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For the first time since the beginning of Chinese history, great areas of continuous territory were under unified rule, without unending internal warfare such as had existed under Shih Huang-ti and Kao Tsu. The creation of so extensive a region of peace produced great economic advance.
There he made the acquaintance of an unusual man, the merchant Lü Pu-wei, a man of education and of great political influence. Lü Pu-wei persuaded the feudal ruler of Ch'in to declare this son his successor. He also sold a girl to the prince to be his wife, and the son of this marriage was to be the famous and notorious Shih Huang-ti.
"These two genii," replied the Chên-jên, "are from Ch'i-p'an Shan, Chessboard Mountain. One is a spiritual peach-tree, the other a spiritual pomegranate-tree. Their roots cover an area of thirty square li of ground. On that mountain there is a temple dedicated to Huang-ti, in which are clay images of two devils called Ch'ien-li Yen and Shun-fêng Êrh.
Ch'in Shih Huang-ti, the First Emperor, was the first to offer sacrifices to this star, the Old Man of the South Pole, at Shê Po, in 246 B.C. Since then the worship has been continued pretty regularly until modern times. But desire for something more concrete, or at least more personal, than a star led to the god's being represented as an old man.
Thus it is by no mere chance that in this period many encyclopaedias were compiled. Encyclopaedias convey knowledge in an easily grasped and easily found form. The first compilation of this sort dates from the third century B.C. It was the work of Lü Pu wei, the merchant who was prime minister and regent during the minority of Shih Huang-ti.
Even before the Christian era, the Chinese chronicles tell of the pressure of these fierce barbarians from the North being so much felt and their raids so constant, that Chi Huang-ti, the ruler of the powerful Chinese feudatory state which laid the foundations of the present Empire of China, began to build the Great Wall of China and to fortify old Peking as the only means of stopping these living waves.
The real loss arose, however, from the fact that the new generation was little interested in the Confucianist literature, so that when, fifty years later, the effort was made to restore some texts from the oral tradition, there no longer existed any scholars who really knew them by heart, as had been customary in the past. In 221 B.C. Shih Huang-ti had become emperor of all China.
Closer research has shown that Shih Huang-ti was evidently an average man without any great gifts, that he was superstitious, and shared the tendency of his time to mystical and shamanistic notions. The Legalists taught that the ruler must do as little as possible himself. His Ministers were there to act for him. He himself was to be regarded as a symbol of Heaven.
In that capacity Shih Huang-ti undertook periodical journeys into the various parts of the empire, less for any practical purpose of inspection than for purposes of public worship. They corresponded to the course of the sun, and this indicates that Shih Huang-ti had adopted a notion derived from the older northern culture of the nomad peoples.
Ch'ih-chiang Tzu-yü lived in the reign of Hsien-yüan Huang-ti, who appointed him Director of Construction and Furnishing. When Hsien-yüan went on his visit to Ô-mei Shan, a mountain in Ssuch'uan, Ch'ih-chiang Tzu-yü obtained permission to accompany him. Their object was to be initiated into the doctrine of immortality.
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