page_title: History of the Han dynasty
section_title: Partisan Prohibitions
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Han dynasty / Decline of Eastern Han / Partisan Prohibitions
caption_attribution_description: English: A Chinese mid-Eastern-Han Dynasty (25&#8211;220 CE) ceramic architectural model of a fortified multistory manor house with a covered bridge extended to a smaller watchtower. This model was excavated by archaeologists in 1993 from an Eastern-Han tomb at Jiazuo, Henan Province, China. The main building is 192 cm tall, and has a courtyard with gate-towers, an exterior stairway leading from the courtyard to the front balcony of the first level, and four sets of rooftops. This information is taken from: Guo, Qinghua. (2005). Chinese Architecture and Planning: Ideas, Methods, and Techniques. Stuttgart and London: Edition Axel Menges. ISBN&#160;3932565541. This artifact is now located in the Henan Provincial Museum, Zhengzhou, China; from collection posted at www.GaryLeeTodd.com by Dr. Gary L. Todd, Professor of History, Sias International University, Xinzheng, China.
context_page_description: The Han dynasty, founded by the peasant rebel leader Liu Bang, was the second imperial dynasty of China. It followed the Qin dynasty, which had unified the Warring States of China by conquest. Interrupted briefly by the Xin dynasty of Wang Mang, the Han dynasty is divided into two periods: the Western Han and the Eastern Han. These appellations are derived from the locations of the capital cities Chang'an and Luoyang, respectively. The third and final capital of the dynasty was Xuchang, where the court moved in 196 CE during a period of political turmoil and civil war.
  The Han dynasty ruled in an era of Chinese cultural consolidation, political experimentation, relative economic prosperity and maturity, and great technological advances. There was unprecedented territorial expansion and exploration initiated by struggles with non-Chinese peoples, especially the nomadic Xiongnu of the Eurasian Steppe. The Han emperors were initially forced to acknowledge the rival Xiongnu Chanyus as their equals, yet in reality the Han was an inferior partner in a tributary and royal marriage alliance known as heqin.
context_section_description: In 166 CE, the official Li Ying (李膺) was accused by palace eunuchs of plotting treason with students at the Imperial University and associates in the provinces who opposed the eunuchs. Emperor Huan was furious, arresting Li and his followers, who were only released from prison the following year due to pleas from the General-in-Chief Dou Wu (d. 168 CE) (Emperor Huan's father-in-law). However, Li Ying and hundreds of his followers were proscribed from holding any offices and were branded as partisans (黨人).
  After Emperor Huan's death, at the urging of the Grand Tutor (太傅) Chen Fan (陳蕃) (d. 168 CE), Dou Wu presented a memorial to the court in June 168 CE denouncing the leading eunuchs as corrupt and calling for their execution, but Empress Dowager Dou refused the proposal. This was followed by a memorial presented by Chen Fan calling for the heads of Hou Lan (d. 172 CE) and Cao Jie (d. 181 CE), and when this too was refused Dou Wu took formal legal action which could not be ignored by the court. When Shan Bing, a eunuch associate of Chen and Dou's, gained a forced confession from another eunuch that Cao Jie and Wang Fu (王甫) plotted treason, he prepared another damning written memorial on the night of October 24–25 which the opposing eunuchs secretly opened and read. Cao Jie armed Emperor Ling with a sword and hid him with his wet nurse, while Wang Fu had Shan Bing killed and Empress Dowager Dou incarcerated so that the eunuchs could use the authority of her seal.
  Chen Fan entered the palace with eighty followers and engaged in a shouting match with Wang Fu, yet Chen was gradually surrounded, detained, and later trampled to death in prison that day (his followers were unharmed). At dawn, the general Zhang Huan (張奐), misled by the eunuchs into believing that Dou Wu was committing treason, engaged in a shouting match with Dou Wu at the palace gates, but as Dou's followers slowly deserted him and trickled over to Zhang's side, Dou was forced to commit suicide. In neither of these confrontations did any actual physical fighting break out.
  With Dou Wu eliminated and the Empress Dowager under house arrest, the eunuchs renewed the proscriptions against Li Ying and his followers; in 169 CE they had hundreds more officials and students prohibited from serving office, sent their families into exile, and had Li Ying executed. The eunuchs barred potential enemies from court, sold and bartered offices, and infiltrated the military command. Emperor Ling even referred to eunuchs Zhao Zhong and Zhang Rang as his "mother" and "father"; the latter two had so much influence over the emperor that they convinced him not to ascend to the top floors of tall towers in the capital, which was an effort to conceal from him the enormous mansions that the eunuchs built for themselves. Although the partisan prohibitions were extended to hundreds more in 176 CE (including the distant relatives of those earlier proscribed), they were abolished in 184 CE with the outbreak of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, largely because the court feared the gentry—bitter from their banishment from office—would join the rebel cause.
caption: A Han dynasty pottery model of two residential towers joined by a covered bridge
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