A Thousand Pieces of Gold: A Memoir of China’s Past Through its Proverbs

Prince Zi Chu knelt on the ground and kowtowed to Lü. Then he said, ‘Should you succeed in making me King of Qin, I shall rule my kingdom together with you.’

A few months later, Lü returned from Xianyang in the best of spirits and immediately sought out Zi Chu. ‘Congratulations!’ he began. ‘I met Princess Hua Yang’s sister and asked her to present some gifts to the princess, telling her that they were from you. Then I said to her, “King Zao is getting old. When he dies, your sister’s husband Prince An Guo will be king. At present, Prince An Guo loves your sister deeply even though she is barren. Princess Hua Yang is a beautiful woman but I have heard that when a woman ages, her husband’s love vanishes along with her beauty. And since she has no son, there will be no one left to protect her after Prince An Guo’s death. Her position will become more and more precarious as she gets older and feebler. Who will be there to look after her at that stage of her life?”

‘I could see that she was getting interested. Now I brought out the jewellery and said, “All these jewels were specially purchased for Princess Hua Yang by Prince Zi Chu. Please give them to her. Prince Zi Chu is a worthy and filial son and loves your sister like a second mother. Life is hard for him. The people of Qin have largely forgotten Prince Zi Chu, and he has languished in the foreign state of Zhao as a hostage for over five years. In spite of this, he remains good-hearted and honest. What a fine young man! He is worthy and filial and everyone in Zhao holds him in the highest esteem!

“When I think of it, since Princess Hua Yang has no son of her own, why doesn’t she adopt Zi Chu as her heir and persuade Prince An Guo to make Zi Chu his successor? This way, your sister, you and your family will always be protected and honoured, even after Prince An Guo’s death. When Zi Chu ascends the throne, Princess Hua Yang will be the Queen Mother. Even after her death, Prince Zi Chu will honour your sister’s memory and the memory of her family. This is called yi yan er wan shi zhi li (speaking one sentence that results in ten thousand generations of gain).”

‘I’m glad to report that after lengthy discussions with her sister, Princess Hua Yang became convinced of the truth of my advice. She waited for the appropriate moment and praised you to your father, saying what a worthy man you are. Then with tears in her eyes, she begged your father to allow her to adopt you as her son and set you up as his rightful heir so that her own future would be secure. Your father gave his consent and even had a jade tally engraved with words to this effect. He broke the tally in two and gave one half to Princess Hua Yang, retaining the other half for himself. This means that you are now your father’s rightful heir. Congratulations!’

‘What you have done is incredible!’ Prince Zi Chu exclaimed. ‘But why did my father not make a public announcement that I am now his heir?’

‘How can he do that? Remember, your grandfather is still very much alive and sits on the throne at this very moment. Your father is only the crown prince, not yet the king. But the fact that he had a jade tally engraved to this effect and divided it with Princess Hua Yang means that he has made a solemn promise. Here! I almost forgot! Your father and Princess Hua Yang also asked me to be your tutor and entrusted me to bring you all these rich gifts. Just look at them! I have no doubt that all the noble lords in Handan will soon look at you with different eyes and your fame will spread far and wide from now on.’

‘I shall always be grateful to you,’ Zi Chu exclaimed. ‘How can I ever repay you?’

‘Don’t even think of it!’ Merchant Lü replied. ‘Why don’t you come to my house tonight to celebrate? I have many concubines who can entertain us. Tonight, they will sing for us while we dine.’

Over the next five years, the two men became best friends and spent much time together. Though Merchant Lü had many concubines, he was particularly fond of one named Zhao Ji who was very beautiful and had great skill in dancing. One day in 260 BC, Prince Zi Chu happened to catch sight of her. As she danced and sang, Prince Zi Chu could not take his eyes off her. Throughout the dinner, he thought of her. Finally, when it was time for him to leave, he stood up and proposed a toast.

‘I drink to your long life!’ Prince Zi Chu said to Merchant Lü. ‘You have done so much for me. May I ask for one more favour?’

‘Of course! Whatever I have also belongs to you. Just ask and it will be yours.’

‘In the last five years, I have been to your house many times and seen many of your concubines,’ Prince Zi Chu began. ‘Even though they are all very pretty, I have never been tempted. But tonight, I have met someone who is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Please, will you give Zhao Ji to me?’

At first, Lü was outraged. He thought of lashing out, but instead held his tongue, took a long drink of wine and thought deeply. By now, he had invested all his wealth in Prince Zi Chu and could no longer afford to break with him. Unbeknown to anyone else, Zhao Ji had just told him that morning that she was pregnant. The thought occurred to him that if they concealed her pregnancy and Prince Zi Chu married her, his son would one day be King of Qin.

He forced a laugh and said to Prince Zi Chu, ‘I would not do it for anyone else but you! You are my best friend and I can refuse you nothing. Give her a few days to pack her belongings and I will send her to you.’

Zhao Ji successfully concealed her pregnancy from Prince Zi Chu. When she delivered in the next year, Prince Zi Chu assumed the child was his and promoted Zhao Ji to the level of a proper wife. He named the boy Prince Zheng.

Two years later, hostilities between Qin and Zhao escalated to such an extent that the Qin army laid siege to the city of Handan. This infuriated the men of Zhao and they wanted to kill Prince Zi Chu. With the help of Merchant Lü, the prince successfully bribed the officers acting as his guards with 600 catties of gold and the two friends managed to escape. They made their way outside the city gates of Handan to the Qin army and were escorted back to Qin.

Back in Xianyang, Prince Zi Chu was hailed as a war hero. Since his adoptive mother Princess Hua Yang was originally from Chu, Merchant Lü urged Prince Zi Chu to dress in the costume worn by Chu noblemen when he went to pay his respects to her and his father, Prince An Guo. Princess Hua Yang was very much impressed by this thoughtful gesture and advised Prince An Guo to grant Zi Chu even greater riches.

Meanwhile, in Handan, Prince Zi Chu’s wife Zhao Ji, and son Prince Zheng, were in a vulnerable position. Over the years however, through the assistance of Merchant Lü, Zhao Ji’s parents had become wealthy in their own right. They paid heavy bribes for Zhao Ji and Prince Zheng to go into hiding. Mother and son lived quietly by themselves for a number of years close to the home of another royal hostage, a prince from Yan. This prince had a baby son, Prince Dan, who was approximately the same age as Prince Zheng. The two princelings often played together and developed a close friendship as they grew into boyhood.

In reading Shiji, I am repeatedly struck by the extensive role played by family ties, close friendships and personal commitments throughout the course of Chinese history, leading to consequences undreamt of by the perpetrators.

The train of events that followed has a striking parallel in our own time. During the 1940s in China, almost all the leaders of the Communist party were close friends of Mao Zedong. They actively participated in the promotion of his image, claiming him to be a qi huo ke ju (precious commodity worth cherishing), and ‘the highest ideal of mankind’. In deifying Mao, they rode on the coattails of his success and developed a total and blind commitment to him.

After driving out the Nationalists in 1949, Mao became more powerful than any previous monarch had been. To challenge him was to dispute the party and the legitimacy of its rule. In Chinese folklore, there is a mythical character named Zhong Kui who possesses the power to expel ghosts and evil spirits. Mao alluded to this figure when describing his own role: ‘The Communist party needed someone to get rid of Chiang Kaishek and the other bad elements in order to personify its claim to power. I became the party’s Zhong Kui of the twentieth century.’

As the years went by, Mao identified more and more with his own press. Twenty years later, the idealistic and fiery revolutionary had turned into an autocratic, paranoid and frustrated old despot clinging desperately to his throne. At one point in the early 1960s, he was heard lamenting that his comrades treated him with the same attention paid to the corpse at a funeral.

Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to reassert his dominance, purging his most loyal colleagues, many of whom had been with him for over thirty years. These were the same men who had originally deified Mao in the 1940s. Because of their assiduous promotion of Mao, they had helped to create the Mao dynasty, and identified Mao so closely with the Chinese Communist party that the two became synonymous in the eyes of the Chinese people. Never did they expect that the ‘precious commodity’ they had helped transform into a demigod would turn against them and plunge the country into chaos.

Although China still considers herself to be a Communist country, it is a very different sort of Communism from that envisaged by Marx, Engels, Lenin or even Mao himself. Since Mao’s death in 1976, China has been radically transformed culturally, economically and politically. Some consider China to be Communist in name only, retaining that label solely because of the country’s Maoist legacy.

Even today, criticising Mao for his actions during the Cultural Revolution is still perceived as challenging the Communist party’s right to rule. This issue remains unresolved and continues to haunt the present leadership.

(#ulink_834f9af8-b95a-5b00-a78e-dd9746f66754)Handan Xue Bu is a proverb taken from the book Zhuangzi, written around 310 BC. The proverb describes a person who loses his original self by slavishly imitating the ways of others.

3 (#ulink_0efe0ea9-b21e-53be-b115-9a28385d2d0b)

One Written Word is Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold (#ulink_0efe0ea9-b21e-53be-b115-9a28385d2d0b)

YI ZI QIAN JING

FOR THE FIRST TEN YEARS of my life, my Aunt Baba and I shared a room. We knew in our hearts that we were both viewed with contempt by the rest of our family, even though we never dared verbalise this, not even to ourselves. I was the lowest of the low because I was a girl and the youngest of five stepchildren. In addition, everyone considered me to be a source of bad luck because my mother had died giving birth to me. My Aunt Baba was also despised because she was a spinster and financially dependent on my father.

Aunt Baba was always like a mother to me. After the death of my grandmother, we grew even closer. She paid the greatest attention to everything about me: my health, my appearance and my personality. Most of all, she cared about my education and checked my homework every evening. Whenever I got a good report card, she would lock it in her safe-deposit box and wear the key around her neck, as if my grades were so many precious jewels, impossible to replace.

In those days, I already loved to write. On the evenings when I had no homework, I used to scribble kung fu stories in a special notebook and would bring them to school the next morning. It thrilled me to show my stories to my giggling classmates and watch them pass my writing illicitly from desk to desk during class.

When she was in a good mood, Aunt Baba read them too. She would pour herself a cup of tea, put on her glasses and chuckle over my narratives. If she came across one she particularly liked, she would smile and say, ‘Yi zi qian jing!’ (one written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold), meaning ‘a literary gem!’

It was only when I was doing research for this book that I learned the origin of this proverb. The phrase was first used in unique circumstances in 241 BC to describe a book of essays collected by the true father of the First Emperor of China — the wily and immensely rich merchant Lü Buwei.

In 251 BC, old King Zao of Qin finally passed away after a reign of fifty-six years. His son, Crown Prince An Guo, succeeded him as King of Qin. Princess Hua Yang became Queen and Prince Zi Chu was officially named as Crown Prince. By that time, the political climate had changed so much that when Prince Zi Chu requested the return of his wife and son, the King of Zhao obliged by sending them to Qin under official escort. King An Guo was already fifty-one years old and ruled for only one year before succumbing to illness and dying too.

An Guo’s son, Prince Zi Chu became King of Qin. Merchant Lü Buwei was ecstatic that his dream of investing in a future king of Qin had been fulfilled. Far from forgetting his mentor, Prince Zi Chu made the ex-merchant his Prime Minister. Queen Hua Yang, whom Zi Chu had come to treat as a mother, was named Queen Dowager. The former courtesan Zhao Ji was named Queen of Qin and her son Prince Zheng became Crown Prince and successor to the throne.

As his father had predicted, Merchant Lü became richer and more powerful than he had ever thought possible. His financial reward was certainly greater than that which he might have reaped from any other investment. Zi Chu addressed him as ‘Brother’, ennobled him as a marquis and allowed him to keep the revenues of 100,000 households in Luoyang in Henan province. It was recorded that Lü Buwei employed 10,000 servants and engaged them in handicrafts, industry and commerce, thus further increasing his wealth.

After Zi Chu’s death from illness only three years later, thirteen-year-old Prince Zheng ascended the throne. He made Merchant Lü his regent as well as his Prime Minister and honoured him by giving him the title of zhong fu or ‘second father’.

Merchant Lü’s authority over the affairs of state was absolute during King Zheng’s teenage years. He resumed his sexual relationship with his former concubine, the beautiful Zhao Ji (now the Queen Mother), but kept it a secret from their son, the boy King. For the next eight years, Lü Buwei was the de facto ruler of Qin.

Ashamed of his merchant background, he emulated the practice of the four most renowned and cultured kings of that era (those of Zhao, Chu, Qi and Wei), by opening his home to visiting scholars regardless of their family background or origin. At the height of his fame and power, Merchant Lü maintained a household of three thousand guest scholars. Among them was the scholar Li Si, who had recently emigrated from the state of Chu. Merchant Lü introduced Li Si to King Zheng who took an instant liking to the well-educated scholar.

Merchant Lü assembled the best articles written by the scholars under his roof and compiled them into a book of 26 chapters, comprising 160 essays and 200,000 words. According to Shiji, ‘He claimed it to be an encyclopaedia of current knowledge, encompassing all matters pertaining to Heaven, the earth, natural phenomena, the past and the present.’

He entitled it Spring and Autumn Annals of the House of Lü, and had the words carved in stone and the tablets displayed at the city gate of Xianyang. One thousand pieces of gold were suspended above the text along with a notice proclaiming that the sum would be awarded to anyone who could improve the literary value of his book by adding or deleting a single word. Naturally, no one dared risk the displeasure of someone as powerful as the Prime Minister by challenging his writing. Merchant Lü’s 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.

As Zheng approached manhood, Merchant Lü became fearful that the boy King would discover his liaison with the Queen Mother. So he decided to distance himself and look for someone who would take his place in the bedroom. He searched about until he found a man named Lao Ai who had the reputation of being very well endowed, and made him his servant. Shiji tells us that in order to arouse the Queen Mother’s interest, Merchant Lü ordered Lao Ai to parade around with a cartwheel made of paulownia wood balanced on his phallus while sensual music was played. Hearing of this, the Queen Mother expressed a desire to meet the servant. To avoid a scandal, Merchant Lü disguised Lao Ai as a eunuch by plucking his beard and eye brows.

(#ulink_4e4099fd-45f8-5ba7-baec-5f17cac19d13) He then gave Lao Ai to Queen Zhao Ji as a servant in her private apartments. Lao Ai got along so well with the Queen Mother that they secretly had two sons together. Queen Zhao Ji lavished gifts upon her lover and referred all decisions to him. Ennobled as a marquis, he was assigned lands, built palaces, designated parks and hunting areas, and employed several thousand male servants. Many men approached Lao Ai hoping to attain government office.

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.