The gate of the Cui house was shut. Inside, the ruler of Qi had just been killed.

Outside stood a man not quite six feet tall by the measure of his day. The people with him asked: Will you die for our lord?

He said: Was he my lord alone? Why should I die?

They asked: Then will you flee?

He said: Was it my crime? Why should I flee?

They asked: Then will you go home?

He said: Our lord is dead. Where is home?

The man was Yan Ying. When the gate opened he went in, laid his head on the dead ruler’s thigh and wept. Then he rose, stamped his feet three times in mourning, and walked out.

Someone told Cui Zhu: You must kill him. Cui Zhu said: The people look up to him. Let him go, and we win the people.

When I wrote my remarks after his biography, the first thing I set down was this weeping outside a gate. All his life he stood outside gates. He would not go in to die with the dead, and he would not turn and walk away.

I. A Man from the East

Yan Ying, courtesy name Zhong, posthumous name Ping, came from Yiwei in the land of Lai.

Lai had been a small state on Qi’s eastern edge. In the time of Duke Ling of Qi, Yan Ying’s father, Yan Ruo, built walls at Dongyang to press on Lai, and later led the army that besieged it. Those were the years in which Qi destroyed Lai.

When Yan Ruo died, Yan Ying wore the coarsest mourning cloth, a hemp sash, carried a mourning staff and straw sandals. He ate thin gruel, lived in a mourning hut, slept on a straw mat and used straw for a pillow.

The old steward of the household said: This is not the rite for a grandee.

Yan Ying answered only: Only a minister counts as a grandee.

He did not argue. He said only that he did not measure up. I would see that kind of answer from him again and again.

II. Two Rulers Without Courage

Yan Ying served three rulers of Qi: Duke Ling, Duke Zhuang and Duke Jing.

In the twenty-seventh year of Duke Ling, Jin led the other states against Qi. Ling could not hold at Pingyin and turned to run back to his capital, Linzi. Yan Ying tried to stop him. He would not listen. Yan Ying said: My lord has no courage at all!

The Jin army surrounded Linzi. The people inside kept to the walls and dared not come out. Jin burned the outer town and withdrew.

Under Duke Zhuang, the Jin grandee Luan Ying fled to Qi, and the duke received him lavishly. Yan Ying warned him: At the meeting of Shangren we accepted Jin’s terms. What use do you mean to make of the Luan clan now? A small state serves a great one through good faith. Lose good faith, and you cannot stand.

The duke did not listen. Yan Ying withdrew and said to Chen Wenzi: A ruler holds to good faith; a subject holds to respect. That is the way of Heaven. Our lord is throwing himself away. He will not last.

The next year Duke Zhuang used Luan Ying’s trouble to attack Jin. Yan Ying spoke again: My lord relies on force to strike the leader of the alliance. If it fails, that will be the state’s good fortune. To win without virtue means sorrow will reach my lord.

Duke Zhuang came home victorious. Two years later the sorrow came, through the gate of Cui Zhu’s house.

III. The Cui Gate

Cui Zhu had married the widow of the lord of Tang. She was beautiful. Duke Zhuang carried on with her, went to the Cui house again and again, and even gave Cui Zhu’s cap away to someone else.

The duke had once flogged a eunuch named Jia Ju, then taken him back into service. Jia Ju now watched the duke’s movements for Cui Zhu.

In the fifth month of Duke Zhuang’s sixth year, the ruler of Ju came to pay court and Qi held a feast for him. Cui Zhu said he was ill and did not attend. The next day the duke went to ask after his illness and, while there, went after his wife. She went into an inner room and shut the door with Cui Zhu, and neither came out. Outside, the duke hugged a pillar and sang.

Jia Ju held back the duke’s attendants, went in himself and shut the gate. Cui Zhu’s armed men rushed out from inside.

The duke climbed a terrace and begged to be let go. They refused. He begged for a covenant. They refused. He begged to kill himself in his ancestral temple. They refused. They said: Your servant Cui Zhu is gravely ill and cannot receive your orders. This is close to the palace. We household men are only here to seize adulterers. We know of no other orders.

The duke climbed over the wall. An arrow struck his thigh, he fell back, and they killed him.

That was when Yan Ying came to stand outside the Cui gate.

I recorded only half of what he said there in the Hereditary House of Qi. The book of Master Zuo has it more fully. He said: Is the ruler of a people there to lord it over the people? He is there to preside over the altars of the state. Is the servant of a ruler there for his salary? He is there to sustain the altars of the state. So when the ruler dies for the state, his servant dies with him; when he goes into exile for the state, his servant goes too. But if he dies for himself, or flees for himself, who but his own favorites would take that on?

Besides, a man made him ruler and then killed him. How could I die for him? How could I flee for him? And where would I go?

He did not die. He did not flee. He did not go home. He went in, wept, and came out.

IV. Blood in the Great Temple

Two days later Cui Zhu made Duke Zhuang’s half-brother Chujiu ruler. He was Duke Jing. Cui Zhu became Minister of the Right, Qing Feng Minister of the Left.

Afraid of more trouble, the two ministers gathered the people of the capital in the Great Temple to swear an oath: Whoever does not side with Cui and Qing shall die!

When it was Yan Ying’s turn, he looked up to Heaven and sighed: I, Ying, follow only those who are loyal to the ruler and serve the altars of the state!

Two endings to this moment have come down.

In the Hereditary House of Qi I wrote that Yan Ying refused to swear. Qing Feng wanted to kill him. Cui Zhu said: He is a loyal servant. Let him go.

The book of Master Zuo says that after he spoke those words, he called on the Lord on High as his witness, and then smeared his lips with the blood.

I wrote it as I had heard it. I have read Master Zuo’s text too, and I set it out here alongside. Whether he swore or refused, both records exist. But the words of his vow mean the same thing in both: what he followed was the ruler and the state, not Cui and Qing.

At the same time, the Grand Scribe of Qi wrote down: Cui Zhu murdered Duke Zhuang.

Cui Zhu killed him. The scribe’s younger brother wrote the same, and Cui Zhu killed him too. Another younger brother wrote it again, and Cui Zhu let it stand.

Master Zuo’s book adds that a man of the Southern Scribe family heard the Grand Scribes were all dead and set out carrying bamboo slips, ready to write it himself. On the way he heard it had already been written, and turned back.

I am a Grand Scribe too. When I read this, I always have to stop for a while. Yan Ying weeping outside the gate, the scribes writing on their slips: two different ways of saying the same thing.

V. The Sixty Towns He Refused

Three years later Qing Feng fell and in the end fled to Wu. Duke Jing took back the Qing lands to give out among his servants. Yan Ying was offered Beidian and the sixty towns around it. He would not take them.

Zi Wei asked him: Wealth is what everyone wants. Why are you the only one who does not?

He said: The Qing lands were enough to satisfy desire, and so the Qing fled into exile. My own lands are not enough to satisfy desire. Add Beidian, and they would be. Once desire is satisfied, exile is not many days away. I refuse Beidian not because I hate wealth, but because I am afraid of losing it.

He went on: Wealth is like cloth, which has a fixed width. Set it a limit, so it cannot shift at will. When profit goes too far, it brings ruin. I dare not be greedy for more.

A year later Prince Jizha of Wu came to Qi, took to Yan Ying, and told him: Give up your lands and your office, and quickly. Without lands and without office you will escape disaster. The government of Qi is going to settle somewhere. Until it does, the troubles will not end.

Yan Ying took the advice. Through Chen Huanzi, he handed back his office and his lands. Later, when the Luan and Gao clans rose, that is how he came through unharmed.

This was not the first time the Chen family stood beside him. Years before, when Luan Ying came to Qi and Yan Ying withdrew saying “our lord is throwing himself away,” the man he said it to was Chen Wenzi. Chen Wenzi’s son was Chen Huanzi. That name will keep coming back.

VI. Shoes Are Cheap, Wooden Feet Are Dear

When Yan Ying became chief minister of Qi, he never had two kinds of meat at a meal, and his concubine did not wear silk.

Duke Jing thought his house was too near the market, low, cramped, noisy and dusty, and wanted to move him somewhere high and dry. Yan Ying declined: My late father, your former servant, lived there. I am not worthy to succeed him, and even this is extravagant for me. Besides, a small man who lives by the market can get what he needs morning and evening. That is a small man’s convenience.

The duke laughed: You live by the market. Do you know what is dear and what is cheap?

Yan Ying said: Since I profit by it, how could I not know?

The duke asked: What is dear and what is cheap?

At that time Duke Jing used punishment heavily, and the market sold artificial feet for people whose feet had been cut off. Yan Ying answered: Wooden feet are dear. Shoes are cheap.

Because of this, Duke Jing reduced his punishments.

Later, while Yan Ying was away on a mission to Jin, the duke rebuilt his house for him. When Yan Ying came back, he gave his thanks, then pulled the new house down, rebuilt his neighbors’ homes, which had been torn down to make room, exactly as before, and had the old residents move back. He said: As the saying goes, you do not divine about the house, you divine about the neighbors. The duke would not allow it. Yan Ying had Chen Huanzi ask on his behalf, and the duke gave in.

Chen Huanzi again.

VII. Whose Measures Are Bigger

That mission to Jin was to ask for a Jin bride for Duke Jing. When the marriage was settled, Shuxiang of Jin went with Yan Ying to the banquet and asked him privately: How do things stand in Qi?

Yan Ying said: These are the last days. I know nothing else, except that Qi will probably belong to the Chen.

He spoke of measures. Qi’s old measures were four: the dou, the ou, the fu and the zhong. Four sheng made a dou, four dou an ou, four ou a fu, and ten fu a zhong. The Chen raised the step between each of the first three by one, so that by the time you reached the zhong it was much larger. The Chen lent grain to the people with their own large household measures and took repayment with the state’s small ones.

Timber from the hills cost no more in the market than in the hills. Fish, salt and clams from the sea cost no more than at the shore. The people’s labor was divided into three parts: two went to the duke, and they lived on the third. The duke’s granaries rotted and bred worms, while the old went cold and hungry. In the markets, shoes were cheap and wooden feet were dear.

The people loved the Chen like parents and flowed to them like water running downhill. Even if the Chen did not want the people, how could they avoid getting them?

Shuxiang said: Our own ruling house in Jin is in its last days too.

Two of the cleverest men of the age, at one banquet table, told each other how their states would end.

In the Hereditary House of Qi I put it in one sentence: the government of Qi would end up with the Tian. The Tian were the Chen. The Tian had no great virtue, but they used public power for private kindness, and the people loved them.

VIII. Outside a Gate, Once More

Seven years after Yan Ying said this, Qi broke into fighting again.

The men of the Luan and Gao clans were heavy drinkers and had made many enemies. They were stronger than the Chen and Bao clans and hated them. Someone told Chen Huanzi: Luan and Gao are coming to attack you. Chen and Bao struck first. Luan and Gao turned to attack the palace gate, hoping to seize the duke first.

Yan Ying put on his court robes and stood outside the Tiger Gate of the palace.

All four clans sent for him. He went to none of them. His followers asked: Will you help Chen and Bao? He said: What is good about them? Will you help Luan and Gao? He said: Are they any better? Then will you go home? He said: Our lord is under attack. Where is home?

Three questions again, and a gate again. What he had said outside the Cui gate sixteen years earlier, he said almost word for word.

Only when Duke Jing summoned him did he go in.

Luan and Gao were beaten and fled to Lu. Chen and Bao divided their estates between them. Yan Ying told Chen Huanzi: You must hand all of it to the duke. Yielding is the root of virtue. Every creature with blood and breath has a heart for strife, so profit cannot be forced; it is better to think of what is right. Rightness is the root of profit. Hoarded profit breeds disaster.

Chen Huanzi handed it all over and asked to retire to Ju. Then, privately, he provided tents, furnishings, and clothes and shoes for the servants of princes who had earlier been driven out of the state, brought them back, and gave them towns. To princes and grandsons of the ducal house who had no stipend, he quietly gave towns of his own. To the poor, the orphaned and the widowed of the state, he quietly gave grain.

Master Zuo’s book ends this passage with a few words: the Chen began to grow great.

Yan Ying taught him to yield, and he yielded. Having yielded, the Chen grew greater.

IX. Harmony and Sameness

Duke Jing came back from hunting. Yan Ying attended him at the Chuan terrace. Liangqiu Ju came racing up in his chariot.

The duke said: Only Ju is in harmony with me.

Yan Ying said: Ju is the same as you. How is that harmony?

The duke asked: Are harmony and sameness different?

Yan Ying said: They are different. Harmony is like a stew. Water, fire, vinegar, sauce, salt and plums are used to cook fish and meat; it is heated over firewood, and the cook blends it, adding where the flavor falls short and taking away where it is too much. Ruler and servant are the same. When the ruler says something is right and part of it is wrong, the servant points out the wrong part so the right can be made whole. When the ruler says something is wrong and part of it is right, the servant points out the right part so the wrong can be removed.

Ju is not like that. When you say yes, Ju says yes. When you say no, Ju says no. If you season water with water, who could eat it? If a zither played only one note, who could listen to it?

In the middle of the drinking, when they were enjoying themselves, the duke said: If since ancient times no one had ever died, how happy that would be!

Yan Ying said: If since ancient times no one had died, the happiness would belong to the ancients. What would you get? Long ago the Shuangjiu clan first lived in this land. Jize took it over from them, then Feng Boling, then the Pugu clan, and only after them the Grand Duke. If since ancient times no one had died, it would be the Shuangjiu clan’s happiness, and not what you want.

He was always adding a little salt to the stew at the moment the ruler was most pleased with himself.

X. The Comet

In the thirty-second year of Duke Jing, a comet appeared over Qi.

The duke sat on the Boqin terrace and sighed: How magnificent! Who will hold this after me? The ministers all wept. Only Yan Ying laughed. The duke was angry.

Yan Ying said: I am laughing because the ministers flatter you too much.

The duke said: The comet has appeared in the northeast, the part of the sky that answers to Qi. That is why I am worried.

Yan Ying said: You build high terraces and dig deep pools. You collect taxes as if afraid you will not get them all, and punish as if afraid you cannot punish enough. At this rate even a bushy star is about to appear. Why fear a comet?

The duke asked: Can it be prayed away?

Yan Ying said: If gods could be called down by prayer, they could be sent away by prayer. Tens of thousands of people are suffering and resentful, and you would have one man pray the trouble away. How could he outvoice so many mouths?

At that time Duke Jing liked building palaces, kept dogs and horses, lived extravagantly, and taxed and punished heavily. That is why Yan Ying warned him this way.

In Master Zuo’s record of that year, the comet and “who will hold this” are two separate things. Duke Jing sighed in his main hall: What a beautiful palace! Who will hold it after me?

Yan Ying said: By your words, it will probably be the Chen.

He said: The Chen have no great virtue, but they give to the people. The duke collects heavily; the Chen give generously. The people have gone over to them. If later generations grow a little slack and the Chen have not perished, the state will be theirs.

The duke said: Well said. What can be done?

Yan Ying said: Only ritual can stop it. By ritual, a grandee’s household may not give across the whole state.

The duke said: Well said. But I cannot do it.

XI. The Fields of Nixi

In the twentieth year of Duke Zhao of Lu, Duke Jing and Yan Ying visited Lu together and met Confucius. Later Confucius came to Qi. Duke Jing asked him about government, liked him very much, and wanted to give him the fields of Nixi as a fief.

Yan Ying stepped forward and said: Scholars of this kind are clever talkers and hard to hold to any law. They are proud and self-satisfied and will not serve beneath others. They make much of funerals and give way entirely to grief, ruining their families for lavish burials; that cannot be made a custom. They travel about persuading and begging for support; that is no way to run a state. Now Confucius makes much of dress and bearing and of elaborate rules for going up and down and for every hurried step. Generations could not master his learning; a lifetime could not get to the bottom of his rites. If you want to use this to change the customs of Qi, it is not the way to put the common people first.

After that Duke Jing received Confucius with respect but no longer asked him about ritual. In the end Confucius left Qi.

I recorded these words in the Hereditary House of Confucius, not in Yan Ying’s biography. I revere Yan Ying, and I revere Confucius. They met in Qi, and Yan Ying kept Confucius outside the gate.

I will not plead for either of them here. Yan Ying spoke of ritual all his life, and in the end told Duke Jing that only ritual could save Qi. Yet Confucius’s far more elaborate ritual, he thought, was more than the people of Qi could bear.

XII. After He Was Gone

In the forty-eighth year of Duke Jing, the rulers of Qi and Lu met at Jiagu. That year Yan Ying died.

Ten years later Duke Jing fell ill and died. Before he died he entrusted his young son Tu to Guo Huizi and Gao Zhaozi and had him made heir.

The next year Chen Qi, also called Tian Qi, joined with Bao Mu and led troops into the palace. Guo Huizi fled to Ju. Gao Zhaozi was killed.

Yan Yu, of the Yan family, fled to Lu.

Tian Qi brought Prince Yangsheng back from Lu, hid him in a sack, and at a banquet tipped him out and said: This is the ruler of Qi. Duke Dao was set up, Tian Qi became chief minister, and he ran the government of Qi alone.

Then came Tian Qi’s son Tian Chang. His men caught Duke Jian as he fled and killed him. Tian Chang set up Duke Ping and told him: Granting kindness is what everyone wants; you do it. Punishment is what everyone hates; let me do it. After five years of this, the whole government of Qi was in Tian Chang’s hands.

Tian Chang killed off the Bao, the Yan, Jian Zhi, and the strongest members of the ducal clan.

What Yan Ying said to Shuxiang at the banquet came true. On the day it came true, the Yan family was on the list of the dead.

Epilogue

In my Biographies of Guan Zhong and Yan Ying I put him beside Guan Zhong. Guan Zhong’s wealth rivaled the ruling house. More than a hundred years after Guan Zhong died, Qi had Yan Ying, who never had two kinds of meat at a meal.

When he was chief minister, one day as he went out, his driver’s wife peeped at her husband through a crack in the gate. Driving for the chief minister, her husband held up the great canopy and whipped on four horses, full of himself and very pleased.

When the driver came home, his wife asked to leave him.

She said: Master Yan is not six feet tall, yet he is chief minister of Qi and famous among all the states. Today I watched him go out. His thoughts ran deep, and he always seemed to put himself below others. You are eight feet tall and drive another man’s carriage, and you think that is enough. That is why I want to leave.

After that the driver held himself back and grew humble. Yan Ying found it strange and asked him why. The driver told him the truth. Yan Ying recommended him to be a grandee.

At the end of the biography I wrote one sentence: If Master Yan were still alive, I would gladly hold the whip and drive for him.

When he stood outside the Cui gate, lay over Duke Zhuang’s body and wept, and left only after the rites were done, was that not what is called the courage to do what is right? When he remonstrated, ready to offend his ruler to his face, was that not what is called thinking of loyalty when at court and of mending faults when at home?

The place that driver once had, I would want.

But I know that the man who drives for him sees only his back. All his life he stood outside gates and spoke, and what happened behind the gates, in the end, others decided.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Core sources: Shiji chapter 62, Biographies of Guan Zhong and Yan Ying, the Yan Ying section (from "Yan Pingzhong Ying was a man of Yiwei in Lai" through the story of the driver’s wife) and the Grand Historian’s closing remarks; chapter 32, Hereditary House of Qi Taigong, the passages for Duke Ling’s 27th year, Duke Zhuang’s 3rd to 6th years, Duke Jing’s 1st to 58th years, and the 1st year of the child ruler Yan Ruzi. Read in Wikisource transcriptions of the Shiji, with the Three Commentaries (Jijie, Suoyin, Zhengyi) read in the Wikisource Shiji sanjia zhu, chapters 62 and 32. No modern translation was copied. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷062 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記三家註/卷062 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷032 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記三家註/卷032

2. Cross-checks: Shiji chapter 46, Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan (Tian Wenzi; Tian Qi lending with a large measure; Yan Ying’s private talk with Shuxiang; Tian Qi installing Yangsheng; Tian Chang killing Duke Jian, installing Duke Ping and wiping out the Bao and Yan); chapter 47, Hereditary House of Confucius (Duke Jing and Yan Ying visiting Lu; the fields of Nixi and Yan Ying’s objection; the meeting at Jiagu). Zuozhuan, Duke Xiang years 2 and 6 (Yan Ruo walls Dongyang, besieges Lai; Qi destroys Lai), 17 (Yan Ruo’s death and Yan Ying’s mourning), 18 ("My lord has no courage"), 22 and 23 (Luan Ying in Qi; Yan Ying’s warnings before the attack on Jin), 25 (Cui Zhu murders Duke Zhuang; Yan Ying outside the Cui gate; the oath in the Great Temple; the Grand Scribes and the Southern Scribe), 28 (fall of the Qing; Beidian refused), 29 (Jizha advises Yan Ying to give up lands and office); Duke Zhao years 3 (the marriage mission to Jin; talk with Shuxiang on the last days and the Chen measures; the house by the market; wooden feet and shoes), 10 (Yan Ying in court robes outside the Tiger Gate; "the Chen began to grow great"), 20 (harmony and sameness at the Chuan terrace; "if no one had ever died"), 26 (the comet; the Chen discussed in the main hall); Duke Ai year 6 (Chen Qi and Bao Mu enter the palace; Yan Yu flees to Lu). All read in Wikisource transcriptions. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷046 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷047 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/襄公 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/昭公 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/哀公

3. Key original wording behind the plain-language retelling: the Chinese version of this note gives the classical text of 23 key passages with their exact chapters (Zuozhuan Xiang 25 for the words at the Cui gate; Shiji 32 and Zuozhuan Xiang 25 for the oath and the scribes; Zuozhuan Xiang 28 for Beidian; Xiang 29 for Jizha; Zhao 3 for the house by the market and the measures; Zhao 10 for the Tiger Gate; Zhao 20 for harmony and sameness; Shiji 32 and Zuozhuan Zhao 26 for the comet and the Chen; Shiji 47 for Nixi; Shiji 46 for Tian Chang; Shiji 62 for the driver’s wife and the Grand Historian’s remarks).

4. Variant accounts and dates: (1) At the Great Temple oath, the Hereditary House of Qi says Yan Ying refused to swear and Cui Zhu spared him; the Zuozhuan says he called the Lord on High to witness and smeared the blood. The wording of the vow differs slightly. Both accounts are given; neither is chosen. (2) On the scribes, the Hereditary House has "Cui Zhu murdered Duke Zhuang," the Grand Scribe and one brother killed and the youngest spared; the Zuozhuan has "Cui Zhu murdered his lord," two brothers killed, and adds the Southern Scribe. The main narrative follows the Hereditary House; the Southern Scribe is marked as from the Zuozhuan. (3) The three questions at the Cui gate and the passage on the ruler of a people come from the Zuozhuan; the Hereditary House records only part. (4) Duke Jing’s "who will hold this" is tied in the Hereditary House to the comet of his 32nd year at the Boqin terrace, leading to the warning about taxes; the Zuozhuan, Zhao 26, records the comet and the talk about the Chen in the main hall separately. Both are given. (5) Conventional BCE equivalents: Duke Ling 27 = 555; Duke Zhuang 6 = 548; fall of the Qing = 545; Jizha in Qi = 544; mission to Jin = 539; the Luan–Gao fighting = 532; the Chuan terrace = 522; the comet = 516; Jiagu and Yan Ying’s death = 500; Tian Qi’s coup = 489. The narrative uses only relative intervals. (6) The text does not state Yan Yu’s relation to Yan Ying; the Jijie cites the later scholar Jia Kui saying he was Yan Ying’s son. The narrative says only "of the Yan family." (7) The year of Confucius’s stay in Qi and of Tian Chang’s purge is not given; no year is written.

5. Boundaries of fact and narrative: All speech and judgments come from the sources above; the plain-language retelling is contemporary editorial paraphrase. No weather, scenery, inner thoughts or invented dialogue has been added. Linking sentences such as "All his life he stood outside gates," "Two of the cleverest men of the age… told each other how their states would end," "Three questions again, and a gate again," "Having yielded, the Chen grew greater," "He was always adding a little salt to the stew," "Yan Ying kept Confucius outside the gate," "the Yan family was on the list of the dead," "The place that driver once had, I would want," and the last lines of the epilogue are editorial, not statements in the sources. "Six feet" and "eight feet" are the ancient chi, much shorter than the modern foot. The first-person Sima Qian voice is a literary device for describing how the Shiji is arranged, not Sima Qian’s own words.

6. Map: two points. (1) Linzi (present-day Linzi area, Zibo, Shandong), linked to 548 BCE (Duke Zhuang’s murder and Yan Ying outside the Cui gate, "close to the palace") and 532 BCE (Yan Ying outside the Tiger Gate of the palace), using the OpenStreetMap area reference for Linzi district; it represents the area only, not the Cui house or the palace. (2) Yiwei (present-day Gaomi area, Shandong), Yan Ying’s home, per the Zhengyi; OpenStreetMap area reference for Gaomi; not linked to a date.

7. Rights: The ancient texts are in the public domain. The Chinese and English texts are original contemporary narratives.