Ch'in

The Mongols invaded Szechuan in 1236, and Ch’in fled to the east, where he first became a vice-administrator (t’ung-p’an) in Ch’i-chou prefecture (now Ch’i-ch’un in Hupeh province) and then governor of Ho-chou (now Ho-hsien in Anhwei province).

Ch’in Li-chun, who had studied Japanese and now worked for a Japanese railway company in Shantung province, committed suicide. ‘The Japanese language I had studied in Japan for ten years,’ he wrote in his suicide note, ‘suddenly went out of my mind due to the stimulus on May 7; I was therefore not able to serve the company. I could not provide food and clothes for my family so I had to die.’

There lived a young political genius, not more than thirty years of age, by the name of Ch’ui P’ing (he is better known to the Chinese as Ch’ui Yuan). Young Ch’ui hailed from a rich and influential family of nobles and before long he won the confidence of the then Ch’u emperor, Hwai Wang, and was appointed to a high administrative position. He made recommendations in lengthy memorials and advocated giving the citizens of Ch’u a new deal and a square one at that. The emperor had taken him in as his right hand man allowing him a free hand in the politico-military situation with a high-sounding title which would translates no less than Supreme Crown Adviser and Expert Consultant, and entrusted to him the important duties, on account of his diplomatic acumen, of an ambassador-at-large on a politically inspired tour of the various minor states, notably the Kingdom of Ch’i (the present Shantung province) in an attempt to negotiate some alliance of joint action in defending themselves against the expansionists schemes of the Kingdom of Ch’in, whose domain then was roughly the present Shensi province. He almost succeeded in his mission.

In this "Memorial," his last appeal to the emperor, Li Ssu described his long life of service to the state of Ch'in. He recalled the day when, as a young, unknown scholar, he had entered the service of the minister Lu Pu-wei. In those days, he wrote, "Ch'in 's territory did not exceed a thousand li and its soldiers did not number more than a hundred thousand."

Lu Pu-wei was a prosperous businessman in the large city of Han-tan in Chao, where he met a prince of Ch'in who was being kept as hostage in the capital.

In China, after several hundred years of political turbulence, a king of Ch’in, a northern state, took the conquest title, Shih Huang Ti, meaning First Universal Ruler. Though a powerful man, one who, for example, had most of the Great Wall finished, his rule was considered harsh and after his death the people accepted a new dynasty known as the Han.

A bit of local lore claims that this mound is actually one of twelve in the area. The others were decoys, raised by the people to confuse the "traitors of Ch'u and the troops of Ch'in who would have desecrated the Corpse of Ch'ü Yüan."