A peasant-born village rascal founded one of China's great dynasties
Liu Bang's father called him a little rascal. He dodged work, ran into trouble with the law and leaned on his brother for food. Yet this peasant's son, a minor village sheriff under the Qin, outmanoeuvred every rival and in 202 BC declared himself first emperor of the Han dynasty.
Born in Pei County in the state of Chu late in the Warring States era, Liu was remembered as outspoken, charismatic and generous. Friends in the county office, Xiao He and Cao Shen, covered for his misbehaviour and got him appointed sheriff of a local post. His marriage came through bluff: at a feast where a hall seat cost a thousand coins, he strode in penniless, loudly pledging ten thousand. The host, the wealthy Lü Wen, was so taken with his nerve that he offered his daughter, Lü Zhi, as a bride.
His turn to rebellion was forced. Escorting convicts to work on the First Emperor's tomb at Mount Li, he lost several to escape, a capital offence under Qin law, so he freed the rest and took to the hills with those who chose to follow. A legend grew that he had drunkenly slain a giant white serpent, and that an old woman then wept that the Red Emperor's son had killed the White Emperor's child, a sign of his destiny.
After Qin Shi Huang died, Liu beat the rival rebel Xiang Yu into the Qin heartland and took the surrender of the last Qin ruler, Ziying, in 206 BC. Xiang Yu, now the dominant rebel, carved the empire into Eighteen Kingdoms and banished Liu to remote Bashu, around modern Sichuan, as King of Han. Within a year Liu broke out and seized the Three Qins, starting a civil war known as the Chu–Han Contention that ended with victory at Gaixia.
As emperor he eased taxes and forced labour, promoted Confucianism and crushed vassal kings outside his own clan. After losing to the Xiongnu at Baideng in 200 BC, he began heqin, securing peace with the steppe confederation through arranged marriages. He died in 195 BC and his son Liu Ying succeeded him. Later imperial myth traced his ancestry to the Yellow Emperor and Emperor Yao.
Source: Emperor Gaozu of Han
