Qin Shi Huang秦始皇

Style & Daoist names

Ying Zheng, First Emperor (Shi Huangdi)

Period

Qin

Dates

259 BCE — 210 BCE

School

Fangxian Dao (Way of the Fangshi and Immortality-seekers)

Role

Daoism-Venerating EmperorsSeeker of Immortality

Birthplace

Handan, State of Zhao

Places of activity

Mount Tai (Taishan)

Life

The relationship between Qin Shi Huang (Ying Zheng) and Daoism centers on his embrace and promotion of the Fangxian Dao of Yan and Qi. According to the "Basic Annals of Qin Shi Huang" and the "Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices" in the Records of the Grand Historian, after unifying China he made five tours to the east, repeatedly going to the sea in search of immortals: in the twenty-eighth year of his reign (219 BCE) he performed the feng and shan sacrifices at Mount Tai, and that same year sent Xu Fu (Xu Shi) of Qi, together with young boys and girls, out to sea to seek the elixir of immortality on the three sacred mountains of Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou; he also employed fangshi such as Lu Sheng, Han Zhong, Hou Gong and Shi Sheng of Yan to seek immortals and the "elixir of immortality," and Lu Sheng presented the Lutu shu (Register and Chart), which said "that which will destroy Qin is Hu," directly influencing his decision to build the Great Wall in the north. He also, following Zou Yan's theory of the Five Powers' cyclical succession, determined Qin to be under the power of Water, changing the calendar and the color of court dress and taking the tenth month as the start of the year — the first instance of Five-Phases theory entering state institutions. Later, after Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng fled and slandered him, the First Emperor, in great anger, had more than four hundred and sixty scholars in Xianyang buried alive (traditionally called the "burying of the Confucians," though many among them were in fact fangshi). The First Emperor himself was not a Daoist believer — Daoism as such did not yet exist in his time — but his quest for immortality raised the Fangxian Dao from a local numerological practice to a matter of state, setting the tone for the immortality-seeking of Emperor Wu of Han's reign and for later immortality belief; his stone inscriptions from his eastern tours and the legend of Xu Fu also became enduring motifs of Daoism and East Asian folk narrative.

Contributions & Influence

• Used the power of the state to support the Fangxian Dao's quest for immortality, bringing immortality belief into the center of politics
• Sent Xu Fu to sea to seek the elixir of immortality on the three sacred mountains, becoming the origin point of East Asian immortal narratives
• Adopted Zou Yan's theory of the Five Powers' cyclical succession to determine Qin as under the power of Water, the first instance of the institutionalization of Five-Phases theory in politics
• Performed the feng and shan sacrifices at Mount Tai, establishing the ritual framework for later imperial feng and shan sacrifices and mountain worship

Legends

Xu Fu leading three thousand young boys and girls out to sea, settling on a "level plain with broad marshes" and becoming its king, never to return (per the "Biographies of Huainan and Hengshan" in the Records of the Grand Historian), along with the later legends of Xu Fu's relics in Japan and Korea; Anqi Sheng presenting him with jujubes and arranging to meet him at Penglai — all of these are legendary.