King Jie (; traditionally 1728–1675 BC) was the 17th and last ruler of the

Xia dynasty The Xia dynasty () is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, the Xia dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great, after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors, gave the throne to him. In tradi ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. He is traditionally regarded as a

tyrant A tyrant (), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to rep ...

and oppressor who brought about the collapse of a dynasty.劉煒/著.

002 002, 0O2, O02, OO2, or 002 may refer to: Fiction *002, fictional British 00 Agent *''002 Operazione Luna'', *1965 Italian film *Zero Two, a ''Darling in the Franxx'' character Airports *0O2, Baker Airport *O02, Nervino Airport Astronomy *1996 ...

(2002) Chinese civilization in a new light 中華文明傳真#1 原始社會：東方的曙光. Publishing Company. . pg 150. Around 1600 BC, Jie was defeated by

Tang of Shang Cheng Tang (), personal name Zi Lü (), recorded on oracle bones as Da Yi (大乙), was the first king of the Shang dynasty in Chinese history. Traditionally considered a virtuous ruler, he overthrew Jie, the last ruler of the Xia dynasty. Ris ...

, bringing an end to the Xia Dynasty that lasted about 500 years, and a rise to the new

Shang Dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and ...

.王恆偉. (2005) (2006) 中國歷史講堂 #1 遠古至春秋. 中華書局. . p 26.

Etymology

''Jié'' ( variant: ) (<

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

: ) ( ZS) means "outstanding" and later "hero"; insides Chinese, it is cognate to ''qiè'' (< OC ) (ZS) "martial"; outsides Chinese it is cognate to either "strength; champion, athlete", or Mizo: "brave, resolute". The rime dictionary '' Guangyun'' later associates this Xia king's name (or epithet) ''Jié'' with ''zhé'' "to dismember, to cut asunder". ''

Kangxi dictionary The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' ( (Compendium of standard characters from the Kangxi period), published in 1716, was the most authoritative dictionary of Chinese characters from the 18th century through the early 20th. The Kangxi Emperor of the Qing ...

'' states that 磔 (''zhé'') is synonymous with ''pìgū'' "to cut asunder and open up", in '' Rites of Zhou''; and that "the ancients asserted that the fierce and devious ( ''jiéxiá'') ones are brutal and violent ( ''xiōngbào''), as if they were cutting hingsasunder ( ''zhé'')." Historian Pei Yin ( , 裴骃) cites ''Rules for

Posthumous Names A posthumous name is an honorary name given mostly to the notable dead in East Asian culture. It is predominantly practiced in East Asian countries such as China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and Thailand. Reflecting on the person's accomplishments o ...

'' ( ''Shìfǎ'') (attributed to the

Duke of Zhou Dan, Duke Wen of Zhou (), commonly known as the Duke of Zhou (), was a member of the royal family of the early Zhou dynasty who played a major role in consolidating the kingdom established by his elder brother King Wu. He was renowned for acting ...

), that ''Jié'' was meant for those who harmed and killed numerous people.

Early years

Jie is generally known as Xia Jie (夏桀) or Jie of Xia. His given name was Lü Gui (履癸).王恆偉. (2005) (2006) 中國歷史講堂 #1 遠古至春秋. 中華書局. . p. 27. Jie ascended to the throne in the year of ''

Renchen Renchen ( gsw, label= Low Alemannic, Renche) is a small town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, part of the district of Ortenau. Geography Renchen is located in the foothills of the northern Black Forest at the entrance to the Rench valley at the ed ...

'' (壬辰).Bamboo annals Xia chapter on Xia Jie under the name Gui (癸).Virginia.edu.
Virginia.edu contents of Bamboo annal
" ''Xia chapter.'' Retrieved on 2010-10-03. Initially, his capital was in

Zhenxun Zhenxun () was the last capital for the pre historical Chinese Xia dynasty. There is a consensus among many Chinese scholars that the Erlitou site about 20 km east of central Luoyang Luoyang is a city located in the confluence area of Luo Rive ...

. He lived there for three years and constructed his tilt palace. About the same time, he destroyed the

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...

of Rong (容台), and quelled a rebellion by the Quanyi people (aka ''Fei Barbarians'') after they entered Qi, near Fen. His parents were

Fa of Xia Fa (Chinese language, Chinese: 發, Fā) was the 16th ruler of the Xia Dynasty, father of the infamous Jie of Xia, Jie who brought the dynasty to its end. His given name was Houjing (后敬). Reign Fa was a son of the King Gao of Xia and thus ...

and his wife. 夏桀像

King of Xia

Ruling

Jie is known to have lived a lavish lifestyle with slaves and treated his people with extreme

cruelty Cruelty is the pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept. Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve ...

. His style of ruling was reckless and filled with

sex Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones ( ova, of ...

, luxury and entertainment. He generally disliked people who criticized him, and many were indeed afraid of him.戴逸, 龔書鐸.

(2003) 中國通史. 史前夏商西周. Intelligence press. . p 51. In the sixth year of Jie's regime, he entertained envoys from vassals and neighbors. He received an envoy from the Qizhong barbarian people (歧踵戎). In the 11th year, he summoned all his vassals to his court. The Youmin Kingdom (有緡) did not come, so Jie attacked and conquered it. In his 13th year of the ruling, he moved his capital from Zhenxun to 'South of the He' (河南). About that time, he began using the Nian (輦), or sedan chair, on which he was carried by servants. The next year, he led an army to

Minshan Min Mountains or Minshan () are a mountain range in central China. It runs in the general north-south direction through northern Sichuan (the eastern part of the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture and adjacent areas of Mianyang Prefec ...

. There, he found two of the King of Minshan's daughters, Wan and Yan. They were unmarried and very beautiful, so he took them as his wives, renaming them Zhao (''苕'') and Hua. He abandoned his original wife Mo Xi (''妹喜'') and built a pyramid on top of the Tilt

Palace A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

for them to live in.

Alcohol lake

According to Liu Xiang's book ''

Lienü zhuan The ''Biographies of Exemplary Women'' () is a book compiled by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang c. 18 BCE. It includes 125 biographical accounts of exemplary women in ancient China, taken from early Chinese histories including '' Chunqiu'', ' ...

'' written much later, around 18 BC, Jie was corrupted by his infatuation with his concubine

Mo Xi Mo Xi () was a concubine of Jie, the last ruler of the Chinese Xia dynasty. According to tradition, Mo Xi, Da Ji (concubine of the last ruler of the Shang dynasty) and Bao Si (concubine of the last ruler of the Western Zhou dynasty) are each ...

(妺喜 or ''末喜''), who was beautiful, but completely lacking in

virtue Virtue ( la, virtus) is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standards ...

.Virginia.edu.
Virginia.edu
." ''etext scan.'' Retrieved on 2010-10-03.

(列女傳) scroll 7 chapter on Jie of Xia with Mo Xi Among other things, she liked to drink, enjoyed

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

, and also had a penchant for jugglers and sing-song girls. Apparently, she had Jie order a lake of

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

made. They both sailed about in the alcohol lake in an

orgy In modern usage, an orgy is a sex party consisting of at least five members where guests freely engage in open and unrestrained sexual activity or group sex. Swingers' parties do not always conform to this designation, because at many swin ...

of drunken naked men and women bathing and drinking.S.J Marshall.

(2002) The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the I Ching. Columbia university press. , . p 177-178. She then commanded 3,000 men to drink the lake dry, only to laugh when they all drowned. This event was also recorded in Han Ying's book '' Han shi waizhuan''.

Jie's cuisine

A great deal of effort was spent on Jie's

cuisine A cuisine is a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients, techniques and dishes, and usually associated with a specific culture or geographic region. Regional food preparation techniques, customs, and ingredients combine to ...

and his requirements.

Vegetables Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...

had to come from the northwest,

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

had to be from the East Sea, seasonings and sauces had to come from

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices ...

that grew in the south,

sea salt Sea salt is salt that is produced by the evaporation of seawater. It is used as a seasoning in foods, cooking, cosmetics and for preserving food. It is also called bay salt, solar salt, or simply salt. Like mined rock salt, production of sea sa ...

had to come from the north. Several hundred people were employed just to supply Jie with his meals. Anyone that got his meal wrong was

beheaded Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the ...

. Jie was also a known

alcoholic Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomina ...

, but he did not drink regular wine. He drank a type of pure alcohol wine (清醇). The people working for him who could not supply this drink were killed. Many people died because of this. And while he was drinking wine it was required that he ride on someone's back like a

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

. In one incident Jie was riding the back of a top

chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

like a horse. After a while the chancellor was tired to the point that he could no longer crawl or move. He asked Emperor Jie to spare him. Jie immediately dragged him out to be executed. Another chancellor, Guan Longfeng (關龍逢), told the emperor that he was losing the trust of his people along with the Xia dynasty's rivers and mountains (江山). After yelling at Guan, he too was dragged out to be killed.

Collapse of the Xia Dynasty

The rise of Shang

The Xia Dynasty held

suzerainty Suzerainty () is the rights and obligations of a person, state or other polity who controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy. While the subordinate party is cal ...

over a number of kingdoms, one of which was the Kingdom of Shang. During Jie's reign, Shang grew in power, initially at the expense of Xia's other vassals. A person by the name of Zi Lü was able to win many supporters from as many as 40 smaller kingdoms.王恆偉. (2005) (2006) 中國歷史講堂 #1 遠古至春秋. 中華書局. . p 30. Tang of Shang recognized that Jie mistreated the people and used this as a way to convince other supporters. In one speech Tang of Shang said that creating chaos is not something he wanted, but given the terror of Jie, he has to follow the Mandate of Heaven and use this opportunity to overthrow Xia. He also pointed out that even Jie's own military generals would not obey his orders. In the 15th year of Jie's reign, Tang of Shang began moving Lü (履) to the capital Bo. About two years later Shang sent his minister

Yi Yin Yi Yin (, born Yī Zhì ( 伊挚), also known as A Heng ( 阿衡)), was a Chinese politician who served as a minister of the early Shang dynasty, and one of the honoured officials of the era. He helped Tang of Shang, the founder of the Shang dyna ...

as an envoy to Jie. Yi remained in the Xia capital for about three years, before returning to Shang. The Shang's power continued to grow. In the 26th year of Jie's reign, Shang conquered Wen. Two years later, Shang was attacked by Kunwu (昆吾), and several years of war between Shang and Kunwu followed.高明士, 国真梁. 007(2007). 中國通史. 五南圖書出版股份有限公司. , 9789571143125. p46. Despite this setback, Shang continued to expand on a number of fronts, gathering vassal troops in Jingbo (景亳). The Shang army and allied forces conquered Mixu (密須) (today's 密縣), Wei, and attacked Gu (顧), which was also conquered the following year. Around the same time Zhong Gu, chief historian of Jie, fled from the Xia to the Shang.

Natural disasters

As Jie's reign went on, the histories record unusual and increasingly dire natural

phenomena A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

. These began in the 10th year of Jie's reign, when five

stars A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth ma ...

were seen in the sky in alignment and a

meteor shower A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extre ...

occurred, followed by an

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

. In the 29th year of Jie's reign he tried to dig a water-tunnel through the Qu mountain, but the next year the mountain collapsed with a

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated grade (slope), slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of ...

. There was also a disaster at Linsui (聆隧) in the winter. Records from the later

Qin Dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first Dynasties in Chinese history, dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin (state), ...

say that during the last year of Jie's reign, ice formed during the summer mornings and frost occurred through July. Heavy rainfall toppled buildings, hot and cold weather arrived in disorder, and crops failed. Some scientists correlate this event with a

volcanic winter A volcanic winter is a reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid and water obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large, particularly explosiv ...

, possibly due to the

Minoan eruption The Minoan eruption was a catastrophic Types of volcanic eruptions, volcanic eruption that devastated the Aegean Islands, Aegean island of Thera (also called Santorini) circa 1600 BCE. It destroyed the Minoan civilization, Minoan settlement at ...

Thera Santorini ( el, Σαντορίνη, ), officially Thira (Greek language, Greek: Θήρα ) and classical Greek Thera (English language, English pronunciation ), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km (120 mi) southeast ...

at around 1600 BC.

Battle of Mingtiao

In the 32nd year of Jie's reign,

dispatched troops from Er (陑) to simultaneously attack Xia and Kunwu. Kunwu was quickly defeated. By this time, the Xia were getting weaker near the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

while the Shang were becoming stronger. The Jie's forces fought with the Shang forces at

Mingtiao Xia County or Xiaxian () is a county in the southwest of Shanxi province, People's Republic of China, bordering Henan province to the southeast. It is under the jurisdiction of Yuncheng, Shanxi, Yuncheng City. History In ancient China, it served ...

in a heavy thunder storm and were defeated. Jie himself escaped and fled to Sanzong. The Shang forces, under their general Wuzi (戊子), pursued Jie to Cheng, captured him at Jiaomen and

deposed Deposition by political means concerns the removal of a politician or monarch.
ORB: The Online Reference for Med ...

him, bringing the Xia dynasty to an end. Eventually, Jie was released in

Nanchao Nanzhao (, also spelled Nanchao, ) was a dynastic kingdom that flourished in what is now southern China and northern Southeast Asia during the 8th and 9th centuries. It was centered on present-day Yunnan in China. History Origins Nanzha ...

. Jie eventually died of illness. Tang of Shang succeeded as king by Tang, who inaugurated the

Family

King Jie had a wife named

(妹喜) who was blamed for the fall of the Xia Dynasty, but he later abandoned her for the King of Minshan's daughters Wan and Yan whom Jie renamed Zhao and Hua. King Jie had no known children with his wives. It is alleged that

Chunwei Chunwei (; Old Chinese: ZS: *''djun-ɢʷi''; B-S: *'' ɢʷij'') is a name associated with the Xiongnu, a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd cent ...

, the possible ancestor of the

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 20 ...

ruling elite, was his son.Sima Zhen. ''Suoyin''
chapter 24
/ref>

References

{{Kings of Xia Xia dynasty kings