Ying Zheng

Biography

Family Background and Early Years

Qin Shi Huang, Ying Zheng, was born in 259 BCE, in the first month of the forty-eighth year of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, in Handan, the capital of Zhao. His father Yiren was a grandson of King Zhaoxiang of Qin and a son of Crown Prince Anguo, later King Xiaowen of Qin. Yiren's mother, Lady Xia, was not favored by Anguo. Yiren ranked among the middle of more than twenty sons and was sent to Zhao as a political hostage. Qin and Zhao were then frequently at war, and Yiren was treated coldly in Zhao, living in straitened circumstances without sufficient carriages, horses, or wealth.

The wealthy merchant Lü Buwei of Wey was doing business in Handan when he met Yiren and judged him to be a “rare commodity worth hoarding.” He therefore financed Yiren heavily and personally went to Qin to lobby Lady Huayang, the favored consort of Anguo. Lady Huayang had no son. Lü persuaded her to adopt Yiren, who changed his name to Zichu. Through Lady Huayang's influence, Anguo designated Zichu as heir. Lü Buwei also presented to Zichu a woman from Handan whom he favored, Zhao Ji, who later gave birth to Ying Zheng.

In 257 BCE, the fiftieth year of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, the Qin general Wang He besieged Handan and Zhao sought to kill the hostage Zichu. With Lü Buwei's help, Zichu bribed the guards with six hundred jin of gold and escaped to the Qin camp, returning to Qin. Zhao then sought to kill Zichu's wife Zhao Ji and their son Ying Zheng. Because Zhao Ji was the daughter of a wealthy Zhao family, mother and son were able to hide and survive.

In 251 BCE, King Zhaoxiang died. Anguo became King Xiaowen of Qin, Lady Huayang became queen, and Zichu was made crown prince. Zhao then sent Zhao Ji and Ying Zheng back to Qin. King Xiaowen's reign was extremely brief: he died only three days after formally becoming king. Zichu succeeded him as King Zhuangxiang of Qin, appointed Lü Buwei chancellor, and enfeoffed him as Marquis Wenxin. In the fifth month of 247 BCE, the third year of King Zhuangxiang, the king died, and the thirteen-year-old Ying Zheng succeeded as king of Qin.

Ying Zheng's parentage later became controversial. The “Biography of Lü Buwei” in the Records of the Grand Historian states that Zhao Ji was already pregnant when Lü Buwei presented her to Zichu, implying that Ying Zheng was Lü Buwei's biological son. The claim has long been disputed. Qing scholar Liang Yusheng argued in Shiji Zhiyi on the basis of the pregnancy chronology that it was impossible; modern scholars including Ma Feibai and Guo Moruo also treated it as an isolated claim and suspected later slander. More recent scholars such as Li Kaiyuan have analyzed it in the context of political struggle and suggested that the “Lü Buwei as biological father” story may have been a rumor spread by Zhao-linked relatives in competition for power.

Young King of Qin and Rule by Powerful Ministers

When Ying Zheng became king at thirteen, he was too young to govern personally, and state affairs were controlled by Chancellor Lü Buwei, whom he honored as Zhongfu, “Second Father.” Lü continued Qin's strategy of territorial annexation, recruited retainers and wandering scholars, maintained as many as three thousand household guests, and organized them to compile the Lüshi Chunqiu. Militarily, Qin continued campaigns against the Three Jin states—Han, Zhao, and Wei—under generals such as Meng Ao, Wang He, and Duke Biao.

At the beginning of Ying Zheng's reign, the Qin court was effectively shaped by three groups of imperial relatives: the Chu faction represented by Lady Huayang, the Han faction represented by Lady Xia, and the Zhao faction represented by Zhao Ji. Rivalry among these three groups strongly influenced politics before King Zheng assumed personal rule.

In 240 BCE, the seventh year of King Zheng, his grandmother Empress Dowager Xia died, greatly weakening the Han-linked relatives. At this time Lü Buwei was having an affair with Empress Dowager Zhao Ji. Fearing that the growing Ying Zheng might discover it, Lü arranged for his retainer Lao Ai to undergo a sham castration and enter the palace to serve the empress dowager. Lao Ai became deeply favored by Zhao Ji, was enfeoffed as Marquis of Changxin, received lands including Shanyang and Taiyuan, maintained thousands of servants and more than a thousand retainers, and became the second most powerful political figure after Lü Buwei.

In 239 BCE, Ying Zheng's younger brother Chengjiao, Lord of Chang'an, led an army against Zhao but rebelled at Tunliu, in present-day Shanxi. After Qin suppressed the revolt, Chengjiao's followers were executed under collective-liability rules and the people of Tunliu were deported to Lintao. Some scholars have argued that the rebellion may have been connected with the purge of Han-linked imperial relatives after the death of Empress Dowager Xia.

Personal Rule and the Removal of Powerful Ministers

In 238 BCE, the ninth year of King Zheng, Ying Zheng reached the age of twenty-two and held his coming-of-age ceremony at Qinian Palace in Yongcheng, formally assuming personal rule. Lao Ai, sensing that his position was collapsing, stole the king's seal and the empress dowager's seal and launched a rebellion, leading county troops, guards, official cavalry, and others against Qinian Palace. Ying Zheng had already positioned three thousand elite troops and ordered Lord Changping and Lord Changwen to mobilize forces to suppress the revolt. Fighting took place at Xianyang. Lao Ai fled after defeat but was soon captured. Ying Zheng had him torn apart by chariots, exterminated his three kinship groups, killed the two sons Lao Ai had fathered with the empress dowager, and confined his mother Zhao Ji at Fuyang Palace in Yongcheng.

In 237 BCE, Ying Zheng dismissed Lü Buwei as chancellor on the grounds of his connection to the Lao Ai affair. Lü was exiled toward Ba and Shu; on the journey, recognizing that his relationship with the king could not be repaired, he drank poison and killed himself. Ying Zheng was thereby freed from the restraints imposed by powerful ministers and began to exercise supreme authority directly.

The same year, after the Qin water engineer Zheng Guo was exposed as having originally come from Han to build a canal, Qin nobles used the incident to attack guest officials from the other states, and Ying Zheng issued an order expelling them. Li Si of Chu submitted the Memorial Against the Expulsion of Guest Officials, citing Qin's rise through the service of guest officials such as Baili Xi, Shang Yang, Zhang Yi, and Fan Ju and arguing that expulsion would harm the state. Ying Zheng accepted Li Si's argument, revoked the order, and gave important roles to Li Si, Wei Liao, and others as Qin pursued the strategy of unifying the Six States.

Unification of the Six States

By the time King Zheng assumed personal rule, Qin had already annexed Ba, Shu, and Hanzhong and established Nan Commandery; in the north it held territory east of Shang Commandery as well as Hedong, Taiyuan, and Shangdang; in the east it reached Xingyang, had destroyed Eastern Zhou and Western Zhou, and had established Sanchuan Commandery. The wars of unification had entered their final stage.

King Zheng adopted proposals by Li Si, Wei Liao, and others to use large bribes against influential ministers in the six states and sow distrust between rulers and subjects in coordination with military attacks. The stated sequence was to destroy Han first, then Zhao and Wei, then Chu and Yan, and finally Qi.

In 230 BCE Qin sent Neishi Teng against Han. King An of Han was captured and Yingchuan Commandery established in Han territory, ending the state of Han.

In 229 BCE Wang Jian led troops from Shangdi down through Jingxing while Yang Duanhe led troops from Henei to besiege Handan. Zhao generals Li Mu and Sima Shang resisted. Guo Kai, a favored courtier of the Zhao king, accepted Qin bribes and spread rumors that Li Mu intended rebellion. The Zhao king killed Li Mu and appointed Zhao Cong and Yan Ju instead. In 228 BCE Wang Jian decisively defeated Zhao forces, captured Handan and King Qian of Zhao, and destroyed Zhao. Prince Jia of Zhao escaped with several hundred members of the ruling clan to Dai Commandery and proclaimed himself king of Dai. King Zheng personally went to Handan and killed people who had feuded with his mother's family during his childhood there.

In 225 BCE Wang Ben attacked Wei and diverted the Yellow River to flood Daliang. The city walls collapsed, King Jia of Wei surrendered, and Wei was destroyed.

In 226 BCE Wang Ben attacked Yan and captured its capital Ji; King Xi of Yan fled to Liaodong. In 222 BCE Wang Ben attacked Liaodong and captured King Xi, ending Yan.

After Zhao's destruction, Wang Jian led 600,000 troops against Chu. In 223 BCE Wang Jian and Meng Wu captured the Chu capital Shouchun and King Fuchu, destroying Chu. The following year Qin armies pacified the lands south of the Yangtze associated with Chu, received the submission of Yue rulers, and established Kuaiji Commandery.

In 221 BCE Wang Ben advanced south from former Yan territory against Qi. King Jian of Qi surrendered without battle and Qi was destroyed. Qin had now unified the Six States and ended more than five centuries of rival regional states since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.

Adoption of the Imperial Title and Institutional Construction

After unification, Ying Zheng judged that the title “king” was no longer sufficient for his achievements and ordered his ministers to discuss a new title. Chancellor Wang Wan, Imperial Secretary Feng Jie, Commandant of Justice Li Si, and others submitted that ancient tradition spoke of the Heavenly August, Earthly August, and Supreme August, of which the Supreme August was the most exalted, and recommended that title. Ying Zheng held that his virtue equaled the Three August Ones and his achievements surpassed the Five Emperors. He therefore combined huang from the Three August Ones with di from the Five Emperors to create the title huangdi, “emperor,” and styled himself the First Emperor, intending that successors be numbered Second, Third, and onward for ten thousand generations.

At the central level, Qin Shi Huang established the system of the Three Lords and Nine Ministers. The Three Lords were the chancellor, responsible for civil administration; the grand commandant, responsible for military affairs; and the imperial secretary, responsible for supervision. The Nine Ministers handled specialized functions of government. In local administration, he accepted Li Si's proposal to abolish enfeoffment and replace it with the commandery-county system, dividing the empire into thirty-six commanderies, later increased to more than forty. Commanderies had governors, military commanders, and supervisory officials, while counties had magistrates or chiefs. This centralized administrative system became a basic framework for Chinese government over the next two millennia.

In economic and cultural affairs, Qin Shi Huang carried out a series of standardizations: the script was standardized with small-seal writing as the official form; currency was standardized around the round bronze banliang coin with a square hole; weights and measures were standardized through official reference instruments; axle widths were standardized and a network of imperial roads was built around Xianyang. Laws were also unified across the empire on the basis of Qin law.

Inspection Tours and the Search for Immortality

After unification, Qin Shi Huang repeatedly toured the empire, both to overawe local populations and proclaim imperial virtue and to pursue his desire for immortality and elixirs.

In 220 BCE he first toured Longxi and Beidi, reached Mount Jitou, and passed through Huizhong. In 219 BCE he traveled east to Mount Yi near Zou, erected an inscription celebrating his achievements, performed the Feng and Shan rites at Mount Tai, and carved further commemorative inscriptions. He then traveled along the coast and sent Xu Fu of Qi to sea with several thousand boys and girls in search of immortals. He went south to Langya, remained there for three months, and moved thirty thousand households to the area below the Langya Terrace.

In 218 BCE, while traveling east through Bolangsha near Yangwu, he was attacked by Zhang Liang, a descendant of Han nobility, and a strongman wielding a heavy iron hammer. The weapon struck the secondary carriage instead of the imperial carriage. Qin Shi Huang escaped and ordered a ten-day search throughout the realm, but the attackers were not found.

In 215 BCE he toured Jieshi in the north and had an inscription carved there. He sent Lu Sheng of Yan to seek the immortals Xianmen and Gaoshi and sent Han Zhong, Hou Gong, and Shi Sheng to search for immortals and elixirs of deathlessness. Lu Sheng returned with the statement “Hu will destroy Qin.” Qin Shi Huang therefore sent Meng Tian with 300,000 troops north against the Xiongnu and seized the lands south of the Yellow River bend.

In 210 BCE he made his fifth eastern tour. He traveled south to Mount Jiuyi, descended the Yangtze, passed Danyang, reached Qiantang and the Zhejiang River, ascended Mount Kuaiji, sacrificed to Yu the Great, looked toward the Southern Sea, and erected another inscription. On the return north, he became ill at Pingyuan Ford, south of present-day Pingyuan County in Shandong. On a bingyin day in the seventh month, Qin Shi Huang died at Shaqiu Platform, northwest of present-day Guangzong County in Hebei, aged fifty.

Political Turmoil in His Final Years

In Qin Shi Huang's later years government became increasingly severe. In 213 BCE, at a banquet in Xianyang Palace, the scholar Chunyu Yue proposed restoring the enfeoffment system. Chancellor Li Si submitted a memorial denouncing scholars who “do not take the present as their teacher but instead study antiquity and use it to criticize their age,” and recommended burning the Book of Songs, Book of Documents, and writings of the Hundred Schools. Qin Shi Huang accepted the proposal and ordered the book burning. With the exception of Qin historical records and books on medicine, divination, and agriculture, privately held copies of the Songs, Documents, and writings of the Hundred Schools were to be surrendered and burned. Those who discussed the Songs and Documents were to be publicly executed, and those who used antiquity to criticize the present were subject to extermination of their kin.

In 212 BCE practitioners such as Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng, having failed in their search for immortality, fled and circulated criticisms that Qin Shi Huang was harsh, self-willed, and greedy for power. Enraged, he ordered the imperial censors to investigate the scholars. They denounced one another, and more than 460 people were implicated and buried or executed at Xianyang. This episode became known as the Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars. In the same year Qin Shi Huang ordered construction of an audience palace in Shanglin Park south of the Wei River, later called Epang Palace, on an enormous scale. The source describes its dimensions as five hundred paces east to west and fifty zhang north to south, large enough for ten thousand people to sit above and for a five-zhang banner to stand below. More than seven hundred thousand convicts and laborers were also mobilized to construct the mausoleum at Mount Li.

In 211 BCE, a meteorite fell in Dong Commandery and someone carved on it the words “The First Emperor will die and the land will be divided.” Qin Shi Huang sent censors to investigate. When no one confessed, he ordered the residents near the stone executed. That autumn, an imperial messenger traveling at night through Pingshu Road near Huayin was stopped by someone carrying a jade disk who declared, “This year the Ancestral Dragon will die.” Qin Shi Huang remained silent for a long time after hearing the report. Divination indicated that travel and relocation would be auspicious, so he moved thirty thousand households to Yuzhong in Beihe and in the next year, 210 BCE, began his fifth eastern tour.

In the seventh month of 210 BCE, Qin Shi Huang died at Shaqiu. Before his death, an edict ordered his eldest son Fusu to return to Xianyang, attend the funeral, and inherit the throne. Zhao Gao, Director of the Imperial Carriage Office, and Chancellor Li Si conspired to alter the edict, designate the younger son Hu Hai as crown prince, and order Fusu and Meng Tian to die. Hu Hai became the Second Emperor of Qin, and Qin rule rapidly moved toward collapse. Qin Shi Huang was buried in the mausoleum at Mount Li.

The Lao Ai Revolt and the Clearing of Rivals

In 238 BC (ninth year of King Zheng) Lao Ai forged the royal and dowager seals to levy county troops, guards, mounted attendants, Rong and Di chiefs and retainers in order to attack the Qinian Palace. King Zheng ordered the chancellors Changping and Changwen to raise troops against him; they fought at Xianyang, beheaded several hundred, and all who took part were given rank, even the eunuchs. Lao Ai fled but, with a price of a million cash for his capture and half that for his killing, he and his party were taken. The commandant of the palace guard Jie, the capital official Si, the assistant archer Jie and the grand counsellor Ling Qi, twenty men in all, were beheaded and their heads displayed, their bodies torn apart by chariots and their clans wiped out. In the ninth month Lao Ai was executed to the third degree, the two sons born of the queen dowager were killed, she was removed to Yong, and all Lao Ai's retainers had their households confiscated and were deported to Shu. The king wished to punish Chancellor Lü Buwei but, because of his great service to the late king and the many retainers and orators who pleaded for him, could not bear to proceed, and only the next year removed him. There followed a general search and the expulsion of foreign retainers, halted when Li Si memorialised; Li Si then urged the king to take Han first in order to overawe the other states. Wei Liao of Daliang came and offered the plan of sparing no wealth in bribing the enemy's powerful ministers so as to ruin their schemes, for thirty thousand gold would suffice to finish the other states; the king followed it, treated Wei Liao as an equal with the same clothes and food, yet Wei Liao judged him to have "a wasp's nose, long eyes, an eagle's chest and a jackal's voice, sparing of kindness and wolf-hearted", and fled, whereupon the king, discovering it, firmly detained him and made him commandant.

Mao Jiao's Remonstrance on the Queen Dowager

The king had removed the queen dowager to the Fuyang Palace and decreed that whoever remonstrated on her behalf would be killed, his back split with caltrops and his limbs cut off and piled below the gate; twenty-seven had already died so. Mao Jiao of Qi sought audience, saying that "Heaven has twenty-eight mansions, and twenty-seven men have now died; I come to make up the number", and declaring that he did not fear death. The king sat with hand on sword, froth at his mouth, and ordered a cauldron boiled. Mao Jiao said calmly that the king, by tearing apart his surrogate father with chariots, showed jealousy; by bursting his two brothers in sacks, cruelty; by exiling his mother, impiety; and by punishing remonstrants with caltrops, the rule of Jie and Zhou; and that the world, hearing of it, would crumble away and none would turn to Qin, so that he feared for the state. Having spoken he stripped and laid himself on the executioner's block. The king came down from the hall, raised him with his left hand, waved off his attendants with the right, said "pardon him; put on your clothes, sir, I wish to hear you", at once made Mao Jiao his "second father" and a high minister, and brought the queen dowager back to Xianyang.

The Campaigns against the Six States

In 230 BC the interior scribe Teng attacked Han, took King An and annexed all its land, making Yingchuan commandery. In 229 and 228 a great army attacked Zhao: Wang Jian led the troops of Shangdi down through the Jingxing pass, Yang Duanhe the troops of Henei, and Qiang Hui attacked Zhao, Yang Duanhe laying siege to Handan. The Zhao generals Li Mu and Sima Shang resisted, but the king of Zhao, falling for Qin's stratagem of slander, killed Li Mu and replaced him with Zhao Cong and Yan Ju; Wang Jian and Qiang Hui then took all the eastern lands of Zhao and captured King Qian. King Zheng went himself to Handan and buried alive all those who had wronged his mother's family when he lived there, returning by Taiyuan and Shangjun; Prince Jia of Zhao fled to Dai with several hundred clansmen, made himself king of Dai and joined Yan. In 227 Prince Dan of Yan sent Jing Ke to assassinate the king; the plot failed and Jing Ke was dismembered, whereupon Qin sent Wang Jian and Xin Sheng against Yan and broke its army west of the Yi River; the next year Wang Ben took Ji, the Yan capital, and the head of Prince Dan, while King Xi fled to Liaodong. In 225 Wang Ben attacked Wei and diverted the Yellow River to flood Daliang; the walls collapsed and King Jia surrendered. In the Chu campaign the king first sent Li Xin and Meng Tian with two hundred thousand men south, who after early success were routed by the Chu at Chengfu, the Chu pressing without rest for three days and nights, breaking into the two camps and killing seven commandants; the king then went in person to Pinyang to recall Wang Jian and compel him to take command of a great host, taking the land from Chen south to Pingyu and capturing King Fuchu of Chu, while the Chu general Xiang Yan enthroned Changping as king of Chu and rebelled in Huainan. In 223 Wang Jian and Meng Wu broke the Chu army, Changping died and Xiang Yan killed himself; the next year Wang Jian pacified the lands south of the Yangtze, received the submission of the Yue chief, established Kuaiji commandery, and in the fifth month the realm feasted. In 222 Wang Ben took Liaodong and King Xi of Yan, then took Dai and captured Prince Jia. In 221 Wang Ben marched south from Yan against Qi and took King Jian, and all six states fell.

The Institutions of the Empire

When the king first united the realm he ordered his chancellors and censors to deliberate on the imperial title. Chancellor Wang Wan, Censor Feng Jie and the commandant of justice Li Si, having consulted the erudites, reported that of old there had been the Heavenly, Earthly and Great August Ones, the last being the noblest, and asked that the title be "Great August", that his orders be called "zhi" and "zhao", and that he call himself "zhen". The king struck out "August", kept "Huang" and took the ancient "Di", styling himself Huangdi, Emperor; and decreed that the law of posthumous names be abolished, that he be the First Emperor, and that later ages count by number, Second, Third and so on for ten thousand generations without end. The central government had the chancellor, the grand commandant and the censor-in-chief and various ministers, among them the director of guests who handled relations with friendly non-Han peoples, the director of dependent states for those already subject, and the household manager for the empress and heir. Locally the feudatories were abolished for commanderies and counties, the commanderies having governor, commandant and inspector, the counties magistrates who handled civil affairs, commandants for arms and assistants for justice; below the county were the districts, which assessed levies, collected taxes, made neighbours watch and denounce one another and held a man's neighbours liable for his crime, and the post stations, which besides keeping order received officials and handled documents. Qin also adopted the doctrine of the Five Powers in succession, holding that Zhou had the virtue of fire and Qin succeeded it, so that now the virtue of water began, the year was re-dated, audiences were held from the first day of the tenth month, and clothing, banners, tassels, tallies and flags all favoured black.

Tours, Secrecy and the Search for Immortality

The First Emperor had the two hundred and seventy palaces and lodges within two hundred li of Xianyang joined by raised and covered ways, filled with curtains, bells, drums and beauties, each fixed in its registered place; wherever he went, whoever spoke of it was put to death. Once, from Mount Liang, he saw the chancellor's carriage and escort in great number and was displeased; someone told the chancellor, who thereafter reduced it, and the emperor, angry that "these attendants leaked my words", questioned them without answer and had all those present executed, after which none knew where he went. Lu Sheng and others reported that the herbs and immortals were never found, and advised the ruler to travel in secret to drive off evil spirits, keeping his dwelling unknown; the emperor accordingly declared his admiration for the "true man" and called himself such instead of "zhen". Xu Fu and the others, having spent years at sea without finding the drug and fearing punishment, falsely claimed that the herb of Penglai was attainable but for a great fish; the emperor dreamed of fighting the sea god, and the interpreter of dreams said the water god took the form of great fish and dragons, which must be removed, so he had the seafarers take fishing gear while he himself waited with a repeating crossbow, finding nothing from Langya north to Chengshan but killing a great fish at Zhifu. He had also sacrificed at Pengcheng, hoping to raise the Zhou cauldron from the Si River and sending a thousand men to dive without success; and, crossing to the Xiang Mountain shrine, he was nearly prevented by wind, and learning from the erudites that the Xiang goddess was the daughter of Yao and wife of Shun, he angrily had three thousand convicts cut down every tree on the mountain and strip it bare, though excavated Qin documents record the opposite, that he admired "the fine wild trees" and ordered that none be felled. Popular tradition told of a stone bridge he built to cross the sea and see the sunrise, with gods driving stones into the sea and whipping them until they bled. When a storm caught him on Mount Tai he sheltered under a tree and enfeoffed it as "Fifth Grandee".

The Burning of Books and the Burial of the Scholars

In 213, at a banquet in the Xianyang Palace, the erudite Chunyu Yue asked for the restoration of the feudatories, and Chancellor Li Si denounced those who "do not model themselves on the present but study antiquity and condemn their own age" and asked for the burning of books. It was decreed that histories other than the Qin records be burned; that any private person holding the Odes, Documents or the hundred schools' writings, unless an officer of the court, surrender them to the governors and commandants to be burned; that any who spoke of the Odes and Documents together be executed in the market; that any who used antiquity to condemn the present be exterminated with his clan; that officials who knew and failed to report share the guilt; that those who did not burn within thirty days be tattooed and sent to the wall; that medicine, divination and husbandry books be spared; and that those wishing to learn the laws should take officials as their teachers. In 212, when the adepts Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng fled after failing to find immortality and slandered the emperor, he angrily had the censors question the scholars, who informed on one another until more than four hundred and sixty were found to have broken the ban and were buried alive at Xianyang, the realm being told of it to warn the rest. The heir Fusu remonstrated that "the realm is newly settled, the people far off are not yet gathered, and the scholars all recite and follow Confucius; to bind them all with severe law, I fear, will unsettle the realm", whereupon the emperor, angry, sent him north to supervise Meng Tian in Shangjun.

Omens, Prophecy and the Coup at Shaqiu

In 211 (thirty-sixth year) Mars stood in Antares; a meteor fell in Dongjun and became a stone on which someone carved "when the First Emperor dies the land will divide". The emperor sent censors to question all, and when none confessed he had everyone living near the stone killed and the stone burned. That autumn an envoy, travelling by night past the Ping-Shu road at Huayin, was stopped by a man with a jade disc who said "give this to the Lord of Hao Pond" and then "this year the Ancestral Dragon will die", and vanished; the emperor, receiving the disc, was silent a long while, said that "a mountain spirit can know no more than one year's affairs", and had the disc examined, finding it the one he had sunk in the river in his twenty-eighth year. Divining, he obtained "travel and move: auspicious", and moved thirty thousand households to Beihe and Yuzhong, giving each a rank. In 210 he made his fifth eastern tour, with Li Si as left chancellor attending, Feng Quji as right chancellor keeping the capital, and his youngest son Huhai accompanying him by request. At Yunmeng he sacrificed in the distance to Shun on Mount Jiuyi, sailed down the Yangtze past Danyang to Qiantang, and, finding the Zhejiang dangerous, crossed a hundred and twenty li west at a narrow point, then ascended Mount Kuaiji to sacrifice to Yu, look toward the southern sea and set up a stone inscribed with his virtue. On the way north he fell ill at Pingyuan Ford and died at the Shaqiu platform in the seventh month. His deathbed decree summoned Fusu to the capital for the funeral and the succession, but it was never sent; the palace carriage officer Zhao Gao and Chancellor Li Si plotted, forging a decree making Huhai heir and another ordering Fusu and Meng Tian to die. At Shangjun the envoy arrived; Fusu wished to kill himself, Meng Tian urged him to ask again, but Fusu said "a father gives his son death — how can I ask again", and killed himself, while Meng Tian refused and was imprisoned at Yangzhou. The coffin travelled north in summer heat, the body already stinking, and the attendants loaded a picul of salted fish to confuse the smell. Mourning was held at Xianyang, Huhai became Second Emperor and Zhao Gao the chief of the palace guard, managing affairs at the emperor's side. Later the lost Zhao Zheng Shu appeared, recording that the emperor fell ill at Boren and that Huhai was named heir, while the calendar from the Qin tomb at Zhoujiatai has no bingyin day in the seventh month of that year, leading the Japanese scholar Tsuruma Kazuyuki to suggest that "seventh month, bingyin" should read the eighth month, though the question is unresolved.

Major Activities

Unification of the Six States

Qin Shi Huang's most important historical achievement, as presented in the source, was ending more than five centuries of political division since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods and establishing a unified centralized state. Beginning with the destruction of Han in 230 BCE and ending with the destruction of Qi in 221 BCE, Qin eliminated Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, and Qi within ten years. The process was not simply a military conquest; it also used diplomatic division, large-scale bribery, and political disintegration, reflecting the political strategy of Qin Shi Huang and his advisers.

Creation of the Imperial Institution and Centralized Government

Qin Shi Huang created the title “emperor” and established the emperor as the supreme ruler. At the center he instituted the Three Lords and Nine Ministers, while in local administration he implemented the commandery-county system and abolished the long-standing system of enfeoffment. State power was concentrated in the central government and ultimately in the emperor. The source presents this as laying the basic political framework for centralized autocratic government over the next two millennia. The Ming thinker Li Zhi called him “the one emperor for the ages,” with particular reference to this institutional significance.

Standardization of Script, Currency, Weights and Measures, and Axle Widths

After unification, Qin Shi Huang ordered Chancellor Li Si to standardize writing, taking Qin small-seal script as the norm and suppressing the scripts of the former six states. Currency was standardized around the round bronze banliang coin with a square central hole. Weights and measures were standardized by issuing official reference instruments throughout the empire. Axle widths were standardized at six chi, and a system of imperial roads centered on Xianyang was constructed. These measures reduced economic and cultural barriers among regions and promoted exchange and integration across the empire.

Construction of the Great Wall and Territorial Expansion

In 215 BCE Qin Shi Huang sent Meng Tian with 300,000 troops north against the Xiongnu, recovered the Henan region in the Ordos area of present-day Inner Mongolia, and established Jiuyuan Commandery. He then linked and repaired the northern walls previously built by Qin, Zhao, and Yan during the Warring States period, extending from Lintao in the west to Liaodong in the east for more than ten thousand li, forming what became known as the “Great Wall of Ten Thousand Li.” In the south he sent Tu Sui, Zhao Tuo, and others against the Baiyue. In 214 BCE he established Guilin, Nanhai, and Xiang commanderies and incorporated Lingnan into the Qin realm. The source describes Qin territory as reaching the sea and Korea in the east, Lintao and the Qiang lands in the west, the north-facing households in the south, and the Yellow River and Yinshan mountains to Liaodong in the north, and presents this as laying a territorial foundation for a unified multiethnic Chinese state.

Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars

In 213 BCE Qin Shi Huang accepted Chancellor Li Si's proposal and ordered privately held copies of the Book of Songs, Book of Documents, writings of the Hundred Schools, and the histories of the former states to be burned, while retaining works on medicine, divination, and agriculture and Qin's own historical records. In 212 BCE, after practitioners including Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng fled and criticized the government, Qin Shi Huang ordered an investigation that implicated more than 460 people, all of whom were buried or executed at Xianyang. The source describes the Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars as a cultural catastrophe that caused major losses to the preservation of pre-Qin texts and intellectual traditions and became one of the most frequently criticized episodes of Qin Shi Huang's rule.

Imperial Tours and Commemorative Inscriptions

After unification, Qin Shi Huang undertook five large-scale tours, traveling through areas corresponding to present-day Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Hubei, and Hunan. He often had inscriptions carved to commemorate imperial achievements. The source lists inscriptions at Mount Yi, Mount Tai, Langya Terrace, Zhifu, Jieshi Gate, and Mount Kuaiji, most of which praised Qin virtue and proclaimed imperial authority. These inscriptions are both important historical sources for the Qin and valuable works in the history of Chinese calligraphy.

Construction of Epang Palace and the Mausoleum at Mount Li

After unification, Qin Shi Huang launched major building projects. At Shanglin Park south of the Wei River he began constructing the audience palace known as Epang Palace, described as large enough for ten thousand people to sit above and for a five-zhang banner to stand below. He also mobilized huge numbers of workers to build the mausoleum at Mount Li, which the source describes as containing “mercury for the hundred rivers, the Yangtze, the Yellow River, and the great seas, mechanically circulated; the constellations above and the geography below.” The source states that these projects consumed enormous labor and resources, increased burdens on the population, and were among the factors in Qin's rapid collapse. The Mount Li mausoleum is the present Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor at Lintong, Xi'an, Shaanxi. The pits of terracotta warriors discovered to its east in 1974 shocked the world and have been called the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

The Unification of Script, Coinage and Measures

After unification Chancellor Li Si directed the standardisation of writing on the Qin seal script, abolishing the variant scripts of the six states. Another account says that Cheng Miao, a prison officer at Yunyang, jailed for ten years for a crime, summed up a change already appearing in the scripts, later called the "clerical transformation", and was rewarded by the emperor, released, made a censor and ordered to "fix the script", producing the new clerical style, which broke with the ancient forms, laid the basis of the standard script and made writing faster. In coinage the state alone cast money and private casting was severely punished; two currencies circulated, gold as the higher unit of twenty ounces and bronze coin as the lower, marked "half tael" and of that weight, round with a square hole; the pearls, jade, tortoise shell, cowries, silver and tin of the six states ceased to be money. For weights and measures standard implements were issued throughout the realm and all divergent ones forbidden; in land measurement the six-foot pace and the mu of two hundred and forty square paces were fixed, a standard lasting a thousand years. The gauge of carriages was also unified at six feet, so that one cart could travel the whole realm.

Roads, Waterworks and the Frontier

To control the former states and supply the northern front, from 222 BC highways were built radiating from Xianyang, fifty paces wide, among them the Shangjun, Linjin and Eastern roads, mostly laid over the old roads of Qin and the six states; the most famous included the road to Shangjun. To move troops and supplies for the southern campaign the canal known as the Lingqu was cut by Shi Lu to link the Xiang and Li rivers, completed between 219 and 215 BC and one of the oldest canals in the world, for two thousand years the water route between the south and the Central Plains. After the campaign against the Xiongnu, Qin took the lands south of the Yellow River and set up forty-four counties there with settlers as garrison, and the next year Meng Tian crossed the river again to take the Yin Mountains and Beijia, establishing Jiuyuan commandery. To fill the frontier, convicts were deported "to people the new counties" and ordinary people encouraged to move, thirty thousand households being moved in 211 from the interior to Beihe and Yuzhong, each receiving a rank of nobility; these settlers farmed and garrisoned at once. In the southwest the emperor sent Chang An to open the way to the southwestern peoples and built the Five-Foot Way from present-day Yibin in Sichuan to Qujing in Yunnan, extending his power into the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau.

Economic Policy and Legal Control

Like earlier Qin rulers the First Emperor upheld the policy of "exalting agriculture and suppressing the secondary", so that the common people "should apply themselves to farming and crafts"; commerce was restrained yet closely regulated. Officials such as the "lacquer-garden overseer", the "works overseer" and the "iron-mining overseer" were appointed, and statutes such as the Labour, Workmen's Norms, Equalising Labour and Checking statutes were enacted. The Field statute forbade peasants to sell wine; the Stables and Parks statute forbade officials using state horses and carts to sell the meat and hides of dead horses; the Money and Cloth statute forbade offices to sell goods on their own account, which must go to the capital or county; and the Miscellaneous Qin Statutes forbade petty officials to profit from the horses and labour allotted to them, on pain of exile. The law also fixed prices, protected fair dealing and banned smuggling: the Money and Cloth statute required all sellers but those of goods under one cash to mark prices; the Works statute set grain at thirty cash a picul and labour at eight cash a day, or six for those fed; the Legal Questions required foreign traders to present credentials, forbade dealings with illegal foreign merchants, barred the sale of pearls and jade to foreign "guests" and "travellers", and required smuggled jewels seized to be sent to the interior secretary. In 216 BC the emperor "caused the common people to declare their own fields", each holder reporting his acreage and paying tax accordingly, which in practice advanced private landholding.

Migration and Resettlement

Large-scale migration was an important means by which the First Emperor preserved unity and political order, notable for its frequency, scale and duration. The Basic Annals of the First Emperor records twelve such instances, at least five or six involving thirty thousand households or more, and in the year of unification alone a hundred and twenty thousand wealthy households were moved to Xianyang; there were besides movements not separately recorded. It has been estimated that the numbers moved reached a million or more, perhaps two to three million. The aims were to fill the frontier, control great families directly, punish rebels and criminals, and populate regions of special imperial concern. These settlers and deported convicts farmed and garrisoned at once, developing the northern frontier and strengthening its defence, though at heavy cost to the people.

Uniform Customs and the Inscribed Stones

"Uniform customs" meant correcting manners and establishing a single ethical and behavioural standard, to which Qin gave considerable attention. In 219 BC at Mount Tai the emperor had inscribed that the sexes should be distinct and courteous, women managing the inner and men the outer sphere, each fulfilling his or her duty, so that "man and woman keep the rites and heed their tasks, inner and outer are clearly separated" as an example for later ages; the Kuaiji inscription of 210 BC attacked the licentious customs of the region, branding the adulterer a "boar let loose" whom it was no crime to kill, to correct the laxity of Wu and Yue. The surviving inscriptions of Yishan, Mount Tai, the Langya Terrace, Zhifu, the Jieshi Gate and Kuaiji, mostly praising Qin's virtue and displaying its majesty, are both important sources for Qin history and treasures of Chinese calligraphy.

The Mausoleum and Disputed Accounts of His End

The First Emperor's mausoleum lies at the northern foot of Mount Li in Lintong, Shaanxi, built from 246 to 208 BC over thirty-nine years, the first large and carefully planned imperial necropolis in Chinese history; it employed seven hundred thousand labourers a year. From outside, the mound is about two thousand metres in circumference and fifty-five metres high; the burial mound is of truncated-pyramid form within a double rammed-earth wall symbolising the palace and capital. The tomb, it is said, had a bronze ceiling, rivers and seas of mercury with machines to keep them flowing, a ceiling studded with pearls for sun, moon and stars, and was surrounded by many pits and graves of varied form; the discovery in 1974 of the terracotta army pits to its east astonished the world and has been called an eighth wonder. His end is recorded differently in the histories and in excavated texts: the Records of the Grand Historian has him die at Shaqiu, while the Zhao Zheng Shu has him already at Boren when gravely ill; and where the Records say the decree summoned Fusu home as heir, only for Zhao Gao and the others to forge orders putting Fusu to death and making Huhai emperor. Given the difference, and the dates of composition, Sima Qian may not have been unaware of such accounts but excluded them from his narrative; further inquiry lacks more evidence.

The Southern and Northern Campaigns

After unifying the Central Plains, the First Emperor launched his southern campaign around 219 BC, sending Commandant Tu Sui with five hundred thousand men in five columns, of which the Huainanzi records that "three years passed without the armour coming off or the crossbows unstrung". The army advanced through Yuecheng Ridge in northern Guangxi, Mount Jiuyi in southern Hunan and the Nankang and Yugan districts of Jiangxi toward the Yue peoples of the two Guang regions, the fighting lasting three years, the hardest campaign of the Qin. In 214 he sent Ren Ao and Zhao Tuo against the Yue again, and with the Qin armies sweeping forward the whole of Lingnan passed into the empire. The histories describe Lingnan before the Qin as a miasmal southern wilderness of slash-and-burn clan society; the Qin armies brought northern farming techniques and a more advanced culture, so that Lingnan moved swiftly into an agrarian civilisation, and the campaign mattered greatly for the fusion of the Central Plains and the Yue and for the political, economic and cultural development of the south. In the north the emperor sent Meng Tian with three hundred thousand men, the main force moving east out of the wall from Shangjun and Yang Wengzi moving west with a detached force from Xiaoguan, and the Xiongnu fled; Qin took the lands south of the Yellow River and set up forty-four counties with settlers as garrison. Because the Xiongnu kept attacking, the next autumn Meng Tian crossed the river again to take Yangshan and Beijia and established Jiuyuan commandery. This counter-campaign ended the Xiongnu raids, and the seizure of the lands south of the river freed the Ordos and the lands on both sides of the great bend from war for a considerable time.

Qi-Watching, Magic and Legend

The First Emperor believed in the reading of qi. The Basic Annals of Gaozu in the Records of the Grand Historian says that "the First Emperor of Qin often said that in the southeast there was the qi of a Son of Heaven, and so travelled east to suppress it", and the annals of Emperor Yuan in the History of the Jin likewise tell of diviners under Qin predicting that after five hundred years Jinling would have the qi of a king, which the emperor toured east to suppress; according to the Traditions of Jiangbiao, Moling, originally Jinling, was founded by King Wu of Chu, and local elders told how, when the First Emperor passed through on his eastern tour to Kuaiji, the qi-watchers said that "the ground of Jinling has the qi of a royal capital", whereupon he had the connecting ridges cut through and the name changed to Moling. As to magic and marvels, the Miscellany of the Western Capital records a square mirror four feet wide and five feet nine inches high, bright on both faces, in which a man standing before it appeared inverted, and by which, holding the mirror to the heart, one could see the stomach and entrails plainly, while a woman of lewd heart showed her gall distended and heart moved; the emperor often used it on his women and put to death those so revealed. The Record of Gleanings tells of a people of Wanqu arriving in a spiral "wave-skimming boat" and presenting the fire-stones of Mount Ran, and of the emperor, hearing them speak of the beginning of heaven and earth as if they had seen it, calling them gods and believing all the more in the arts of immortality. Such accounts belong to the lore of marvels and cannot be taken as history.

Great Works and the Exhaustion of the People

Soon after unification Qin repeatedly undertook vast construction; some works, such as the Great Wall and the Lingqu canal, benefited the realm, yet the productive forces suffered greatly, and by 216 BC a picul of grain sold for sixteen hundred cash. Excavation shows that the Epang Palace was never completed, only its foundation remaining, yet the preparation of materials for so vast a court alone consumed enormous resources; the emperor also reproduced around Xianyang more than two hundred and seventy palaces of the six states, linked by covered ways, at a cost in labour beyond reckoning. As to the burning of books, the works destroyed mostly existed in duplicate in the Xianyang Palace and among the people, but the precious historical records kept by the Zhou royal house had no copies and were lost forever; the "burial of the scholars" is a later phrase, the Records of the Grand Historian speaking of burying the adepts while also noting that "the scholars all recited and followed Confucius". These works and measures, added to the migrations, frontier garrisons and tours described above, formed the immediate background to the exhaustion of the people at the dynasty's end.

Personal Relations

• Father: King Zhuangxiang of Qin, Ying Zichu (Yiren).
• Mother: Zhao Ji, Imperial Empress Dowager.
• Grandfather: King Xiaowen of Qin, Ying Zhu (Lord Anguo).
• Grandmother: Lady Xia, Empress Dowager Xia.
• Adoptive grandmother: Lady Huayang, Empress Dowager Huayang.
• Great-grandfather: King Zhaoxiang of Qin, Ying Ji.
• Younger brother: Chengjiao, Lord of Chang'an.
• Sons: Fusu, Hu Hai (the Second Emperor of Qin), Jianglü, and Gao.
• Daughters: Princess Huayang and others; historical sources record several daughters, but most names are unknown.
• Lü Buwei: chancellor and Zhongfu; removed after the Lao Ai affair and later committed suicide by poison.
• Li Si: chancellor; assisted Qin Shi Huang in unifying the Six States and implementing the commandery-county system, then participated in the Shaqiu conspiracy after the emperor's death.
• Wei Liao: state commandant who proposed strategies for dividing the Six States.
• Wang Jian: leading general who commanded campaigns that destroyed Zhao and Chu.
• Wang Ben: son of Wang Jian, who commanded campaigns that destroyed Wei and Qi.
• Meng Tian: leading general who campaigned against the Xiongnu and worked on the Great Wall.
• Zhao Gao: Director of the Imperial Carriage Office, who launched the Shaqiu succession plot after Qin Shi Huang's death.
• Xu Fu: practitioner who went to sea with boys and girls in search of immortals.
• Lao Ai: favored companion of Empress Dowager Zhao Ji; launched a rebellion and was torn apart by chariots.
• Chengjiao: younger brother who rebelled during a campaign against Zhao and died at Tunliu.
• Zhang Liang: descendant of Han nobility who attempted to assassinate Qin Shi Huang at Bolangsha.
• Jing Ke: assassin from Yan sent by Crown Prince Dan of Yan to kill the king of Qin; the attempt failed and Jing Ke was killed.
• Gao Jianli: friend of Jing Ke who later tried unsuccessfully to strike Qin Shi Huang with a zhu instrument and was killed.
• Rulers of the Six States: King An of Han, King Qian of Zhao, King Jia of Wei, King Fuchu of Chu, King Xi of Yan, and King Jian of Qi.
• With Li Si: Li Si was one of Qin Shi Huang's most important civil ministers and played a major role in the standardization of writing and the commandery-county system. The source states that Qin Shi Huang's final edict ordered him to assist Fusu, but Li Si was later persuaded by Zhao Gao to participate in the Shaqiu conspiracy.
• With Wang Jian: Wang Jian was one of the generals most trusted by Qin Shi Huang. Before the campaign against Chu, Qin Shi Huang personally went to Pinyang to ask him to return to service, and Wang Jian then led 600,000 troops to destroy Chu.
• With Meng Tian: Meng Tian was one of the generals most trusted by Qin Shi Huang in his later years, commanding 300,000 troops on the northern frontier before later being forced to commit suicide.

Historical Assessment

Qin Period and Contemporary Assessments

• Qin official inscriptions praised Qin Shi Huang with phrases describing the emperor's glorious achievements, the unification of the realm, and enduring virtue, and represented the unified world as imperial territory while placing his accomplishments above those of the Three August Ones and Five Emperors.
• Qin court scholars and officials described him as having raised righteous armies, punished violent enemies, pacified the realm, organized the world into commanderies and counties, and unified laws and ordinances; they claimed that his achievements had never existed since high antiquity and exceeded those of the Five Emperors.
• By the late Qin, popular criticism portrayed him as greedy, violent, and tyrannical; the uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang appealed to the slogan that “the realm has long suffered under Qin.”

Han Period

• Jia Yi's Discourse on the Faults of Qin argued that Qin failed because it did not practice benevolence and righteousness after the balance between conquest and defense had changed, and treated harshness toward the people as a root cause of collapse.
• Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian described Qin Shi Huang as believing his achievements surpassed the Five Emperors and his territory exceeded that of the Three Kings, while also criticizing him as hard, severe, deeply suspicious, deciding affairs through law and lacking benevolence and humane righteousness.
• Ban Gu's Book of Han held that Qin policy did not change after unification but instead intensified harsh punishments and laws, causing the realm to rebel.
• The early Han thinker Lu Jia summarized the lesson of Qin's fall in the Xinyu: Qin did not lack the desire to govern, but failed because its measures were violent toward the people and punishment was carried to extremes.

Tang and Song Periods

• Liu Zongyuan's Tang essay On Feudalism praised the commandery-county system and argued that the beginnings of a more public political order arose when Qin abolished enfeoffment and established commanderies and counties, giving a positive assessment of Qin Shi Huang's institutional innovation.
• Du Mu's Tang Rhapsody on Epang Palace summarized Qin's fall with the argument that the Six States destroyed themselves and Qin destroyed itself, criticizing Qin Shi Huang's extravagant excess.
• Su Shi of the Song acknowledged Qin Shi Huang's achievement in swallowing up the Warring States and embracing all under heaven while criticizing the harshness of taxation and the burden of corvée labor.
• Zhu Xi of the Song criticized Qin Shi Huang for burning the Songs and Documents, degrading scholars, relying on law, and emphasizing severe punishment, and judged that his lack of virtue led to the dynasty's fall.

Ming and Qing Periods

• Li Zhi of the Ming called Qin Shi Huang “the one emperor for the ages” in Cangshu, praising his unification and institution-building and writing that with the First Emperor's appearance and Li Si as his chancellor, an old world was overturned.
• Wang Shizhen of the Ming questioned the claim that Lü Buwei was Ying Zheng's biological father and regarded it as later slander.
• Zhang Xuecheng of the Qing, in Wenshi Tongyi, praised Qin Shi Huang for establishing laws and institutions that served as models for later ages.
• Gu Yanwu of the Qing, in Rizhilu, attributed Qin's fall to excessively urgent legalism and criticized rule through severe punishments and harsh laws.

Modern Assessments

• Liang Qichao described Qin Shi Huang as China's “first truly active ruler,” while also criticizing his autocracy and violence; he argued that the fault of Qin Shi Huang lay in despotism rather than in unification itself.
• Qian Mu's Outline of National History credited Qin Shi Huang's standardization of script, currency, weights, and measures with laying foundations for Chinese cultural unity, while criticizing excessively harsh law and excessive mobilization of the population.
• Lü Simian's History of Qin and Han affirmed the achievement of unifying the Six States and the realm while arguing that policy was overly hasty and caused widespread suffering.
• Jian Bozan's History of Qin and Han described Qin Shi Huang as one of the outstanding figures in Chinese history and argued that his unification opened a new era.
• Works by Li Kaiyuan such as The Collapse of Qin reconsider Qin Shi Huang from institutional and political history, arguing that unification and institutional construction laid foundations for more than two thousand years of Chinese political development.