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35-567: In 235 BCE, after being implicated in a scandal involving the Queen Dowager Zhao (Ying Zheng's mother) and her illicit lover Lao Ai , Lü Buwei was stripped of his posts and titles and was banished to the remote Shu region in the south of Qin. While in exile, Lü Buwei committed suicide by consuming poison. Apart from his political career, Lü Buwei is also known for sponsoring the Lüshi Chunqiu , an encyclopaedic compendium of

70-460: A 13-year-old Ying Zheng succeeded him, while Lü Buwei continued serving as a chancellor ( 相國 ) and regent to the young king. As the chancellor and regent, Lü Buwei dominated the Qin government and military. He invited famous scholars from all over China to Xianyang , the Qin capital, where they compiled the Lüshi Chunqiu ( Lü's Spring and Autumn [Annals] ), an encyclopedic compendium of the ideas of

105-463: A royal hostage. When Lü Buwei was trading in Handan , the capital of Zhao, he met Yiren and said, "This is a rare piece of merchandise that should be saved for later." The Zhan Guo Ce recorded a story about Lü Buwei deciding to switch his career from business to politics. On returning home, he said to his father, "What is the profit on investment that one can expect from plowing fields?" "Ten times

140-423: A servant in the harem." The queen dowager therewith covertly gave a generous bribe to the officer charged with castrations to falsely sentence him and to pluck out his eyebrows and beard to make him appear a eunuch. As a result, he was made a servant of the queen dowager. The Queen Dowager fell in love with Lao Ai and had him enfeoffed as the "Marquis Changxin". After she became pregnant, he recklessly took control of

175-498: A son named Zheng; the historian Sima Qian , ill-disposed towards the first emperor, claimed that the pregnancy was especially long and that the child was actually Lü's. The couple were living at the time in Handan , the capital of Zhao, where Yiren was a hostage; when Qin laid siege to the city, Lü was able to bribe the prince's way out of town but Lady Zhao and her infant son were forced to hide among her family. Thanks to Lü's intervention and diplomacy, Prince Yiren subsequently ascended

210-415: A wheel of paulownia wood and walk about, making certain that the queen dowager would hear about it to entice her. The queen dowager did hear about it and consequently secretly desired to obtain him. Lü Buwei thereupon introduced Lao Ai to her. Deviously ordering someone to accuse Lao Ai of a crime punishable by castration, Lü also privately told the queen dowager, "If we can fake the castration, we can make him

245-511: Is home to the main campus of Northwest A&F University (NWAFU), one of the world's top universities in agriculture science related fields, and a member of " Project 985 " club which is an organization of 39 reputable universities in China. Xianyang was among the capital city's environs during the Western Zhou dynasty , and was made the capital of the state of Qin in 350 BC during

280-587: The 2010 census . It has a total area of 10,213 square kilometers (3,943 sq mi). Xianyang is the seat of the Xi'an Xianyang International Airport , the main airport serving Xi'an and the largest airport in Northwest China , and one of the 40 busiest airports in the world. Xianyang is one of the top 500 cities in the world by scientific research outputs, as tracked by the Nature Index . It

315-544: The Hundred Schools of Thought . The Shiji says that Lady Zhao (who became the Queen Dowager after Ying Zheng ascended the throne) pursued many illicit sexual activities, and Lü Buwei, fearing that discovery would cause disaster to befall him, secretly sought a man with a large penis, Lao Ai [ 嫪毐 ], whom he made his retainer. Sometimes he would have music performed and order Lao Ai to put his penis through

350-640: The Qin dynasty , some alleged stories (for example, Lü's private thoughts and conversations) can be discounted. Note that some of the following English translations come from John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel's scholarly study of the Lüshi Chunqiu . Lü Buwei's biography in the Shiji mentioned that he was from the Wey state and he became a successful travelling merchant earning "thousands of measures of gold". In 267 BCE,

385-612: The Warring States period before becoming the capital of China during the short-lived Qin dynasty . Because the city lay south of the Jiuzong Mountains and north of the Wei River – both sunlight-rich ( yang ) orientations – it was named "Xianyang", meaning "fully yang ". Under Duke Xiao of Qin 's reign, minister Shang Yang designed Xianyang and in 350 BC organized the relocation of Qin's administration from

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420-534: The "First Emperor", the queen-dowager was already deceased. She was posthumously promoted as Empress Dowager ( Chinese : 帝 太 后 ; pinyin : Dì Tàihòu ; Jyutping : Dai3 Taai3 hau6 ). She was buried with King Zhuangxiang at Zhiyang. In the manga and anime Kingdom , she was described and introduced as a beautiful dancing girl and Lu Buwei's lover, before she was engaged to Zhuangxiang. After getting stranded in Handan and giving birth to Zheng, she

455-482: The Han literati. They considered Qin and its unification of China an unmitigated evil. So Lü was in their eyes a parvenu and a fraud whose schemes had made possible Qin's evil. He was a baleful figure, richly deserving of condemnation and eminently worthy of ridicule and calumny. Queen Dowager Zhao Zhao Ji ( Chinese : 趙 姬 ; lit. 'Consort Zhao'; c.  280 –228 BC), personal name unknown,

490-487: The Qin government. The Shuoyuan mentioned: Lao Ai had sole power over the affairs of state and grew increasingly arrogant and extravagant. The high officials and honoured ministers of government all drank and gambled with him. Once when he got drunk, he began to speak belligerently. In a provocative fashion, eyes glaring with anger, he bellowed, "I am the stepfather of the emperor. How dare some wretch oppose me!" One of those with whom he had quarrelled ran to report this to

525-481: The Qin throne, becoming known to history by his posthumous name King Zhuangxiang. When King Zhuangxiang died in 247 BC, Crown Prince Zheng ascended the throne and Lady Zhao became the Queen Dowager . Sima Qian claimed she continued her affair with Lü Buwei but, facing exposure and persecution, he gave her a man named Lao Ai disguised as a eunuch . The couple produced two illegitimate children. After Lao Ai

560-563: The Queen Dowager and ordered the two sons she secretly had with Lao Ai to be put into sacks and beaten to death. Lü Buwei was implicated in the incident and was stripped of his posts and titles and banished to the remote Shu region in the south of Qin. Lü Buwei feared eventual execution so he committed suicide in 235 BCE by consuming poison. As a result of the Lao Ai affair, Ying Zheng removed power from most of Lü Buwei's retainers and followers (one notable exception being Li Si ) and restored it to

595-671: The Wei River. He continued with the theme of earth as the mirror of heaven building a network of 300 palaces in the Wei valley connected by elevated roads. In 212 BC, he built the Epang Palace ( 阿房宮 ; Ēpánggōng ). Shortly after the First Emperor's death in 210 BC revolts erupted. At the beginning of December 207 BC, the last Qin emperor Ziying surrendered to rebel leader Liu Bang , who entered Xianyang peacefully without harming

630-483: The benefits can be passed on to future generations. I propose to go serve Prince Yiren of Qin who is a hostage in Zhao and resides in the city of Jiao." Using bribes and machinations, Lü Buwei arranged for Yiren to return to Qin and successfully persuaded Lady Huayang to adopt Yiren as her son, thereby making Yiren the heir apparent to Lord Anguo. Lady Huayang renamed Yiren to "Zichu" ( 子楚 ; lit. "son of Chu") because she

665-436: The center of politics, economy and culture of the Qin empire. Noble families were compelled to move into Xianyang, and the realm's weapons were gathered in the city to be melted and cast into twelve towering statues. The Emperor had a lavish mausoleum built near the capital, complete with his Terracotta Army . This and other large undertakings diverted enormous levels of manpower and resources away from agriculture. Coupled with

700-627: The death of King Zhaoxiang in 251 BCE, Lord Anguo was enthroned and became historically known as "King Xiaowen", but he died three days after his coronation in 250 BCE. Zichu succeeded his father and became historically known as " King Zhuangxiang ". King Zhuangxiang appointed Lü Buwei as his chancellor ( 相國 ; or prime minister) and enfeoffed him as "Marquis Wenxin" ( 文信侯 ) with a taxable fief covering 100,000 households in Luoyang . While in office, Lü Buwei oversaw Qin's military campaigns against neighboring states. When King Zhuangxiang died in 247 BCE,

735-423: The emperor [Ying Zheng], who was outraged. Ying Zheng learnt that Lao Ai was not really a eunuch, and had plotted with the Queen Dowager to make their illegitimate son become successor. In 238 BCE, Lao Ai launched a revolt in an attempt to seize power from Ying Zheng, but the rebellion was crushed and Lao Ai was executed along with three generations of his relatives. Ying Zheng stripped his mother of her position as

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770-452: The first son of King Zhaoxiang of the Qin state died, so King Zhaoxiang named his second son, Lord Anguo , as his new heir apparent. Lord Anguo promoted his concubine, Lady Huayang ( 華陽夫人 ), who was childless, to the status of his primary spouse. Lord Anguo had over twenty sons. Among them, Yiren , who ranked somewhere in the middle in terms of age, was sent to the Zhao state to serve as

805-453: The future First Emperor of Qin. In the West, we would regard Lü as a merchant-prince, a patron of culture and literature, an eminent statesman and wise counsellor, a kind of Medici prince who influenced not merely Florence and Italy, but all of European civilization. But in China the facts of Lü's life, together with the fact that he was from the despised merchant class, condemned Lü in the eyes of

840-540: The hereditary Qin aristocracy. After Lü Buwei's death, the Lüshi Chunqiu fell out of favour with the Qin government, but was resurrected by the Han dynasty later. Knoblock and Riegel describe the Western and Chinese historical perspectives of Lü Buwei as follows: Lü engineered the succession of a minor prince to the throne of Qin; and when that prince died after a few months on the throne, Lü became regent for his young son,

875-539: The ideas of the Hundred Schools of Thought that was published in 239 BCE. The primary sources of information about Lü Buwei date from the first century BCE: Sima Qian 's Shiji ( Records of the Grand Historian ), and Liu Xiang 's Zhan Guo Ce ( Strategies of the Warring States ) and Shuoyuan ( 說苑 , Garden of Stories ). Since these three Han dynasty texts openly criticise both Lü Buwei and

910-413: The investment," replied his father. "And the return on investment in pearls and jades is how much?" "A hundredfold." "And the return on investment from establishing a ruler and securing the state would be how much?" "It would be incalculable." "Now if I devoted my energies to labouring in the fields, I would hardly get enough to clothe and feed myself; yet if I secure a state and establish its lord,

945-529: The locals. However, Liu Bang was forced to hand the city over to another more ruthless rebel leader, Xiang Yu , whose army greatly outnumbered Liu Bang's. Xiang Yu then killed Ziying and burned Xianyang in 206 BC, destroying the sole surviving copies of several banned books that were kept in the royal library. In 202 BC, after defeating Xiang Yu in Battle of Gaixia and ending the Chu-Han contention , Liu Bang

980-564: The old capital Yueyang to the new city, which was then the capital for over 140 years. It was located in the modern day Shaanxi province on the northern bank of the Wei River , on the opposite side of which Liu Bang would later build the Han dynasty capital of Chang'an once he became emperor. In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang eliminated all six other warring states to establish the first centralized empire in Chinese history . Xianyang became

1015-634: The series Qin Dynasty Epic . Xianyang Xianyang ( Chinese : 咸阳 ; pinyin : Xiányáng ) is a prefecture-level city in central Shaanxi province, situated on the Wei River a few kilometers upstream (west) from the provincial capital of Xi'an . Once the capital of the Qin dynasty , it is now integrated into the Xi'an metropolitan area, one of the main urban agglomerations in northwestern China , with more than 7.17 million inhabitants. Its built-up area, consisting of 2 urban districts (Qindu and Weicheng), had 945,420 inhabitants at

1050-464: The state's repressive measures on the population, these factors eventually led to the fall of the Qin dynasty and with it the original city of Xianyang. Qin Shi Huang expanded Xianyang beyond the walls. Then he built replicas of the palaces of all the conquered states along the Wei River. In 220 BC, he built Xin Palace ( 新城 ; Xīnchéng ) and later renamed it Wei Palace ( 渭城 ; Wèichéng ), named after

1085-422: Was cold to her son, to the point of sadism. She escaped after her son and joined the court as a dowager. She knew Lao Ai due to Lu's schemes and had children with him. In the aftermath of her attempt at a coup, she was imprisoned and her children with Lao Ai were secretly banished instead of killed. She is portrayed by Wu Jinyan in the Chinese television series The Legend of Haolan (2019) and by Zhu Zhu in

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1120-587: Was crowned the emperor of the newly established Han dynasty , and he built a new capital across the Wei River merely miles from the ruins of old Xianyang and named this new city Chang'an . The Han-era town of Anling ( 安陵 , tomb of emperor Hui ) was located nearby and houses some of the Han dynasty's mausoleums. From the end of the 1950s until the middle of the 1990s, archeologists discovered and excavated numerous Qin era sites in Xianyang, including palaces, workshops and tombs. Chinese Bureau of Statistics lists

1155-503: Was from the Chu state . The Shiji mentioned that Lü Buwei had a beautiful "dancing girl", Lady Zhao , in his household, with whom Zichu became so infatuated that he asked for her. Lü Buwei reluctantly presented Lady Zhao to Zichu, and they returned to Handan. In 259 BCE, Lady Zhao gave birth to a son, Ying Zheng, who eventually unified China under the Qin dynasty and became historically known as " Qin Shi Huang " (First Emperor of Qin). After

1190-509: Was killed during an attempted coup d'état , the queen was imprisoned in her palace and the children were killed. In 237 BC, a Qi man named Mao Jiao persuaded King Zheng to welcome the Queen Dowager back from Yong to Ganquan Palace in Xianyang , for fear that other regional states would turn against the Qin if they heard that King Zheng exiled his own mother. By 221 BC, when King Zheng had unified China and become known as Shi Huangdi ,

1225-470: Was the wife of King Zhuangxiang of Qin and the mother of Qin Shi Huang , the first emperor of China . Upon her marriage, she was the Lady Zhao ; after the king's death, she was the Queen Dowager ( Chinese : 太 后 ). The daughter of a prominent family of Zhao , she was a concubine of the merchant Lü Buwei , who gave her to his protégé, Prince Yiren of Qin . A year later, she gave birth to

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