Imagine a ruler so hated that after his death, he becomes known to posterity by a nickname that almost literally means “shitty.” This ruler was King Zhou of Shang1, a dynasty of ancient China previously widely thought to be partly or entirely mythical until recent archaeological discoveries that proved its existence. King Zhou, who reigned for about 30 years in the 11th century BC, was the last ruler of the Shang for reasons that will soon become apparent. His dissolute life, his fall and his violent death at his own hands paved the way for a new 800-year dynasty (confusingly named the Zhou dynasty; no relation to King Zhou himself.)
First of all, “Zhou” was not even his real name. Our subject for today was born Di Xin to King Di Yi. Di Xin, in his youth, was said to be sharp-witted and physically fit. A promising start for a young crown prince.
Unfortunately, crazy seems to have run in the family. Di Xin’s great-grandfather Wu Yi, King of Shang, apparently had a wooden statue of the chief god of heaven carved and santcified by a priest, then “played” an ancient Chinese sort of chess called liubo against the statue, which naturally lost the game. In this way Wu Yi could boast of being superior to Heaven itself. After which he would order bags to be filled with blood (hopefully animal, and not human, blood, though the record does not specify) and hung from trees so that he could shoot them with arrows and watch blood rain from the sky, proclaiming that he was shooting Heaven. Yes, that is seven kinds of batshit crazy. But Di Xin got the crazy gene as well, and he would outdo great-grandpappy Wu Yi in both blasphemy and debauchery many times over.
The first sign of this brand of blasphemous crazy appears as a probably apocryphal tale. Di Xin visited the temple of Nuwa, a creator goddess and protector of the Shang. It is said that he witnessed her beauty and, being a horndog, was overcome with lust. Not being able to stick it to a supernatural entity, he contented himself with scrawling a quick poem on the temple wall about his desire for Nuwa, as though it were a bathroom stall. When Nuwa discovered this poem, she was incensed and maybe also a little skeeved out and thenceforth removed her protection from the Shang, leading to Di Xin’s destruction.
More believable stories of Di Xin’s evil insane lusty brand of bad governance follow. The guy liked wine and women, as is usually the case with rulers of his kind. His wife Da Ji rounds out the evil ruler archtype by matching him in cruelty – the Caesonia to his Caligula, but over one thousand years earlier. Di Xin was naturally a spendthrift and spent much of his kingly time thinking up new extravagances, such as filling the palace gardens with animals from distant lands. His most famous invention was the 酒池肉林 – literally “wine lake meat forest.”2 He ordered a large pool built, lined with smooth stones and filled with wine. In the middle of said lake stood an artifical island with fake trees and branches adorned with roasted meat skewers. If you were lucky enough to be invited to a party by the King, you could look forward to lounging in a boat in the wine lake, free to dip your cup into the lake and get blitzed out of your head. No catering or pizza deliveries necessary either – just paddle over to the island and grab a few meat skewers to satisfy your hunger. There was presumably a lot of associated debauchery going on at these parties that can only be guessed at. One hopes the resulting bodily fluids didn’t find their way into the wine lake, though it seems unlikely that anybody would have cared.
As you might imagine, all this wine meat lake and exotic animal garden business was expensive. The burden of paying for it fell upon the common people in the form of taxes. The common people, who did not get to enjoy the benefits of a wine lake, were understandably upset, and revolts followed. The principal threat to Di Xin’s power was King Wen of Zhou, one of his vassals, who he had preemptively locked up. King Wen was only released when friends and supporters paid a large ransom of loot to Di Xin, who absolutely must have regretted this move later on, because Wen would go on to raise a serious rebellion again Di Xin once he returned to his home state.
In the meantime, Di Xin and Da Ji happily imprisoned and executed ministers and officials who protested against their massively ruinous spending. And these were not just regular executions. One minister who remonstrated with Di Xin was “sliced into pieces.” Another, an uncle of the king who was renowned for his wisdom, had his heart cut out while he still lived because Da Ji wanted to know what the heart of a pure sage looked like. The at least semi-fictional Investiture of the Gods also attributes to Da Ji the invention of a contraption called the Bronze Toaster, which was designed to roast alive ministers and officials and whoever got on the royal couple’s bad side.
These extravagances and cruelties gave King Wen great support among the disaffected nobles and populace, making Wen’s untimely death before things really got off the ground all the more untimely. Di Xin wasn’t off the hook, however, because Wen’s son inherited his title as King Wu and picked up right where his father left off, leading an allied force toward Di Xin’s capital at Chaoge. Turns out Di Xin’s own armies didn’t even like him, because the Shang soldiers mustered to defend Chaoge from Wu defected en mass, opening a path for the Zhou forces to take the capital.
Di Xin was not prepared to be taken alive. Retreating to his massive animal garden, he had some of his valuables piled up around him and set the whole thing on fire, leaving not even his remains for the Zhou army to seize. Da Ji, also realizing her end was near, strangled herself.2 Under the circumstances, King Wu decided to go ahead and declare the end of the Shang and the beginning of the Zhou, a new dynasty to rule over the land.
The infamy of this classically evil royal couple lives on to this day. So much so that Di Xin is much more widely known as Zhou, which is the part of a saddle that gets soiled by the horse wearing it. His wife Da Ji has not escaped the eye of history either. According to legend, she was not a human but rather an evil fox spirit who deceived the King and his court by taking the shape of a woman. Da Ji has starred in games such as SMITE and Warriors Orochi, and you can probably guess that she has very interesting designs in these games – she typically takes the form of a scantily clad fox lady, sometimes sporting nine fox tails. Not really much of a disguise if you ask me. 𒀭
1 Nope, he was not the Emperor of China in case you were wondering. The title huangdi, which is translated as emperor, was created in 221 BC by the first ruler of the Qin dynasty, 800 years after the events of today’s story. Chinese monarchs until then bore the title wang, translated as king.
2 It should be noted that the fall of the Xia dynasty, which was overthrown by the Shang, is very similar in the annals to the fall of the Shang, complete with evil empress and even a wine lake. However, the Xia wine lake does not include a meat forest, so it’s not as fun.
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