Lü Buwei facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lü Buwei
Chancellor of Qin
In office 251 BCE – 235 BCE
Monarch	King Zhuangxiang of Qin Ying Zheng
Succeeded by	Li Si
Personal details
Born	291 BCE
Died	235 BCE (aged 55–56)
Occupation	Merchant, politician

Lü Buwei (291–235 BCE) was a Chinese merchant and politician of the Qin state during the Warring States period. Originally an influential merchant from the Wey (衛) state, Lü Buwei met and befriended King Zhuangxiang of Qin, who was then a minor prince serving as a hostage in the Zhao state. Through bribes and machinations, Lü Buwei succeeded in helping King Zhuangxiang become the heir apparent to the Qin throne. In 249 BCE, after King Zhuangxiang ascended the throne following the death of his father, King Xiaowen, he appointed Lü Buwei as his chancellor (相國) and ennobled him as "Marquis Wenxin" (文信侯). After King Zhuangxiang's death in 247 BCE, Lü Buwei became the chancellor and regent to King Zhuangxiang's young son, Ying Zheng, who later became Qin Shi Huang (First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty).

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 took his own life by drinking poison.

Apart from his political career, Lü Buwei is also known for sponsoring the Lüshi Chunqiu, an encyclopaedic compendium of the ideas of the Hundred Schools of Thought that was published in 239 BCE.

Life

Lü Buwei

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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 the Hundred Schools of Thought.

The Shiji says that Lady Zhao (who became the Queen Dowager after Ying Zheng ascended the throne) fell in love with Lao Ai, who then recklessly took control of the Qin government.

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 the Queen Dowager and ordered the two sons she secretly had with Lao Ai to be murdered. 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 took his own life in 235 BCE by consuming poison. As a result, Ying Zheng removed power from most of Lü Buwei's retainers and followers (one notable exception being Li Si) and restored it to 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, 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 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.