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Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

author:Zou is not
Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties of ancient China

Among these four beauties, Xi Shi is the most mysterious character, her existence is well known, but people know nothing about her story, because the historical documents of the Spring and Autumn And Warring States Period do not record the deeds of Xi Shi. Moreover, when the "Chinese Yue Language" records the historical deeds of the Yue King's Gou Jian sending beauty to Wu Wang Fuchai, there is no mention of Xi Shi's name. Therefore, some people can't help but suspect that Xi Shi has never existed in history at all, and also said that she is a fictional historical figure by later generations.

Although Xi Shi's experience is unknown, she is indeed a real person. Although xi shi is not mentioned in the "Chinese" and "Zuo Zhuan", which record the history books of the Spring and Autumn Warring States, Xi Shi's figure appears in the classic masterpieces such as "Zhuangzi", "Mencius" and "Han Feizi", and the allusions related to Xi Shi such as "Sinking Fish and Falling Geese", "Xi Zi Holding Heart" and "Dong Shi Xiao Yi" are all from "Zhuangzi".

It can be seen that Xi Shi is a real historical figure, but there are very few deeds about her. But this mystery is the reason why I became interested in Xi Shi, so I specially wrote an article to tell the life story of Xi Shi.

Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

Xi Shi's film and television image is played by Jiang Qinqin

According to the records of the history books, Xi Shi was a beautiful heavenly immortal, and the beauty of the country and the city made none of the men who saw her unmoved, and even the posture of frowning and caressing her chest when she was unwell was suffocatingly beautiful.

The beauty of Xi Shi cannot be fully expressed by words alone, and it must be combined with the allusion of "hooking up the beauty of Suo to sacrifice the King of Wu, and getting Zhuji Anda Luoshan to sell the salary woman".

In 494 BC, after the defeat of King Gou of Yue at the battle of Wu WangFuchai, he adopted the Seven Strategies of Destroying Wu by the Scholar Dafu, and one of the strategies was the Beauty Plan. This strategy also played a key role in the later ability of the Yue King to be able to shame and destroy Wu.

Wen Zhong believed that Wu Wang Fuchai was a person who coveted female color, as long as he threw in his favor and offered beauty, in order to consume his will and reduce Wu Wangfuchai's vigilance against the Yue Kingdom, so he sent Fan Li to the folk to find beautiful women.

When Fan Li was ordered to come to the folk to search for beauties, he learned of Xi Shi's existence, so he went to the place where Xi Shi was located. It is said that Fan Li was fascinated after taking a look at Xi Shi, and later generations have said that Fan Li and Xi Shi had feelings for each other in the process of communicating. However, in order to help The Yue King achieve the great cause of restoring the country, Fan Li gave up his feelings for Xi Shi, but this is only a story passed down from generation to generation, not necessarily the true history.

The selected beauty needs to meet the three requirements of the language: beautiful as a heavenly immortal, able to sing and dance, and beautiful posture. But Xi Shi, who was a civil woman, only met the condition of beauty, so the Yue King spent three years teaching Xi Shi singing, dancing and etiquette.

Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

Xi Shi Huan Sha Tu

In this regard, Wu Zixu, a loyal minister around FuChai, saw through Yue Guo's intentions and advised the monarch not to take it lightly, but all this was as expected by the text, and After Wu Wang Fuchai saw Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, he immersed himself in the female color and did not take Wu Zixu's warning to heart. The State of Wu perished precisely because of fu cha's arrogance and passion for belligerence. The beauty plan only caters to and amplifies the desire of fu cha to conquer.

Wu WangFucha also really loved Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, built the Spring Supper Palace for them, and also built a large pond in the palace, and specially set up a dragon boat in order to be able to play with the two of them.

But Zheng Dan himself thought that Xi Shi was better looking than himself, and went around telling people that Xi Shi was a beautiful woman. Zheng Dan took the initiative to be friends with Xi Shi, but the introverted Xi Shi felt inferior to his appearance, belonging to the type of beauty without self-awareness, so Zheng Dan often encouraged her, dragged her to the lake, let her look at the lake, carefully looked at her own appearance, and said that her beauty even the fish in the lake were fascinated. Inspired by Zheng Dan, Xi Shi eventually overcame his inferiority and became the first of the four beauties in ancient Chinese history, while Zheng Dan appeared obscure compared to Xi Shi.

Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

Portrait of Zheng Dan

But these two beauties have one thing in common, that is, the historical records are vague in their accounts of their endings. In the history books that record the late Spring and Autumn Period, they are not even mentioned. Therefore, about Zheng Dan's death, it has become an unsolvable mystery in history. And Xi Shi, after the Yue King destroyed the State of Wu, was also missing, as if evaporating in the human world.

Regarding the end of Zheng Dan, according to folk historical records, Zheng Dan gave birth to a child for Wu Wangfu not long after he arrived in the Kingdom of Wu, but the child died prematurely due to weakness, and Zheng Dan fell into a state of depression all day and eventually died.

There is another theory because Wu Wangfuchai prefers Xi Shi to Zheng Dan. Zheng Dan, who felt that he was snubbed, finally committed suicide without thinking about it. Since the history books do not record the deeds of Zheng Dan, we cannot find out the truth, and can only regard these as speculations and imaginations of posterity.

The first version is that after the Yue King destroyed the State of Wu, although Xi Shi completed the task given to her by the State of Yue, at the same time, she was ashamed of the Wu King's husband, so she continued to struggle in this complex and contradictory mentality, and finally had a mental breakdown and chose to commit suicide, but I personally think that this statement is not credible.

The second version is that after Yue Wang's revenge plan is completed, he ascends to the peak of his life, but he exterminates those heroes who helped him destroy Wu. Fan Li escaped the disaster because he saw clearly the nature of Yue Wang's gouge, but Wen Zhong, who was not aware of this at first, regretted that he did not listen to Fan Li before dying. And Xi Shi, as a hero of yue wang gou jian wu, also could not escape the fate of being liquidated, so some people speculated that Xi Shi's end was thrown into the river by Yue Wang. This statement is mainly derived from Mozi's "Xi Shi Zhi Shen, its beauty also", which means that Xi Shi's death is related to her beauty, so it has a certain degree of credibility.

Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

One of Xi Shi's cinematic images

The third version is that after The Wu King Fu sent himself to kill himself, the remaining Wu people regarded Xi Shi as a curse, that is, the culprit that led to the decline of the Wu state, so the people vented their anger on Xi Shi, killed her, and threw her body in the Yangtze River. With regard to this claim, since I have not found a historical record that can provide evidence, it is difficult to falsify this claim.

The fourth version is that after Yue Wang Gou Jian destroyed wu guo, he summoned Xi Shi back to serve him in the palace, but this caused Lady Gou Jian to be jealous, so she asked Fan Li to persuade Yue Wang Gou Jian to learn the lessons of King Wu and not be confused by Mei Se, and later Lady Gou Jian used this to get rid of Xi Shi and throw his body in Taihu Lake. This claim is mainly derived from the Ming Dynasty novel "Chronicles of the States of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty".

Xi Shi, the head of the four beauties in ancient times, once sacrificed himself to save the country, and destroyed the neighboring countries with only one move of beauty

The fifth version is one of the most popular of the many endings about Xi Shi. In the folklore, after the Yue King destroyed the State of Wu, Fan Li took Xi Shi into hiding his name and fled away. This statement is mainly derived from the work of the historian Yuan Kang in the Eastern Han Dynasty, "The Book of Yue Jie", and has influenced posterity, as long as Xi Shi is mentioned, people think that this is the end of Xi Shi.

According to the Book of Yue, "After wu's demise, Xi Shi returned to Fan Li and went away with the Pan Five Lakes." However, according to the "Records of History", when Fan Li decided to leave the Yue State for the State of Qi, he did not take Xi Shi with him, and Fan Li did not mention Xi Shi in his later memoirs. Perhaps he has long forgotten Xi Shi, but people believe in the beautiful and romantic story between Xi Shi and Fan Li, because this caters to people's fantasies, but the reality is cruel, and in ancient times, people generally had a prejudice against beauty, believing that beautiful women would bring disaster, which is the so-called "red face disaster".

Later literati believed that the demise of the State of Wu was entirely attributed to Xi Shi, and that the literati who supported this view were Su Zheng, Li Shen, and Xuan Yuji. But there are also literati who oppose this view, such as Wang Wei and Hu Youzhen, who believe that Xi Shi is not a red face and a disaster, but a tragic figure with a red face and a short life.

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