A Zheng soldier struck him on the shoulder, and he fell down inside his chariot. The great flag on the chariot, the one called the Bee Banner, was taken by the Zheng troops.

It was autumn in 493 BCE, below a small hill called Tie in the land of Wey. Zhao Yang, a minister of Jin, was intercepting a Zheng army. The Zheng troops were escorting grain that Qi was sending to the Fan clan, Zhao Yang’s enemies.

The Zheng army was routed. Jin captured a thousand cartloads of Qi grain.

When the fighting was over, the three men in the chariot took turns claiming the credit. Zhao Yang said: The men of Zheng hit me. I lay over my bow case coughing blood, and the drum never grew weaker. Today no one did better than I did.

The spearman on the right, the heir of Wey, said: I saved our commander in the chariot and drove off the enemy on the ground. Among spearmen, I was first.

The driver, You Liang, said: Both my traces were about to snap, and I held them together. Among drivers, I was first. Then he drove over a log, and both traces broke on the spot.

Later ages call Zhao Yang Zhao Jianzi. Four years earlier, the troops of his own state had besieged him in the city of Jinyang as a rebel. Four years later, he lay fallen in a chariot and kept the drum going.

When I wrote the Hereditary House of Zhao, I kept thinking of that drum. Half of his life went into winning his family a way to survive. The other half went into choosing someone who could keep the drum beating after him.

I. A Line That Nearly Ended

The Zhao had not always been so tough.

When Zhao Yang’s grandfather, Zhao Wu, was still a child, the Zhao clan was nearly wiped out. In the Hereditary House of Zhao I set down a long story: the grandee Tu’an Gu led troops and killed the whole Zhao clan; two retainers, Cheng Ying and Gongsun Chujiu, hid the Zhao orphan; fifteen years later the boy was restored as heir to the Zhao line. Master Zuo’s book tells it differently. There, Lady Zhuang Ji, a Zhao widow, slandered her own kin before the ruler of Jin, and Jin punished Zhao Tong and Zhao Kuo. The young Zhao Wu was raised with his mother in the palace, and later, after Han Jue spoke for him, the ruler restored Zhao Wu and gave back the Zhao lands. I keep both versions here.

Zhao Wu grew up to become chief minister of Jin. When Prince Jizha of Wu came to Jin, he left a prediction behind: in the end, the government of Jin would pass to the heirs of Zhao Wu, Han Xuanzi and Wei Xianzi.

In the time of Zhao Wu’s son Jingshu, Yan Ying of Qi came to Jin on a mission and talked privately with Shuxiang of Jin. Yan Ying said the government of Qi would end up with the Tian. Shuxiang said: The government of Jin will pass to the Six Ministers. The Six Ministers have grown extravagant, and our ruler gives it no thought.

The Six Ministers were the Fan, the Zhonghang, the Zhi, the Han, the Wei and the Zhao. When Jingshu died, his son Zhao Yang stepped into one of those six seats.

II. The Man Who Asked About Ritual and the Man Who Cast a Cauldron

One of Zhao Yang’s early appearances in the records is at Huangfu.

That summer the Zhou royal house was torn by strife, and grandees from many states met at Huangfu. Zhao Yang ordered them to send grain to the Zhou king and to supply garrison troops. Next year, he said, we will bring the king home. The following year he and Xun Li of the Zhi clan did lead troops to escort King Jing of Zhou back to his capital.

At Huangfu, Zitaishu of Zheng came to see him. Zhao Yang asked him about bowing, yielding and the forms of moving about in ceremony. Zitaishu said: That is etiquette, not ritual. Zhao Yang asked: Then may I ask what ritual is?

Zitaishu gave a long answer, passing on what Zichan of Zheng had taught: ritual is the constant way of heaven, the rule of the earth, the basis of how people act; a person who can straighten what is crooked in himself to meet ritual is called a complete person.

Zhao Yang said: I will hold to these words all my life.

Three years later, he and Xun Yin of the Zhonghang clan led troops to build walls by the Ru River. While they were at it they levied iron from the whole state of Jin, cast a penal cauldron, and inscribed on it the code of punishments Fan Xuanzi had drawn up long before.

Confucius said: Jin will perish, surely! It has thrown away its proper measure. When the people’s eyes are on the cauldron, how will they respect those above them? And what inheritance will those above them have to guard?

The Jin court scribe Cai Mo said: The Fan and the Zhonghang will perish, surely. Xun Yin is only a junior minister, yet he took it upon himself to cast an instrument of punishment and make it the law of the state. This will reach the Zhao too, because Zhao Meng took part. But he had no choice; if he cultivates virtue, he may escape.

The young man who asked about ritual and the minister who cast the cauldron were the same person. Sixteen years later the Fan and the Zhonghang did fall, and the Zhao very nearly fell with them.

III. No Fixed Place for Ruler or Subject

In those years the ruler of Jin held less power every year. Acting under the law, the Six Ministers destroyed the ducal branches of the Qi and the Yangshe, split their lands into ten counties, and sent men of their own clans to govern them. From then on the house of Jin grew weaker still.

In Lu, Duke Zhao had been driven out of his state by the powerful Ji clan, and he died in exile at Ganhou.

Zhao Yang asked the scribe Shi Mo: The Ji drove out their ruler, yet the people accept them and the other states recognize them. Their ruler died abroad and no one blames the Ji. Why?

Shi Mo said: Heaven produced the Ji to be the Lu ruler’s second, and that has been so for a long time. Generation after generation the rulers of Lu indulged their faults, and generation after generation the Ji worked at their duties, until the people forgot their ruler. The altars of the state have no permanent keeper, and ruler and subject have no fixed place. It has always been so. As the Odes say: high banks become valleys, deep valleys become hills.

Zhao Yang asked about Lu. Shi Mo’s answer could just as well be heard in Jin.

IV. Yang Hu Arrives from Qi

In 501 BCE, Yang Hu of Lu ran away to Jin.

He had been a retainer of the Ji clan. He tried to get rid of the Ji head, failed, and fled first to Qi. The ruler of Qi held him in a town on the western border. Yang Hu borrowed every cart in the town, notched all their axles, bound them up with hemp and returned them. Then he hid in a covered cart and escaped. He was caught and brought back, hid in a covered cart again and got away, and went through Song to Jin. The house he went to was the Zhao.

Confucius said: The Zhao will have trouble for generations, surely.

In the Hereditary House of Zhao I recorded that Zhao Jianzi took his bribes and treated him generously. Later, beside Zhao Yang’s chariot, this man gave advice more than once.

V. Five Days Without Waking

Probably around the same year, Zhao Yang fell ill. For five days he knew no one, and the grandees were frightened.

The physician Bian Que went in to look at him and came out. Dong Anyu, a retainer of the Zhao house, asked how he was.

Bian Que said: His pulse is in order. What is so strange about it? Duke Mu of Qin was once like this, and woke after seven days. On the day he woke he said he had been to the Lord on High and had been very happy. Your lord’s illness is the same as his. Within three days he will surely recover, and when he recovers he will surely have something to say.

After two and a half days Zhao Yang woke. He told the grandees: I went to the Lord on High and was very happy. I wandered with the hundred spirits at the center of heaven. The music was played nine times over, and they danced the Wan dance. It was unlike the music of the Three Dynasties, and its sound moved the heart. A bear came at me to seize me. The Lord told me to shoot it. I hit the bear and it died. Then a brown bear came, and I shot again, and it died too. The Lord was very pleased and gave me two bamboo chests, each with a matching smaller one. I saw a child standing beside the Lord. The Lord entrusted a Di hound to me and said: When your son is grown, give it to him.

Dong Anyu wrote these words down one by one and put them away. Zhao Yang gave Bian Que forty thousand mu of land.

Some time later a man stood in the road as Zhao Yang went out. He said he had been beside the Lord on High at the time, and he explained the dream. The bear and the brown bear were the ancestors of two ministerial houses of Jin, and the Lord meant him to destroy those two houses. The Di hound was the ancestor of the state of Dai, and his son would one day hold the land of Dai. Having said this, the man vanished. Zhao Yang wrote this down too and stored it in his archive.

The dream and its explanation are words the Zhao family themselves wrote down and stored away, and I recorded them as they came to me. Master Zuo’s book does not have them.

VI. The Token on Mount Chang

Another day, a physiognomist named Gubu Ziqing came to see Zhao Yang. Zhao Yang called in his sons one by one for him to look at. Ziqing said: Not one of them could be a general.

Zhao Yang said: Is the Zhao line finished, then? Ziqing said: I once saw a boy on the road. He was probably your son too.

Zhao Yang sent for his son Wuxu. When Wuxu arrived, Ziqing rose to his feet: This is a true general!

Zhao Yang said: His mother is lowborn, a Di slave woman. How can he be called noble? Ziqing said: What heaven grants, however lowly, will become noble.

After that Zhao Yang called in all his sons to talk with them, and Wuxu was the ablest. One day he told the sons: I have hidden a precious token on Mount Chang. Whoever finds it first will be rewarded.

Mount Chang is Mount Heng. The sons galloped up the mountain and searched everywhere, and found nothing. Wuxu came back and said: I have found the token.

Zhao Yang said: Show it to me. Wuxu said: From the top of Mount Chang you look down on the state of Dai. Dai can be taken.

Only then did Zhao Yang know that Wuxu really was able. He set aside his heir, Bolu, and made Wuxu, the son of the Di slave woman, his heir.

The child beside the Lord on High in the dream, the Di hound to be handed to a son: here both found their place. At least, that is how the Zhao family remembered it.

VII. Five Hundred Households

Barely two years after the new heir was named, the Zhao house came close to ruin again. It began with five hundred households.

Some time earlier Zhao Yang had besieged Wey, and Wey, frightened, had handed over five hundred households as tribute. Zhao Yang had settled them at Handan, which was held by Wu of Handan, a kinsman from a branch line of his clan. In the spring of 497 BCE, Zhao Yang told Wu of Handan: Give me back those five hundred households from Wey. I want to move them to Jinyang.

Wu agreed. When he went home and told his elders, they all objected: Wey is close to Handan because of those five hundred households. Moving them away cuts our road to Wey. Better to raid Qi first and then find a way to move them. Wu did as they said: he raided Qi first, and only then sent the people to Jinyang.

Zhao Yang was furious. He summoned Wu to Jinyang and imprisoned him, and ordered his attendants to take off their swords before they came in. One attendant, She Bin, refused. Zhao Yang sent word to the people of Handan: I am dealing with Wu privately. You may set up whomever you like. Then he had Wu killed. Wu’s son Zhao Ji and She Bin rose in revolt at Handan.

The ruler of Jin sent troops to besiege Handan. But Wu was the nephew of Xun Yin of the Zhonghang, and Xun Yin was related by marriage to Fan Jishe. The two houses would not join the siege. Instead they prepared to strike.

Dong Anyu heard of it and urged Zhao Yang: Prepare first. Zhao Yang said: Jin has a decree: whoever starts the trouble dies. We will move second.

Dong Anyu said: Rather than let the people suffer, let me die alone. When the time comes, offer me up as the answer. Zhao Yang refused.

In the seventh month, autumn, the Fan and the Zhonghang attacked the Zhao residence. Zhao Yang fled to Jinyang, and the troops of Jin surrounded the city. That year the chronicle of Lu recorded: Zhao Yang of Jin entered Jinyang and rebelled.

VIII. The Oath at Jiang

What saved Zhao Yang was the hatred among the Six Ministers. Inside the Fan and the Zhonghang houses there were men who wanted to take over; and the Zhi, Han and Wei each had their own feuds with those two houses. Xun Li of the Zhi clan said to the ruler of Jin: You commanded your great officers that whoever starts trouble must die, and the oath document lies sunk in the river. Now three ministers have started trouble, and only Zhao Yang is driven out. The punishments are already unequal. I ask that all of them be driven out.

In the eleventh month the Zhi, Han and Wei, with the ruler at their head, attacked the Fan and the Zhonghang, and could not win. The two houses turned to attack the ruler himself. Gao Qiang, an exile from Qi, warned them: Only after breaking your arm three times do you learn to be a good doctor. The one thing you must never do is attack your ruler; the people will not follow you. I attacked my ruler, and that is why I am here. They did not listen.

The people of the capital all took the ruler’s side. The two houses were routed and fled to Zhaoge. The Han and Wei pleaded for the Zhao. In the twelfth month Zhao Yang returned to the capital, Jiang, and swore an oath in the ruler’s palace.

A few months earlier he had been a rebel trapped in Jinyang. A few months later he was a minister of Jin again.

IX. Dong Anyu’s Rope

It was not over yet. The next year Liang Yingfu, a favorite of the Zhi head, told Zhi Wenzi: If you do not kill Dong Anyu and he goes on running the Zhao house, the Zhao will end up with all of Jin. Why not charge the Zhao with the fact that he was the one who started the trouble?

Zhi Wenzi sent word to Zhao Yang: The Fan and the Zhonghang truly rebelled. But Dong Anyu set it off, which means Dong Anyu took part in the plot. Jin has a decree: whoever starts trouble dies. Those two have already paid for their crime. I inform you of this.

Zhao Yang was troubled by it. Dong Anyu was the retainer who had written down his dream word by word. Once, after a battle in which Dong Anyu had done more than anyone, Zhao Yang insisted on rewarding him, and he said: When I was young I held the brush and drafted your orders; when I was older I wore court robes and followed your stewards in their work; you never made anything of it. Now I go into battle once as if in a fit of madness, and you insist on rewarding me. Rewarding me for madness? I would rather run away. And he hurried out. Zhao Yang had to let it go.

This time Dong Anyu said: If I die, Jin will be at peace and the Zhao will be secure. What would I live for? Everyone dies. My death is already late. He hanged himself.

Zhao Yang laid out his body in the marketplace and sent word to the Zhi: You wanted the guilty man punished. Dong Anyu has paid for his crime. Only then did Zhi Wenzi swear an oath with Zhao Yang, and only then was the Zhao house secure. The Zhao placed Dong Anyu in their ancestral temple.

When I reached this point in the Hereditary House, I wrote just one line: after this, the Zhao were at peace. One retainer’s life bought that one line.

X. The Siege Walls at Jinyang

Zhao Yang sent Yin Duo to govern Jinyang. Yin Duo asked: Do you want me to treat Jinyang as a cocoon to draw silk from, or as a shield to protect you? Zhao Yang said: A shield!

When Yin Duo reached Jinyang, he reduced the number of registered households, so the people’s taxes became lighter.

Another time, Zhao Yang sent Yin Duo to Jinyang with the order: Pull down those siege walls. I am coming, and if I see them, it will be like seeing Xun Yin and Fan Jishe. Those were the earthworks Xun Yin and Fan Jishe had raised when they besieged Jinyang.

Yin Duo went and built the walls higher instead. When Zhao Yang reached Jinyang and saw them, he was enraged: I will kill Yin Duo before I enter the city! The grandees pleaded for Yin Duo. He would not listen, and said: This is putting my enemies on display.

The grandee You Wuzheng stepped forward. He was You Liang, the man who drove Zhao Yang’s chariot that day at Tie. He first recalled how the Zhao had come through three generations: the late lord Wenzi suffered disaster as a boy and was raised with his mother in the palace; now you have your grandfather’s example and your father’s teaching, tutors and elders, yet you kept them all at a distance, and so you fell into that disaster. Then he repeated Yin Duo’s own words: To think of pleasure and be glad, to think of danger and be afraid, that is human nature. That heap of earth can be a teacher. Why should I not build it higher? If you punish him, you punish the good.

Zhao Yang was pleased and said: Without you, I would hardly have been a human being! He rewarded Yin Duo with the reward given for saving a lord from danger.

Later he told his heir Wuxu: If Jin ever falls into danger, do not think Yin Duo too young, do not think Jinyang too far. You must go there. Those words would not be needed until after his death.

XI. The Oath Below Tie

Now back to the hill of Tie. In the summer of 493 BCE, Duke Ling of Wey died. Zhao Yang sent troops to escort Kuaikui, the heir of Wey who had been living in exile in Jin, back home. They lost their way in the night. Yang Hu said: Keep the Yellow River on your right and go south, and you will get there. He had the heir put on mourning headgear and had eight men dress in mourning clothes, pretending to be a welcoming party from Wey. They announced themselves at the gate, went in weeping, and took up residence in the Wey town of Qi.

In the eighth month Qi sent grain to the Fan, who were holding out in Zhaoge, and Zheng sent troops to escort it. Zhao Yang caught them near that town. Yang Hu offered more advice: We have few chariots. Raise the big banners from the war chariots and draw up first, facing the Zheng chariots. When they see how we look, they will surely be afraid.

They divined whether to fight. The tortoise shell scorched and showed no clear sign. The retainer Yue Ding said: When everyone’s plans agree, follow precedent.

Zhao Yang swore an oath before the whole army. He said the Fan and the Zhonghang had defied the will of heaven and wanted to seize Jin and destroy its ruler, and that Zheng had abandoned a ruler to help his subjects. Whoever defeats the enemy, he said, a senior grandee will receive a county, a junior grandee a commandery, a knight a hundred thousand mu of land; commoners, artisans and merchants may rise to office; servants and grooms will be freed.

Then he spoke of himself. Zhifu was another of his names. If Zhifu is without guilt, let the ruler judge. If he is guilty, let him be strangled, buried in a thin coffin of paulownia three inches thick, with no outer coffins, on an undecorated cart drawn by unadorned horses, and kept out of the family burial ground. That is the punishment for a junior minister.

On the day of battle You Liang drove, and the heir of Wey was the spearman on the right. They climbed the hill of Tie and saw how many the Zheng troops were. The heir took fright and threw himself down from the chariot. Ziliang handed him the strap for climbing back up and said: Like a woman.

Zhao Yang went along the ranks and said: Bi Wan was an ordinary man. He took captives in seven battles, ended up with a hundred chariot teams of horses, and died at home under his own window. Do your best, all of you. A man does not necessarily die at the enemy’s hands.

Then came the moment this story began with. A Zheng soldier struck Zhao Yang’s shoulder, he fell in the chariot, and the Bee Banner was taken. The heir of Wey shielded him with his own dagger-axe. The Zheng army fell back.

Zhao Yang said happily: That will do. But a retainer named Fu Sou said: We have beaten Zheng, but the Zhi are still there. Our troubles are not over.

The lost Bee Banner was won back by a man named Gongsun Mang. Years before, the Zhou had given the Fan a piece of land, and Gongsun Mang collected its taxes for the Fan. The Zhao caught him and brought him in. The officers wanted him killed. Zhao Yang said: He was working for his own master. What crime is that? He let him go and even gave him land. On the night of the battle at Tie, Gongsun Mang led five hundred foot soldiers in a raid on the Zheng camp, took back the Bee Banner from beneath the tent of the Zheng general Ziyao, and presented it, saying: Let me repay my lord’s kindness.

XII. A Thousand Sheepskins

Over the next few years Zhao Yang took Handan and then Boren. The heads of the Fan and the Zhonghang fled to Qi. Handan and Boren went to the Zhao, and the two houses’ other lands went to the house of Jin.

In the Hereditary House I wrote: in name the Zhao were ministers of Jin; in fact they held all the power in Jin, and their lands were equal to a feudal lord’s.

Zhao Yang had an officer named Zhou She who loved to speak bluntly. After Zhou She died, Zhao Yang was unhappy every time he held court, and the grandees, thinking they had done something wrong, asked to be punished. Zhao Yang said: You have done nothing wrong. I have heard that a thousand sheepskins are not worth the little patch of fur under one fox’s foreleg. When you come to court I hear only “yes, yes.” I do not hear Zhou She arguing. That is why I am troubled.

Once, with the grandee Dou Chou in attendance, he sighed: The sparrow goes into the sea and becomes a clam; the pheasant goes into the Huai and becomes a giant clam. Turtles, alligators, fish and soft-shelled turtles can all change. Only man cannot. How sad!

Dou Chou said: A gentleman grieves at having no worthy men, not at having no wealth. The Fan and the Zhonghang did not care about the people’s hardships and wanted Jin for themselves. Now their descendants are going to plow fields in Qi. The pure-colored animals once offered in their ancestral temples have become beasts pulling plows in the fields. How long does it take a man to change?

XIII. The Drum at Huangchi

In 482 BCE Duke Ding of Jin and King Fuchai of Wu met at Huangchi to swear a covenant. The two states argued over who should smear the blood first. The men of Wu said: In the Zhou royal house, we are the senior line. The men of Jin said: Among the Ji-surnamed states, we are the leader.

The argument dragged on until the day was almost over. Zhao Yang called for the marshal Yin and said: The day is late, and the great matter is still not settled. That is the fault of the two of us, his servants. Set up the war drum and dress the ranks. If the two of us fight to the death, it will be clear enough who is senior.

The marshal went to have a look and came back: Men who eat meat do not have darkened faces. The king of Wu’s face is dark. Has his state been defeated? Has his heir died? Let us wait a little.

Master Zuo’s book says that in the end Wu let Jin go first. Who finally came first I did not write the same way in every chapter of my history, and I have kept both versions. It was another time Zhao Yang wanted the drum set up.

Epilogue

Zhao Yang fell ill. The head of the Zhi house, Zhibo, led troops against Zheng, and Zhao Yang sent his heir Wuxu with him. Zhibo got drunk, threw wine at Wuxu and struck him. Wuxu’s men asked to die avenging him.

Wuxu said: Our lord made me his heir because I can bear humiliation. When Zhibo went home, he urged Zhao Yang to set Wuxu aside. Zhao Yang refused.

Later Zhao Yang died. The son of the Di slave woman took his place. He is Zhao Xiangzi.

That day at Tie, he fell in his chariot, his banner was taken, and the drum did not stop. The banner was won back by a former Fan man he had spared. The drum he handed, in the end, to the son who had been doused with wine and beaten and still said he could bear it.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Core source: Shiji chapter 43, Hereditary House of Zhao, the passages on Zhao Wenzi, Zhao Jingshu and Zhao Jianzi (from “Wenzi fathered Jingshu” to “In the seventeenth year of Duke Chu of Jin, Jianzi died, and the heir Wuxu succeeded him; this was Xiangzi”), read in the Wikisource Shiji transcription and checked against the Three Commentaries (Jijie, Suoyin, Zhengyi) in the Wikisource Shiji sanjia zhu, chapter 43. No modern translation was copied. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷043 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記三家註/卷043

2. Cross-checks: Zuozhuan, Duke Cheng year 8 (Lady Zhuang Ji’s slander; Jin punishes Zhao Tong and Zhao Kuo; Zhao Wu raised in the palace; Han Jue speaks for him); Duke Zhao years 25 (the Huangfu meeting; Zitaishu on ritual), 26 (Zhi Li and Zhao Yang restore the king), 28 (the Qi and Yangshe lands split into ten counties), 29 (the penal cauldron; the remarks of Confucius and the scribe Cai Mo), 32 (Zhao Jianzi asks Shi Mo about the Ji); Duke Ding years 9 (Yang Hu goes to the Zhao; Confucius’s remark), 13 and 14 (the Jinyang crisis; Dong Anyu’s death); Duke Ai years 2 (the Wey heir installed in the town of Qi; the battle of Tie), 3 to 5 (Zhaoge, Handan, Boren), 13 (Huangchi), and year 20 and Duke Dao year 4 (Wuxu in mourning; Zhibo insults Zhao Meng; used only for boundary notes). Guoyu chapter 15, Discourses of Jin 9 (Dong Anyu refuses a reward; Yin Duo at Jinyang; You Wuzheng’s remonstrance; the three boasts at Tie; Dou Chou on change), with Wei Zhao’s commentary. Shiji chapter 105 (Bian Que attends Zhao Jianzi), chapter 39 (Hereditary House of Jin, Dukes Ding and Chu) and chapter 31 (Hereditary House of Wu Taibo, Huangchi). All read in Wikisource transcriptions. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/成公 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/昭公 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/定公 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/春秋左氏傳/哀公 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/國語/卷15 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷105 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷039 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷031

3. Key sayings retold in plain language in the story, with their exact sources (original wording is given in the Chinese notes): Zhao Yang’s boast “I lay over my bow case coughing blood, and the drum never grew weaker,” the boasts of the Wey heir and You Liang, the wounding, the lost Bee Banner and Fu Sou’s warning (Zuozhuan, Duke Ai 2; Guoyu, Jin 9, where Wei Zhao comments that he “still beat the drum lying over the bow case”); the predictions of Jizha and Shuxiang (Shiji 43); the Zhao orphan in the Zuozhuan version (Duke Cheng 8); Huangfu and Zitaishu on ritual (Duke Zhao 25) and the restoration of the king (Duke Zhao 26); the penal cauldron, Confucius and Cai Mo (Duke Zhao 29); the ten counties (Shiji 43); Shi Mo on the Ji and “ruler and subject have no fixed place” (Duke Zhao 32); Yang Hu’s escape and Confucius’s remark (Duke Ding 9), and the bribe (Shiji 43); Bian Que, the dream and the man in the road (Shiji 43, also Shiji 105); Gubu Ziqing, the token on Mount Chang and the choice of Wuxu (Shiji 43); the five hundred households, Dong Anyu’s warning, Xun Li’s speech and Gao Qiang’s warning (Duke Ding 13); Dong Anyu’s death (Duke Ding 14; Shiji 43) and his refusal of a reward (Guoyu, Jin 9); Yin Duo, the siege walls and You Wuzheng (Guoyu, Jin 9); the Wey heir entering the town of Qi, Yang Hu’s advice, the divination, the oath, Bi Wan and Gongsun Mang (Duke Ai 2); the Zhao lands and the thousand sheepskins (Shiji 43); Dou Chou (Guoyu, Jin 9); Huangchi (Duke Ai 13); Zhibo and Wuxu (Shiji 43).

4. Dating and conflicting accounts: (1) The Zhao orphan: the Shiji tells of Tu’an Gu, Cheng Ying and Gongsun Chujiu and a fifteen-year concealment; the Zuozhuan (Duke Cheng 8) has Lady Zhuang Ji’s slander, the punishment of Zhao Tong and Zhao Kuo and Zhao Wu raised in the palace, with no Tu’an Gu or Cheng Ying; You Wuzheng’s speech in the Guoyu and Wei Zhao’s note also speak of Zhuang Ji’s slander. Both are given side by side. (2) The dream, the man in the road, Gubu Ziqing, the token on Mount Chang and the setting aside of Bolu appear only in the Shiji (Shiji 105 also records Bian Que’s visit); the Zuozhuan and Guoyu do not have them, and the story marks them as accounts the Zhao wrote down and stored. Shiji 105 dates the visit to the time of Duke Zhao of Jin, while the Zhengyi commentary, following the chronological tables, puts it in Duke Ding’s eleventh year (about 501 BCE); the story says only “probably around the same year.” Bian Que’s own dates are partly legendary. Mount Chang is Mount Heng, renamed in Han times to avoid Emperor Wen’s personal name. (3) The Zuozhuan says only that Yang Hu went to the Zhao; the bribe is from Shiji 43. (4) The Jinyang crisis of 497 BCE: Shiji 43 puts it in Duke Ding of Jin’s fourteenth year, Shiji 39 in his fifteenth, the Zuozhuan in Duke Ding of Lu’s thirteenth. On Wu of Handan, Shiji 43 says his elders refused and he broke his word; the Zuozhuan says they advised raiding Qi first, after which he sent the people to Jinyang. The story follows the Zuozhuan. Shiji 43 gives Confucius’s wording as “Zhao Yang rebelled with Jinyang”; the received Chunqiu has “Zhao Yang of Jin entered Jinyang and rebelled,” which the story uses. (5) Dong Anyu died in 496 BCE (Zuozhuan, Duke Ding 14; Shiji “the next year”); his last words differ slightly. (6) The battle of Tie, 493 BCE, is not narrated in Shiji 43; the story follows Zuozhuan Duke Ai 2 and Guoyu Jin 9, whose boasts differ slightly in wording. “Kept the drum going” follows Wei Zhao’s note. The driver is You Wuxu and then You Liang in the Zuozhuan and You Wuzheng in the Guoyu; Wei Zhao identifies You Wuzheng with You Liang (Wang Liang), and the story calls him You Liang throughout. The Bee Banner is a flag name (Du Yu); its design is not described. Zhifu is the name Zhao Yang uses for himself in his oath. (7) Huangchi, 482 BCE: the Zuozhuan says Jin went first; Shiji 31 says Wu deferred to Duke Ding of Jin; Shiji 39 and 43 say Wu finally went first. The Shiji contradicts itself, and both versions are kept. (8) Zhao Jianzi’s death: Shiji 43 puts it in Duke Chu of Jin’s seventeenth year, but in the Zuozhuan, Duke Ai 20 (475 BCE), Zhao Meng (Wuxu) is already in mourning and calls him “the late lord,” so his death is usually placed around 476 BCE. The Shiji’s dating of these years does not match the Zuozhuan, and the story gives no year of death. (9) Yin Duo’s two episodes, the advice to Wuxu, and the sayings about Zhou She and Dou Chou are undated in the sources. (10) The levy is “one gu of iron” in the original; the story says only that iron was levied. Du Yu explains the reward for commoners, artisans and merchants as the right to rise to office. (11) Two characters in the Wikisource Zuozhuan text are corrected to the standard reading (see the Chinese notes). (12) Dates: Huangfu 517 BCE; restoration of the king 516; the ten counties 514; the penal cauldron 513; the question to Shi Mo 510; Yang Hu’s flight 501; Jinyang 497; Dong Anyu’s death 496; Tie 493; Handan 491; Boren 490; Huangchi 482. (13) Zhibo’s insult to Wuxu and the rest of Zhao Xiangzi’s story belong to No. 33 of this series; here only what bears on Zhao Jianzi’s choice of heir is used.

5. Boundaries between record and narration: all dialogue and speeches come from the sources listed; the plain-language retelling is a modern editorial rendering. No weather, facial expressions, inner thoughts or invented dialogue have been added. The opening “the three men took turns claiming the credit” follows the three speeches after the battle in the Zuozhuan. The following are modern editorial links and comments, not claims of the sources: “half of his life went into winning his family a way to survive; the other half into choosing someone who could keep the drum beating”; “the young man who asked about ritual and the minister who cast the cauldron were the same person”; “Shi Mo’s answer could just as well be heard in Jin”; “here both found their place; at least, that is how the Zhao family remembered it”; “one retainer’s life bought that one line”; “it was another time Zhao Yang wanted the drum set up”; and the last paragraph of the epilogue. “Sixteen years later” is a count of years from Duke Zhao 29 to Duke Ding 13. The first-person “I” of Sima Qian (“When I wrote the Hereditary House of Zhao,” “I recorded them as they came to me”) is a narrative device describing how the Shiji is arranged, not Sima Qian’s own words.

6. Map: four points. Jinyang (present-day Taiyuan area, Shanxi), linked to 497 BCE; Jiang (Xintian, present-day Houma area, Shanxi), linked to 497 BCE (Zhao Yang’s return and oath in the twelfth month); Tie (present-day Puyang area, Henan), linked to 493 BCE, Tie being a hill south of the Wey town of Qi according to Du Yu; Huangchi (present-day Fengqiu area, Henan), linked to 482 BCE. All coordinates are OpenStreetMap regional reference points for the modern administrative areas and do not mark exact ancient sites. Huangfu, the Ru riverside, Handan, Zhaoge, Boren, Qi (the Wey town), Mount Chang, Dai and Ganhou are left unmapped.

7. Rights: the ancient sources are in the public domain. The Chinese and English texts are original modern narratives. This is an unpublished draft; no actual publication time is filled in.