Volume One: The Decline of the Emperor's Authority

This was an age of sweeping change. The long history of this ancient land was written in exclamation points.

In the waning days of the Xia Dynasty, China’s first dynasty, the feudal lord Tang of Shang led his great armies to a decisive victory over Jie of Xia at Mingtiao, founding the Great Shang Dynasty, China’s second. Legend says that among the descendants of Qi, the mythical figure born when a lively and alluring maiden of the Rong tribe swallowed the egg of the divine black bird of destiny, was Tang of Shang himself, once a vassal of the Xia. Having established the Great Shang Dynasty, he at last enjoyed boundless power and supreme glory.

Yet every dynasty has its rise and fall. Six hundred years later, the throne of Shang passed into the hands of King Zhou of Shang, Di Xin, a man of unrestrained luxury and savage cruelty, despised by all under heaven and therefore given the posthumous title of Zhou by later generations. King Wen of Zhou could be called a sage ruler comparable to Tang of Shang. At the Battle of Muye, King Wu of Zhou, the son of King Wen, defeated the descendant of Tang of Shang, King Zhou of Shang, and founded the Great Zhou Dynasty. The Zhou Dynasty endured two ages, the Western Zhou and the Eastern Zhou, and in the Western Zhou its decline began because of one event.

On a certain day in the eleventh year of King You of Zhou, in 771 B.C., Haojing, the capital of the Western Zhou, once a place of peace and joy in the eyes of the world, had now fallen into the chaos of war. Men and women, old and young alike, wept as the common people, bewildered and panicked, tried to escape the iron hooves of the Rong tribes and save their lives. The signal fires on the watchtowers of Mount Li outside the city blazed fiercely, and thick smoke drifted slowly into the distance. Yet the feudal armies that should have rushed to defend the king at the sight of those beacons were nowhere to be seen. Only a few beacon towers stood helplessly alone in the cold wind, so desolate and timeworn. Why had the feudal lords not come to the king’s aid? It was all because King You of Zhou, seeking to make a beauty smile, had set the beacons alight as a jest to summon the lords. That beauty was Bao Si. Thus arose the saying of “lighting the beacons to amuse the feudal lords.” The joke King You played on the lords later became reality. The Rong people invaded Haojing, the Son of Heaven was cast into dust, and when Duke Wu of Zheng escorted King Ping of Zhou eastward to Luoyang, the chronicles turned a new page and the Eastern Zhou began. From then on, rites, music, campaigns, and punishment issued from the feudal lords; the Zhou Son of Heaven, though still nominally lord of all beneath heaven, had ushered China into a new age of war and turmoil.

This was an era of ceaseless killing and conquest. It was also an age that produced many heroes. Among the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn period, the first to dominate the feudal states was Duke Huan of Qi, followed by Duke Zhuang of Chu, Duke Mu of Qin, Duke Wen of Jin, and Duke Xiang of Song. These wise and ambitious rulers all longed for the rise of their states. Thus came so many famous stories: the friendship of Guan and Bao, the ambition to gaze upon the Central Plains from the Heavens’ highest seat, the adoption of nomadic attire and mounted archery, and the recruiting of worthies at the Golden Terrace.

At the same time, many gifted statesmen and generals appeared, such as Shang Yang and Bai Qi of Qin.

There were also Li Mu, Guan Zhong, Fan Li, Lord Mengchang, and Lord Pingyuan of the other states, and especially Zhang Yi and Su Qin, the two men of the school of diplomacy and statecraft who studied under the same master yet later went their separate ways.

How many remarkable figures were born in that age. Take Qu Yuan, for instance, who lamented on the banks of the Miluo River: “Though all the world is filthy, I alone am pure; though all men are drunk, I alone am awake.” To be born out of season, and to carry vast ambition yet never find it fulfilled, was the greatest sorrow of his life.

Looking back on the history of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, someone once said: there was a time when the people of China lived and moved forward with burning blood, fearless and unrestrained, in a life of incomparable splendor.

This book, compiled from my search through many volumes, opens a gateway for you into the history of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, allowing you to better understand the national history of our country.