The Assassin's Story in Records of the Grand Historian (90BCE)

In this episode, we will read long Jing Ke's assassination of the first emperor of Qin, which is a classic of Chinese literature. We will first get to known the Qin history with Burton Watson's helpful introduction. After reading the plot, we will approach the significant critique on the plot offered by Andrew H. Plaks.

Recommended Readings:
Burton Waston, trans. Records of The Grand Historian
for aficionados in classical Chinese: Shiji(史記)
Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History
For aficionados of modern Chinese: 中国叙事学(Chinese Narratology) , 浦安迪(Andrew H. Plaks) 著，北京大学出版社，1996年

This episode owes its special thanks to Dr. Andrew H. Plaks at Princeton University who granted his permission to translate his work into English.

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Transcript

Hello, I'm Claire Hennessy. Today we will continue our exploration of Shiji written by Sima Qian, a Han Dynasty historian who is little known in the English speaking world, because a full translation of shiji in English has not yet been completed. Today we will read along Jing Ke's assassination of the first emperor of Qin, which is a classic of Chinese literature. We'll first get to know the Qin history with Burton Watson's helpful introduction. After reading the plot we'll approach the significant critique on the plot offered by Andrew H. Plaks, who's a noted a sinologist on Chinese narratology. Sima Qian's Shiji is respected as a model of biographical literature with high literary value and still stands as a textbook for the study of classical Chinese. His works were influential to Chinese writing, serving as ideal models for various types of prose within the new classical movement of the Tang-Song period. The great use of characterization and plotting also influenced the fiction writing, including the classical short stories of the middle and late medieval period, as well as the vernacular novel of the late imperial period. His influence was derived primarily from the following elements of his writing: his skillful depiction of historical characters, using details of their speech conversations and actions, his innovative use of informal, humorous and varied language, and the simplicity and conciseness of his style. Even the 20th century literary critic Lu Xun regarded shiji as the historians most perfect song, a Li Sao without rhyme in his outline of Chinese literary history.

According to Burton Watson, Sima Qian might have begun his account of the Qin Dynasty with his lineage, traced all the way back to the mythic five Emperor's who are set to begin the whole Chinese history. But most importantly, Sima Qian detailed at the Zhou history in order to trace Qin's origin. The Zhou was founded around a 1045 BC and had exercised effective control over a wide area of northern China during the early years of its rule, but after its capital was moved east to Luo Yang in 770 BC, it's power rapidly waned, and China was thereafter ruled by a number of feudal states that acknowledged only nominal fealty to the Zhou king, but in fact behaved as virtually independent political units. The Zhou royal house despite his political weakness continued in existence until its overthrow by the state of Qin in 256 BCE. Sima Qian might have therefore begun his account of the Qin Dynasty at that point, and still preserved a chronological continuity in his narrative. But as he makes clear in his remarks on Qin history, he was intensely interested in its origins in the history of a state or ruling family, not only in its period of the greatest glory, but also in the long centuries that preceded the era of flowering or in the actions of those earlier years, he believed lay the key to an understanding of his later successes or failures.

According to Watson, Sima Qian and describes the history of the state of Qin from its start as a tiny feudal Domain on the far northwestern border of the Chinese cultural sphere, down through its subsequent stages of growth until the moment when, having gradually amassed a power over the centuries, it was able to swallow up its rivals and unite China under a single rule. In all these chapters on Qin history, and in particular in the often seemingly disconnected a welter of entries in the basic annals of Qin chapter, Burton Watson reminds us that there are three overall processes that the reader will want to keep close watch on. First, of course, is Qin's slow, but virtually unceasing territorial expansion, a process often described in traditional Chinese histories as Can Shi  or eating away in silkworm fashion. Chin began as a tiny feudal domain situated on the Wei River in present day Gansu Province, bit by bit expanded to the east and south, gradually moving its capital eastward until it had establish it at Xiangyang near the modern city of Xi'an in Shanxi Province. This is the heart of the so called land within the passes a rich agricultural area protected on the north and south by mountain barriers and on the east by the Yellow River, where it flows south from the ordo regions, and then turns abruptly east towards the sea. At first Qin's ambition seemed to be merely to expand eastward, as far as the Yellow River, thus fulfilling an ancient prophecy that the descendants of his ruling family will one day water their horses at the Yellow River. In time however, Qin crossed the the Yellow River to attack this space to the east, continuing its seemingly inevitable expansion in that direction, as well as southwest into the area of present day Sichuan and southward into the Yangzi Valley.

A second and closely related process is that by which Qin incorporated a newly acquired  territory into its administrative system in the form of Xian or district, and later in larger and administrative units known as Jun meaning provinces or commanderies, the Jun-Xian or province and district system, as it came to be known, apparently did not originate in Qin and was employed in other feudal states of the period as well. But Qin was noteworthy for the rapidity and thoroughness with which it adopted the system. The founders of the Zhou dynasty, when they had overthrown the preceding Shang parceled out fiefs to the members of their family and to the distinguished men of other families who had assisted them to power. The rulers of individual feudal states in turn bestowed grants of land within their domains on members of their own families, or meritorious officials, until China became a veritable patchwork of tiny political entities. Over the centuries, however, the better governed of these small feudal domains absorbed or their weaker neighbors until at times, they came to pose a serious threat to the ruling family of the state in which they were situated, or to the Zhou kings themselves. This happened notably in the states of Jin and Qi where ministerial families in time actually deposed and replaced the ruling family of the state. Qin, which had a later start than a states of eastern China at first, follow the practice of the other states handing out fiefs to his prominent statesmen and military leaders and honoring them with the title of marquis.

But perhaps because it could observe what was happening in the older states, Qin seems to have been highly wary of dangers involved in such granting of territorial domains, and it seized on every excuse to take back the land that had already been handed out. Clearly it preferred to exercise directly jurisdictional control over the territory through the province and district system, often as will be seen when it acquired a new territories, particularly if they were in outlying regions, it forcefully transporting the large numbers of his population to the area in order to ensure more effective control and quicker assimilation of the local populace. In view of this background, it is not surprising that in 221 BC, when the Qin ruler united all of China under a single authority, he formally rejected any suggestion that he dole out land and fiefs to his brothers or sons, as had the founders of previous dynasties. Instead, he extended the provincial system to embrace the entire empire, creating an administration that consisted of 36 provinces, and a unknown number of district while undergoing innumerable modifications over the centuries.

This is essentially the administrative system that has remained in effect in China down to the present time. A third process characteristic the Qin, which began at the urging of the legalist statesman Wei Yang, or Lord Shang and he's described in his biography below was the promulgation of a code of laws to replace the largely unwritten complex of customs and rights that had governed the people in the past and continued to do so in the other feudal states. Qin's laws are noted for their harsh penalties and detailed regulations, and for the equality with which they were applied to high and low alike, regardless of social rank. Qin's legal system and the philosophy of government underlying it was one of the aspects of Qin government most vocally criticized the by the founders of the succeeding Han Dynasty, who had been commoners under Qin rule and had experienced in person its more oppressive aspects. They therefore made a show of simplifying the legal system in order to win popular support, though in practice they took over and carried on many features of the Qin code.

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Let's briefly go through the plot of Jing Ke's assassination of the First Emperor, which is a classic to the Chinese literature. So Jing Ke was a retainer of Crown Prince Dawn of the Yan state, he made a failed assassination attempt of the Qing Zheng of the Qin State, who later became Qinshihuang, or China's first emperor, reigning from 221 to 210 BCE. His story is told in the chapter entitled A biographies of Assassins in Sima Qian's records of the Grand Historian. In 230 BC, the Qin state began conquering other states as part of the unification plan. Qin's armies successfully annihilated the weakest of the seven Warring States Han. Two years later, Zhao was also conquered. In exchange for peace, King Xi of Yan had earlier forced his son Crown Prince Dan to be held hostage by the Qin, but Prince Dan returned knowing that Qin was far stronger than Yan and would attack it sooner or later. Jing Ke originally came from the state of Wei, he was a scholar, proficient in the art of sword, his homeland of Wei was absorbed by Qin and Jing Ke fled to Yan. A youxia, or wandering vigilante or swordsman, named a Tian Guang first introduced to him to Prince Dan. There Jing Ke accepted the hospitality of Prince Dan, who, as a last resort decided to send an assassin against the king of Qin. The plan involves either kidnapping the king, and forcing him to release the territories from his control, or failing this, kill him. The expectation in either case was that Qin would be left to disorganized, enabling the other six major states to unite against it. In 228 BC, the Qin army was already at the Zhou capital of Han Dan, and was willing to approach the state of Yan.  Jing Ke agreed to go to Qin and pretend to be a noble man begging for mercy. According to the events at the time Du Kang in present day Hebei Province was the first part of the Yan State that the Qin wanted, by reason of his fertile farmland. The plan was to present as gifts the map of Du Kang and the severed head of the treacherous Qin general Fan Wuji to the king of Qin in order to approach him. At the time general Fan Wuji had lost favor with Qin and wanted revenge against it, whereas the Qin stayed put a bounty on capturing him of 1000 gold pieces. Jing ke went to Fan himself to discuss the assassination plan.

Fan Wuji believe that that the plan will work and agreed to commit suicide so that his head would be collected. Prince Dan then obtained the sharpest possible dagger, refined it a with poison and gave it to Jing Ke. To accompany him, Prince Dan assigned a Qin Wuyang as his assistant. Qin Wuyang was known at the time to have successfully committed murder at the age of 13. And in the time of warring states, to be able to murder someone at the age of 13 is considered quite an honor because it shows that at least you have some skills in your swordsman ship. For Chinese aficionados and beginners of psychology, I would suggest a once very popular Hong Kong TV series called A Step Into the Past, which is about modern perspective on Chin's history, and it will help you to understand that in that ancient time of China, everyone carries a sword if you're running errands in downtown Han Dan, in fact, to survive each day depends on your very swordsmanship. So back to the plot. In 227 BC, Prince Dan and other guests wore white clothing and white hats at the Yi river to send the pair of assassins off. Jing Ke reportedly sang the song: "The wind blows, the river freezes, the hero fords,  never to return."

The king of Qin received the message of visitors presenting a gift to him and was willing to receive them at the city. Concealing the dagger inside the map scroll, Jing Ke and Qin Wuyang represented the Yan as ambassadors and met with King Zheng. Qin Wuyang reportedly became so nervous that he acted almost paralyzed when entering the palace, and Jing Ke managed to excuse that his partners had never set eyes on the grace of son of heaven. Other sources suggest Jing Ke described Qin Wuyang as a rural boy who had never seen the world and was suffering a cultural shock. The panicked Qin Wuyang was then barred from moving up the palace, and Jing Ke was ordered to present the map alone. Jing Ke then approached the king Zheng and politely presented the map scroll. When the king Zheng unrolled the map Jing Ke immediately sees the revealed dagger and grabbed the king's clothes and attacked him, who somehow managed to back away from the initial thrust by tearing off a sleeve in the process. While King Zheng fled from his attacker on foot, he attempted to draw his own sword hanging from his belt, while running desperately as it was a very long ceremonial sword. None of the other Qin officials within the vicinity were armed and able to stop Jing Ke and the guards were all stationed outside the palace, and were unable to immediately reach the scene.

In the confusion, Jing Ke began to close in on the King, who struggled to get away from the assassin by circling behind a pillar. This scene has ever since become so popular in the Chinese cultural imagination of assassinating a VIP, as is demonstrated in the episode's art cover. It is actually the first known mural regarded the famous assassination handed down from the Han Dynasty. Seeing the king in grave danger, a royal physician named Xia Wuju grabbed his own medicine bag and hurled it at Jing Ke that slowed down the assassin just enough to allow King Zheng to recover some distance. Reminded by the cries from other officials, the king managed to shift his long sword behind his back and unsheath it over the shoulder. Now armed he immediately turned back and struck Jing Ke in the thigh effectively in mobilizing him, the injured Jing Ke out of a desperate last attempt threw his dagger towards King Zheng, only to miss the target. The King then proceeded to stab Jing Ke eight more times, mortally wounding him. Knowing it was hopelessly over the dying Jing Ke sat with his legs stretched forward, a manner then considered very rude, and use the last of the strength to taunt King Zheng with abuses. At this point, the guards had arrived at the scene to finish off both Jing Ke and the fleeing Qin Wuyang.

t was recorded that right after the incident, King Zheng sat on his throne catatonically holding the sword due to the exhaustion caused by the adrenaline rush before he finally recovered after a short while, and thanked the physician Xia Wuju for attempting to stop the assassin. After Jing Ke's attempt the Qin army general Wang Jian was sent against the Yan state. In 226 BC, Prince Dan sent his army to fight at Ji, but were soon defeated. In an effort to try to appease the king of Qin, King Xi of Yan put his son to death. However, the Yan were anexed nevertheless, and were destroyed. In China, the debate on the narrative has been centered on whether Jing Ke's assassination attempt to will or will not influence the course of Chinese history, should he succeed in killing the king. Another line of debate has been on the question of reliability of the various narrators in the story. According to Andrew H Plaks, who is a noted analogies on Chinese narratology that Shiji initiated a new narrative tradition and set the canon for Chinese novels, they began to take shape and thrive in the Ming Dynasty and thereafter. Below is my translation of section four in chapter one of Plaks monograph called Chinese narratology Zhong Guo Xu Shi Xue written and published in Chinese by Peking University Press in 1996.

We often receive two narratorial voices from a literary narrative: One is the event speaking for itself, the other is the voice of the narrator, also known as the “narrator’s voice.” It is often the latter that plays a more prominent role in the story-telling. For example, there are three extant versions of the Three Kingdom, namely, Records of the Three Kingdoms (三国志) [written in the 3rd CE] by Chen Shou (陈寿)，The Romance of the Three Kingdoms（三国演义）[written in the 14th CE] by Luo Guanzhong(罗贯中)，and The Pingshu Script of the Three Kingdoms (全相三国志平话) [written between 250 -316 AD] by Anonymous. No one can deny that these three versions, although recounting the same historical event, are completely distinct stories because of their respectively unique textures, dispositions, and narratorial tones. Chen Shou adopts the voice of an astrologer’s, Luo Guanzhong adopts that of a professional novelist’s, and the Anonymous adopts that of a bard’s.

We find this phenomenon common in Chinese historiography where the “narrator's voice” is often as weighty as they are self-assertive. In the “biography” section of Shiji (史记), we can somewhat hear Sima Qian’s own voice: His suffering and remonstration that channel through each Chinese character, finally takes on the form of astute criticism which reveals his profound understanding of the historical events surrounding him. 

Sima Qian therefore created a narratorial convention that sets the canon for Chinese official historiographies of later ages. Most major narratives would follow an interjected commentary from the grand astrologer, marked by a short phrase “the grand astrologer says” (太史公曰), to emphasize the “narrator’s voice” (叙事人口吻) of the grand astrologer. As I have mentioned in the introduction chapter of this book, even though Chinese literary tradition does not originate in epics, its historical narratives and official historiographies function in the same aesthetic fashion as epics do. Worth to mention is that one can even find in Chinese historiographies shifting voices typified in Greco-Roman epics.

Although Chinese historiographies create a sense of authenticity, it is more an aesthetic than objectifying trope by creating an illusory effect. Chinese historiographies are often collectively written by more than one author, which is unprecedented for world literature, except for a few minor cases in which works are done individually by Sima Qian(司马迁), Ban Gu(班固), Fan Ye(范烨) and Chen Shou(陈寿) (perhaps we should also include Ouyang Xiu[欧阳修]). Every literary masterpiece is characterized by a unique voice whereas a collectively written product loses its appeal. In Shiji, when one reads well-known episodes such as Xiang Yu loses his battle to Liu Bang in Gaixia, Han Xin’s humiliation of being forced to crawl under another’s crotch, and Jingke’s Assassination of the first Emperor, one can easily relate to Sima Qian’s own experience, one that tells an almost unbearable revisit of all the humiliation he has withstood. Nevertheless, more need to be studied regarding the fundamental differences between these individually written narratives and the collectively compiled ones. 

China has a long history of revering historical narratives and elevating them to the level of an omniscient god who appears to provide a comprehensive version of the history. This is due to the fact the grand astrologers in the feudal dynasties of China are the only ones who had access to historical data and records. It makes sense that they are often the ones who assume an authorial attitude in their writings.

In fact, Chinese historiography is far from being omniscient in the so-called “official” history that it dictates, not to mention the fact that “unofficial” histories about the life of ordinary people are always absent. However, with the superstition towards such a quasi-objectifying narrative approach, later generations of Chinese literature from historiography to fiction unflaggingly followed suit. In the meantime, we have to pay attention to the narratorial tones of the dynastic historians who not only write like journalists but also as commentators of events, such as the phrase “the nobleman says” (君子曰) in the Tso Tradition (左传)and “the grand astrologer says”（太史公曰） in Shiji. Interpersing with the historian’s comments signifies a major narratological shift from objectifying to objectifying the narrative with multiple perspectives. Even the historical genre of annals (编年体) is a defacto bricolage narrative, heavily relying on the historian’s choice of selection of events, so as to emphasize their viewpoints. 

Then there developed the genre called “unofficial history” (野史). This less-serious genre later developed into historical Romance, thereby further unsettling the reliability carried by official historiographies. 

For example, in the beginning section of these anecdotal stories which are called the hook, it often begins with “dear audience, now begins our story” (看官，且听道来) and end with “to know what happen afterwards, come back for more brainteasers” (欲知后事如何，且听下回分解). Therefore, the issue of the narrator is the key aspect in narratology.

Let’s look into the narratorial voice in “Jing Ke’s Assasination of the First Emperor”(荆轲刺秦王), so that I will demonstrate how the narrator consciously scaffold the structure of the plot for the real historical event of the assasination. First and foremost, this episode is within the section of the biographies of assassins, which itself is a coherent body of narratives, demonstrating one of Sima Qian’s signature narrative techniques. Even in Jing Ke’s story itself, Sima Qian further divides the whole story into ten subplots, observed by the Qing scholar and politician Zeng Guofan(曾国藩). These ten subplots can be identified as “Jing ke’s swordsman experience,” “Prince Dan and Juwu’s plotting on assasinating the first emperor,” “Tian Guang recommends Jingke to Prince Dan,” “Jing ke’s arrival at Qin,” “Assassination failed”, “Qin annexed Yan” and ends with “Gao Jianli's assasination attempt on the first emperor”. These subplots closely interact with each other in an intriguingly complex fashion, what the Tongcheng School (桐城派) calls “narrative style” (笔法)，which I call “narrator’s voice.”

In my reading of the plot, I contend that it is enacted in two parts. The first part tells the background and experience of Jing Ke as a swordsman that backs up his assassination motivation, whereas the latter part dramatizes an extremely exasperating experience, narrated by different voices. One may question the consistency of these two sections according to my method of division, especially that the character of Jing ke in the first half of the story seems overly cautious, and at times even timid to set off for his assassination mission. Yet without much transition, the assassin seems to turn valiant all of a sudden as he sets off for Qin singing loudly “the hero fords and never to return." In addition, the background story conveyed in the first section does not foreshadow what Tian Guang later obtusely observes as “this is an extraordinary man”. Elsewhere confusing is the overly reluctant narrative rhythm in the first section followed by an almost fastforward of the tension in the second. The ending, perhaps designed to achieve a structural balance, bizarrely has Gao Jianli, who has appeared in the beginning of the story, to reappear in the end. These have been the two major interpretations. In other words, the first view of the entire narrative follows a procedural consistency, governed by the chain of causality step by step. The second interpretation is the confusion caused by the seemingly incoherent subplots that indirectly speak of the personality and quality of the assassin. This second interpretation, I believe, comes from a set of very Western schemas of reading and writing, which demand a logical coherence among all the plots. Chinese culture, however, often reads someone’s personality through a non-linear bricolage gathering of dispersed clues that do not necessarily account for the linearity of sequence.

This way of story-telling, I argue, also reflects the Chinese cultural perspective of “acting only at the right time” (得时), meaning that it is patience and strategic plan before action that speak to a hero’s quality. 

This is why I read Sima Qian’s emphasis on the aforementioned two cultural aspects as his unique narratorial voice at its full play. 

Therefore, the narrator’s voice is of key importance to the comparative study of Chinese and Western narrative techniques. In their book Nature of Narrative, Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg consider “the narrator” as one of the most important three aspects that tell apart Western and Chinese narratological logics. In Western literature, there is only the teller rather than tale in poetry, and scenes rather than the teller in theater. Both the teller and tales only exist in fiction, although varying in showing and telling, the co-existence of both reflects the narrator’s important function. Now the question is whether we can find such a co-existence in Chinese narratology. To answer this I would like to borrow a Chinese word “to tell the content'' (说话) from Stories Old and New: A Ming Dynasty Collection (三言二拍) . “Shuo” is the verb, which means to speak. And “hua” is the object, which means the story. Thus, the Chinese word “shuo hua ren” (说话人) provides a useful perspective in understanding the Chinese way of story-telling: namely, he who tells the story manufactures it into a different product.

The “story-teller”, or shuohuaren, transforms the raw material into the final production, the magic of which is a rather appealing process. This is why the Pingshu theater of The Romance of Three Kingdom is always packed with an audience whereas no one wants to read or listen to the verbatim official history of the three Kingdoms. It is the same with the petite history or historical romance such as The Story of Liu Yi（柳毅传书）, or Nocturnal Rendezvous (待月西厢) which turned into different versions when each time retold. The fact that the narrator is also the interpreter is a commonly recognized concept among world literatures, for example, Don Juan and Faust became utterly different stories through translation, under the process of remaking the story, which, to encapsulate the essence of such a literary act, is called rhetorics. All said, discussions on “the narrator” or "shuo hua ren" (说话人) are the ideal angle of inquiry for narratology.

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