From: jamesou@zygote.hsc.usc.edu (James Ou)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,soc.culture.taiwan
Subject: Re: Hus Fu and the Japanese
Date: 27 Dec 1992 22:25:42 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: zygote.hsc.usc.edu


In <1992Dec27.010519.8165@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, nlu@Xenon.Stanford.EDU
(Nelson Lu) writes:

Regarding Han4 Wu3 Di4:

>Well, even then, the key is that they didn't blame him as much.  Let me
>translate a segment of Ban1 Gu4's commentary on Liu Che:  (pardon my far
>from elegant translation, but I just want to make a point...)
>
>"Even though Wu Di had many military achievements, but he did not change the
>custom of being humble and thrift left from the times of Wen Di (Liu Hen) and
>Jing Di (Liu Chi), and he loved his people; even the king sages praised by the
>Book of Poetry (Shi1 Jin1) and Book of Documents (Shu1 Jin1) cannot exceed
>him."
>
>Doesn't sound like much of a blame to me!  Much of the praise is undue, while
>Liu Che's military achievements went unpraised (showing the bias of traditional
>historians).

It sounded like boot-licking to me. :-) Looking at the history of
Ban1 Gu4, he was really far from a great sage. He associated
himself with a powerful relative (Dou4 Xian4) of the emperor and
eventually died for that association. Since BanGu was a Han
dynasty minister, it is unlikely that his commentary on HanWuDi
was unbiased. It is just like that we can't expect an unbiased
evaluation of CCP from a PRC historian. Here is a commentary on
HanWuDi from the Song dynasty scholar Si1 Ma3 Guang1. He said,
"In many aspects such as Qiong2 She1 Ji2 Yu4 [satisfying their
desire with extreme luxury], Han4 Wu3 Di4 was just like the Qin2
emperor Ying2 Zheng4. However, HanWuDi was able to award good
people and punish bad people and to set up schools for education.
Perhaps that was the reason why Ying's country fell while WuDi's
country was able to stand still." I think SiMaGuang's comments on
HanWuDi was less biased.


Regarding Yang2 Guang3:

>Again, the key is *not as much*.  Whenever historians want to conjure up
>images of tyrants, they always go to Ying Zheng first.  (The great Li Shi4
>Min2 knows better, as he always referred to Yang Guang, but he's not a
>historian.)

I disagree. Yang was a jerk and a disastrous emperor. I believe
most netters know that. However, there were so many emperors like
Yang Guang in the Chinese history. Ying Zheng was OFTEN used as
the example of a tyrant, because, unfortunately, he was "more
famous". After all, he was the first emperor of China. Li Shi Min
liked to use Yang Guang as an example, because he essentially saw
what happened to Yang2 Guang3.

>(BTW, I don't think Yang Guang just "fondled" his father's concubines. :-))

Okay, okay, Yang fondled one of his "step-mothers" first, and,
after that step-mother reported the incident to his father Yang2
Jian1, he murdered his father and raped his "step-mother" in the
following night.

I did not want to be so explicit, you know. :-)


****Bu2 Ru4 Hu3 Xue4, An1 De2 Hu3 Zi3.
(If we don't enter the tiger's cave, how can we get the tiger's
cubs?)
		   --Ban1 Chao1 (BanGu's brother), East Han4 dynasty

Newsgroups: soc.culture.china