#Sima qian

[its-not-a-pen]

i love the hilarious eunuch ranking system by @welcometothejianghu so i decided to make one based on (mostly) REAL historical chinese enunchs!

in chronological order:

Warring States Period long story short, the PM is sleeping with the Empress Dowager, and he wants to extracate himself before her son (future Emperor Qin Shi Huang) gets old enough to find out. the PM finds her a suitable replacement, and the replacement is attached to a guy named Lao Ai. They pluck his beard and pass him off as a eunuch so he can sneak into the palace. Bing bang boom everyone's happy. This goes terribly wrong later, since Lao Ai tries to replace the emperor with his own kids and stages a failed coup. rest in pieces buddy...

it's very likely that Lao Ai was a ficticious character invented by Sima Qian, who will be appearing on this list later.

Qin Dynasty

Zhao Gao helped the first emperor of China conquer an empire, and administer it efficiently with his legal knowledge, but he also made the second emperor into a puppet, and weakened the empire for his own political gain. Max points of complexity, but you'd get more loyalty out of a coffee club punch card.

Before launching his soft coup, he decided to test the waters by bring in a deer and gaslighted the emperor by calling it a horse. the officials who were loyal to him called it a horse, and he executed the rest.

Han Dynasty Jiru, male favourite of Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang), the peasant scoundrel who became the founder of the Han Dynasty. look, if the emperor has a harem of hundreds of women and you manage to catch his attention, you max out in style points. simple as. for most of chinese history it was fairly common for high-ranking men, especially eunuchs, to wear make up like powder and rouge, but i decided to give Jiru some women's huadia as well, cause he's a baddie.

Jiru gets a bad rap for alledgely distracting the emperor from his duties, but lets be real, history is written by civil officials who have no shortage of professional jealousy and gender/sexuality related prejudice towards eunuchs, since they were the personal attendants of royalty and could exert a lot of influence. plus Liu Bang was already pissing in the hats of confucian scholars, most of the poor work ethic is on HIM. Jiru should get credit for making him marginally less of a troglodite.

all in all he didn't try any court intrigue so extra points for loyalty and complexity. free my man >:( he's just a Han dynasty Monica Lewinsky who got slutshamed by jealous coworkers >:(

Han Dynasty

meet the father of east asian history, sima qian. half the people on this list can owe their placement here thanks to his extremely though history books "records of the grand historian"

history at this time was mostly "creative writing" and sima qian attempted to give the practise more academic intergrety, he went out and personally interviewed people, tried to get primary sources, and got rid of most of the more fanstastical aspects. however, he was not without his biases and some texts can be seen as allegorical/veiled insults towards the Han Dynasty, especially towards Emperor Wu. unlike most of the people on this list, sima qian was from the gentry and castated later in life as a punishment for treason. he was implicated after trying to defend a friend, and could not pay the fine to commute his sentence. the gentlemen at the time were expected to die by suicide rather than live with such ignimony, but sima qian chose to live so he could finish writing the history book his father started. the "giant conspiracy" joke explained: the chinese word for penis is a homophone for "conspiracy".

[incorrectbcchina]

Sima Qian: I keep a protrait of His Majesty in my drawer. Whenever I face difficulties, I take it out and stare at the picture.

Sima Qian: And I tell myself: "If I survived this asshole, then I can survive anything."

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

historian by way of tumblr webcomic.

[ashy-ashy-ashy]

made a new chronicle for oath

[paganimagevault]

Sima Qian by unknown artist. This guy is one of the good sources on the various nomads and neighbors of China (including the Huns) during the Qin and Han dynasties.

"Emperor Wu repeatedly dispatched large military forces to the desert region in an attempt to capture the Xiongnu ruler, known by the title of Shanyu, or at least force him to acknowledge fealty to the Han. During one such expedition in 99 BC, a young military commander named Li Ling led a force of several thousand men in a daring raid deep into enemy territory, but after desperate fighting he was finally forced to surrender. Emperor Wu, who expected his military leaders to die in battle, was enraged when he learned of the surrender, and the other court officials united in condemnation of Li’s action. Only Sima Qian, who had known and admired Li Ling in the past, spoke out in his defense. For such temerity he was charged with attempting to deceive the ruler and handed over to the law officials for investigation, a process that involved imprisonment and torture. Eventually he was sentenced to undergo the penalty of castration. Customarily, a man of honor would commit suicide before submitting to such disgrace. But, as Qian explains in a letter to a friend translated in appendix 2 of this volume, he chose to suffer the shame of mutilation in order that he might finish the writing of his history. This price of completion, ghastly as it was, has assured him a place of honor among the world’s great historians."

-Sima, Qian. Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty. Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.

If anyone wants a more detailed understanding of what Sima Qian was forced to endure, South China Morning Post has an article on it: https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/2155959/forbidden-city/life/chapter_02.html

[professeur-stump]

Yen-ti voulut empiéter sur les droits des seigneurs; les seigneurs se réfugièrent tous auprès de Hien-yuen. Hien-yuen alors fit appel à toute son énergie et leva des soldats; il se rendit maître des cinq influences; il mit en terre les cinq semences; il fit du bien aux dix mille tribus et gouverna les quatre côtés. Il dressa des ours, des léopards, des panthères, des lynx et des tigres et il s’en servit lors de la bataille qu’il livra à Yen-ti dans la campagne de Pan-k’iuen. Il soutint trois combats et finit par avoir gain de cause.

(Se-ma Ts’ien, Mémoires historiques, Les cinq empereurs)

[falseandrealultravival]

Lao Tzu's "Destruction of the Ego" 2 (Essay)

(This is a dialogue between me and a certain woman.)

Real example(Continuing)

Me: Lao Tzu preached, "Only those who have extinguished their ego can be entrusted with the state." but there are certainly few examples of people who have practiced this. In China, Sima Qian, who appears in "Ri Ling" (Atsushi Nakajima), would be applicable. Though he was right,

Touched by the wrath of the absolute monarch Emperor Wu of Han, he was sentenced to be cut his male sex organ, which is harsher than the death penalty, and suffers a harsher life than death.

Even if you are thrown into the pit of despair and your pride as a controversialist is uprooted,

Having accomplished his task (compilation of the "History"), he "disappeared" when he was imprisoned, I can only say that he was forced to do so. However, he did not have much time left to become a politician after that.

In Japan, I think that Kantaro Suzuki, who ended the Pacific War, is doing a good job. While dealing well with the army, which refused to accept defeat, he was evaluated by those around him as ``a dull person,'' but when it comes to emergency, he can only be described as a completely different person. He took it to the end of the war in an unprecedented way. This person was from the navy and was almost killed in the 2.26 Incident. It is said that Suzuki's favorite book was "Lao Tzu". (!)　

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Takamori Saigo was exiled to an island two or three times, and even tried to commit suicide with a monk named Gessho. Yes, and there were many times when he was on the verge of death. It is appropriate to compare it to an "empty jar" or a "huge bell," and Ryoma Sakamoto said, "If you hit it softly, it will sound softly, and if you hit it hard, it will sound loudly." He must have been a charming man. Saigo must have had an excellent staff officer. It was also bad for him that the chief staff officer at the time of the Seinan War was the mere ``human slayer'' Toshiaki Kirino.

What the above three people have in common is that they have all encountered situations that they cannot do anything about on their own, and have internalized that experience. "None of them are religious persons."

[whats-in-a-sentence]

You's predecessors had set up watchtowers so that if the Rong attacked, drums and fires could warn the many lords, who would rush to the rescue with their retinues. Sima Qian says,

King You lit the beacons and beat the great drums. As the beacons were to be lit only when intruders drew near, the many lords all came. Upon their arrival, there were no intruders, thus Lady Bao Si laughed out loud. The king was pleased, so he lit the beacons several times. Afterwards, since this was not reliable, the many lords became more reluctant to come.

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris

[j-august]

Wang Yun said, "Centuries ago, Emperor Wu spared Sima Qian and employed him on the annals, with the result that many slanderous stories have been handed down to us. This is a trying period of great perplexity, and we dare not let a specious fellow like this wield his pen in criticism of those about the court of a youthful prince and abuse us as he will."

Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (trans. C.H. Brewitt-Taylor)

[reinaka42]

He passed the Serveperial Examination with the highest degree of Babygirl and was appointed Grand Cuntchellor in the capital of Slayzhou.

[romanceyourdemons]

[ID: an author listing reading “Xiu, Mo Xiang Tong /end ID]

my local library catalogue has given me a lot to ponder, regarding the nature and function of cataloguing. i don’t think i would have done it that way

[mqfx]

no clue what to title chapter 4 AKJSDFHALKDFJDF see i was planning on giving these chapters silly titles bc it's a deeply silly story but i started with the fucking art of war and the tao te ching i kind of have a pattern that needs to be upheld. sima qian baby where are you

[simayeeet]

this one is an exclusive for me in rarepair hell

sometimes you descend from heaven for the first time in thousands of years and not realize humans have more laws than you last remember

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

idk if he'd appreciate it, but i got a printout of sima qian to motivate me to finish writing my reports

[galatur]

Ok since you are kindly letting me be pedantic here: Lao Ai was the guy with the enormous dick. The queen was Queen Dowager Zhao.

I love that when the press asked ava gardner why she married frank sinatra scrawny ass she was just like yeah hes hung. Like a fucking horse

[professeur-stump]

Le prince héritier de Wei va combattre. Un homme demande à être reçu par lui. Il possède, dit-il, une recette qui, dans cent combats, donne cent fois la victoire. Introduit, il s'exprime à peu près ainsi (je résume) : Si vous êtes vainqueur et annexez un territoire, vous ne serez jamais que le roi de Wei; si vous êtes battu, vous perdrez Wei; « telle est ma recette pour remporter cent victoires dans cent combats ». Autrement dit, il est inutile de combattre pour agrandir un territoire.

(Marcel Granet, La pensée chinoise, note d'après : Mémoires historiques, Sseu-ma Ts'ien)