During the Western Jin Dynasty, many nomadic peoples outside the Western Jin Dynasty took advantage of the rebellion of the Eight Kings of the Western Jin Dynasty and the weakening of their national strength to establish several non-Han regimes one after another, forming a period of confrontation with the Southern Han regimes.
It can be said that the "Five Hu Chaohua" is probably the darkest period in the history of the Han people in the Central Plains. During this period, many Han Chinese were slaughtered and cooked on a large scale. The Hu people who invaded the Central Plains were very barbaric, among them, the three tribes of The Xiongnu, the White Huns, and the Xianbei were the most vicious. Even, the Han nationality was once forced to the point of extinction, and the cruel methods of the Qiang people, the head of the three ethnic groups, were even more heinous.
Historians have divergent opinions on the origins of the Karmic people, but since the 1970s, there has been a basic unity of opinion. They believed that the Karmic people were Kangju people in Central Asia, which did not include the southern inhabitants who were conquered and enslaved by the Kangju people at that time. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Kangju belonged to the Xiongnu, at this time, another part of the Xiongnu became the Xiongnu, and later, settled in Mongolia, and then moved south to the area around Dangwu Township. After entering the Sené, the People of Sene retained the organization and customs of the original tribe, with two chiefs, one large and one small.
As a nomadic ethnic minority, the Qiang still retained a nomadic economy during the Jin Dynasty, but with the migration of the Xiongnu in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the proportion of agricultural economy became larger and larger, and the Xian at this time was dominated by agricultural economy, but it was still poor. At this time, some of them even became servants of Han landlords, and some became pawn traders.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the imperial court was corrupt and the people were not happy, and the civilians led by Zhang Jiao launched an uprising, which made the situation in the Central Plains even more turbulent. The rule of the imperial court was crumbling, wars were raging, and the people had nowhere to complain. Around 300 AD, in that turbulent era, a leader of the Qi clan named Shi Le established himself as king in xiangguo and established the "Zhao State".
Historians, in order to distinguish them from the "Former Zhao" established by the Xiongnu, refer to the state founded by Shi Le as "Later Zhao". As for Shi Le, he was the only slave emperor in Chinese history.
Shi Leben was a native of Dangwu Township, from a poor family, who had never studied or spoken Chinese. When he was young, he followed his father on business in Luoyang, and during the turmoil, he went into exile to Yanmen and was captured by the Han and sold to a landlord in Shandong as a slave. Although Shi Le was committed to a corner, he was ambitious, and he was very good at riding and shooting with the blood of the Qi people, and he secretly learned martial arts during his enslavement, and he was bold.
Because the Karma are originally nomadic people, they have dealt with livestock since childhood, so they have developed a skill of being good at soma. This talent of his made Gisang, who was in charge of the horse, very appreciative, and the two became very good friends. In 319 AD, Shi Le led the Qi people to live in the Central Plains, and as the grand chief, he was enthroned as the emperor and established a political power, becoming one of the sixteen kingdoms.
Although Shi Le did not have culture and did not understand Chinese characters, he attached great importance to talents, paid attention to culture, and once admired Han culture for a period of time. In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, due to the impact of war and chaos, the city was in ruins, so he built the Zongmiao Temple and the Sheji Lingtai in accordance with the han system and etiquette, imitating the Han bureaucratic hierarchy, and even spent eighteen years to complete the construction of xiangguo.
At this time, Later Zhao had already reached its peak, and Shi Le took all the people from Dangwu Township's hometown to Xiangguo, and moved all the more than 300 households of Han courtiers and nobles to Chongrenli. This alley still exists today, and the ancient rhyme still exists. However, the regime founded by the Qi people was only a flash in the pan in history, and after thirty-two years of the seven-lord shared state, it basically did not exist for long before it disappeared.
In fact, this is not unrelated to their brutality, which is still very barbaric after the invasion of the Central Plains, and even some people still retain the bestiality of man-eaters.
In the process of nation-building, there will inevitably be wars, and grain and grass are a very important part of the war. However, in the eyes of the Karma people, this is not a matter at all, most of their grain and grass are looted, and sometimes they do not even need to bring grain and grass at all, but they rob Han women as military pay. The People of Qi also triumphantly refer to Han women as "two-legged sheep", that is, comparing women to animals that walk like sheep on two legs, insulting and overflowing with words. They showed no mercy to Han Chinese women, slaughtering and cooking during the day and insulting and entertaining at night.
The Qiang people seemed to have a deep hatred for the Han people, and before Shi Le established Later Zhao, the local Han people were almost exterminated. In the end, after Ran Min destroyed the Later Zhao state, the population of the Central Plains Han people fell from 20 million in the Western Jin Dynasty to only about 4 million. During this period, Ran Min rescued 200,000 Han maidens, and these women were not taken captive as wives and concubines, but were eaten as livestock.
In 333, Shi Le died, and his throne was succeeded by his son Shi Hong. However, in the following year, Shi Hu killed Shi Hong and established himself as king. By 335, he moved his capital from Xiangguo to Yecheng. It can be said that once Shi Le died, his nephew Shi Hu was even more lawless, and the new emperor was even more violent and cruel. Unlike Shi Le, he also had some literary and martial strategies, and Shi Hu's attitude toward the Han people was simply outrageous, and later historians called him "the tyrant of the ten thousand worlds".
According to historical records, when Shi Hu was idle, he liked to hang out with a knife in the mansion, and when he met the maid, he cut off her head and placed it on a plate as a handicraft to enjoy alone. He embraced Buddhism and ordered Han women to become nuns, and then went to the temple to rape and ravage them. Moreover, he cut off the flesh of the nuns, mixed with the meat of other livestock, and cooked them, and gave them to his subordinates. Shi Hu died at the age of fifty-four, and his sons killed each other in order to fight for the throne, and Later Zhao gradually declined.
However, where there is oppression, there is resistance, the Han people in the Central Plains never let people slaughter, and the unusual cruelty of the Qiang people arouses the vengeful heart of a person, who is what we call Ran Min mentioned earlier.
At a time of internal instability, the Later Zhao general Ran Min took advantage of ethnic contradictions to attack and kill the Later Zhao emperor Shi Jian to seize power. After that, the national name was called "Wei", the history was called "Ran Wei", and the capital was still the capital Yecheng. It can be said that the Ran Wei regime eliminated most of the Qi people and other ethnic minorities. Shi Zai, who killed more than 200,000 people, is known in history as the killing of Hu Ling, and the Xiong people have since disappeared in Chinese history.
However, in 352, Ran Min was unable to break through, and was captured by the Former Yan emperor Murong Juan, beheaded at Mount Shu, and was posthumously honored as the Emperor of Wu mourning. The epitaphs of Ran Min's descendants refer to Ran Min as "Emperor Ping", and some scholars believe that this may be the nickname given to Ran Min by the Ran Wei regime.