Lü Buwei
The "Shiji" (chap. 85, p. 2510) biography of Lü Buwei has the earliest information about the "Lüshi Chunqiu". Lü was a successful merchant from Handan who befriended King Zhuangxiang of Qin. The king's son Zheng (政, who the "Shiji" suggests was actually Lü's son) eventually became the first emperor Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC. When Zhuangxiang died in 247 BC, Lü Buwei was made regent for the 13-year-old Zheng. In order to establish Qin as the intellectual center of China, Lü "recruited scholars, treating them generously so that his retainers came to number three thousand" (tr. Knoblock and Riegel 2000:13). In 239 BC, he, in the words of the "Shiji"