments at all levels.

One might ask: wouldn't this inevitably lead to hypocritical and pretentious individuals being mistakenly selected? If a person acts hypocritically and performs good deeds their entire life, would you call them a good person or a bad person?

Because public opinion in the Han dynasty followed a person throughout their entire life. It did not stop simply because one attained official rank; people would still continue to evaluate them. Consequently, scholars and officials were extremely sensitive to public opinion and acted with great caution to win the praise of the court and avoid public ridicule.

For this reason, Gu Yanwu held the function of public discussion in very high regard. He stated: "In a place where public morals are at their worst, if public discussion still survives, it is sufficient to sustain things somewhat. Once public discussion perishes, the clash of arms immediately follows." For example, the Book of Later Han records that Cui Lie, a renowned scholar from Jizhou, obtained the position of Minister of Works (Situ) by paying five million cash through the emperor's wet nurse, whereupon his reputation plummeted.

He asked his son, "Having attained the rank of one of the Three Ducal Ministers, how do I stand among those who discuss state affairs?"

Cui Jun replied, "Since your youth, sir, you possessed a brilliant reputation and served successively as a minister and commandery governor. No one argued that you were unfit to be one of the Three Ducal Ministers, but now that you have attained the position, the entire empire is disappointed."

Cui Lie asked again, "Why is that so?"
Cui Jun answered, "People object to the stench of copper on you."

This intangible force averted the flaw of the later imperial examination system, which focused solely on talent. As the scholar Gu Yanwu noted in his Record of Daily Knowledge (Section on Public Discussion): "When it came down to the Wei and Jin dynasties, although the establishment of the Nine-Rank Zhongzheng system lost much of its truth, its lingering spirit did not die. Anyone impeached and subjected to public discussion was discarded for life and treated as if under official ban." (The later degeneration of public discussion into mutual protection and flattery among officials is another matter entirely.)

The true catalyst that shaped "public discussion" into a unique social phenomenon with formidable influence lay in the reigns of Emperors Huan and Ling of the Eastern Han dynasty.

At that time, the two major "Partisan Prohibitions" occurred. The monarchs of the era were morally corrupt from the top down: "Between the reigns of Emperors Huan and Ling, the sovereigns were dissolute and government policies erred; state authority was delegated to eunuchs." They employed petty villains—imperial relatives by marriage and eunuchs—who engaged in vicious infighting. The third political faction at court, the ministers from prominent aristocratic clans, engaged in fierce struggles against them.

At the same time, government positions were secured through bribery, and scholars lost their avenues for advancement. Out-of-office scholars joined forces with the ministers at court, loudly proclaiming their reputations and criticizing government affairs. Public discussion evolved from the original recommendation of scholars into partisan dissent.

The ruling faction launched a counterattack, stripping serving ministers of their posts, which further drove out-of-office scholars to rally around these ministers, forming a massive and true opposition party.

Immense political pressure also caused public discussion to fracture in two directions: the first was to remain engaged in worldly affairs, while the second was to choose escapism.

The latter laid the groundwork for the long-standing tradition of pure conversation (qingtan) and metaphysical discourse (xuanxue) during the Wei and Jin dynasties. Therefore, the author feels that public discussion at the end of the Han dynasty branched into several forms:

First, the character evaluation of individuals, which was the traditional form. By the Jin dynasty, this gradually shifted from the Han focus on a person's inner moral integrity (such as Xu Shao's evaluation of Cao Cao as "a capable minister in times of peace, a crafty hero in times of chaos") to an emphasis on a person's external bearing and spirit (such as describing someone as having a bright and handsome demeanor).

Second, the critique of court politics, which took the form of factional strife. Under the high-pressure political environment of the Jin dynasty, this form virtually vanished.

Third, empty pure conversation and escapism. By the Jin dynasty, this manifested as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, eventually crystallizing during the Eastern Jin into the prevalent ethos among the literati of ignoring practical affairs.