1. Why I Picked It Up
This March I was preparing a reading-group talk and wanted to do the Feast at Hong Gate. Going through the “Annals of Xiang Yu”, I stopped short: in this most famous dinner, Liu Bang’s inner thoughts are almost never written; the whole passage runs from Xiang Yu’s side. Then I went to the “Annals of Gaozu”, and the same event came back at another angle, in other words. One dinner, two chapters, two different things. It was not an oversight; it was the mutual-seeing method — one person’s different sides hung in different chapters, and only read together do they form a whole.
After the talk I did not put the book down. I reread it with two concrete questions: why does Xiang Yu, a loser, get a place in the “basic annals”? Why does Chen She, a conscript, get a place in the “hereditary houses”? Those places were not handed out by history; Sima Qian placed them with his own hands.
Which is to say: the arrangement of the Shiji is itself the Grand Historian’s verdict.
2. The Skeleton First
The Shiji runs 130 chapters in five parts: 12 “basic annals”, 10 “tables”, 8 “treatises”, 30 “hereditary houses”, 70 “biographies”. It begins with the Yellow Emperor and ends with Emperor Wu of Han — the first general history to run from antiquity to its own day, and the first in the biographical-annalistic form.
The annals record emperors, the houses record hereditary lords, the biographies record every kind of person — which sounds like a classification by rank, but it is far from tidy: Xiang Yu never took the throne yet enters the basic annals; Chen She was king for only a few months yet enters the hereditary houses; Confucius was no lord yet enters the hereditary houses. Those “irregular” placements are exactly where Sima Qian left his attitude1.
Five parts, and what each handles:
| Part | Chapters | What it handles |
|---|---|---|
| Basic annals | 12 | Emperors and de facto holders of power; the book’s timeline |
| Tables | 10 | Dense chronologies pressed into grids — hardest to read, best to consult |
| Treatises | 8 | Institutional histories: rites, music, law, calendar, astronomy, sacrifices, rivers, finance |
| Hereditary houses | 30 | Lords and great families; Confucius and Chen She placed here against the rule |
| Biographies | 70 | All kinds of people — assassins, knights-errant, upright officials, cruel officials, jesters, money-makers |
Expand: the five parts and a few deliberate irregularities
- Basic annals run from the Five Emperors to Emperor Wu; “The Annals of Xiang Yu” is the boldest irregularity in the book. At its close Sima Qian says he himself went to Gaixia and heard locals point out the old traces.
- Tables get skipped, yet they carry the most historian’s spine: only a grid can line up a confused chronology cell by cell.
- Treatises — “The Treatise on the Balance Standard” and “The Treatise on Rivers and Canals” are chapters on economy and waterworks, the ones modern readers most often miss.
- Hereditary houses list Confucius, conceding that an “uncrowned king” may have a lineage too; they list Chen She, conceding that a rebel may carry a stretch of history.
- Biographies are grouped with intent: “The Upright Officials” set against “The Cruel Officials”, and assassins, knights, jesters, and money-makers — people who belong in no official history — written into official history.
3. Passages and Marginalia
On “ambition”: the book’s method is not inside the book
亦欲以究天人之际，通古今之变，成一家之言。
— Letter in Reply to Ren An
My own working translation: I too wished to examine the boundary between Heaven and man, to thread the changes of past and present, and to make it a school of my own.
This line is in a letter to a friend, not in the Shiji itself, yet it is the whole book’s manual. “The boundary between Heaven and man” asks where heaven’s business ends and man’s begins; “the changes of past and present” strings three thousand years onto one line; and “a school of my own” matters most — what he wanted was not to retell, but to put forward a reading of his own.
笔记My note: those characters, “a school of my own”, lift the Shiji out of the drawer marked “collected sources”. Sima Qian knew exactly what he was doing: not filing archives for the court, but leaving later generations his own set of judgements.
On “arrangement”: placement is commentary
且壮士不死即已，死即举大名耳，王侯将相宁有种乎！
— The Hereditary House of Chen She
My own working translation: And a strong man, if he does not die, is done; if he dies, let him die for a great name — are kings, lords, generals, and ministers born to their stations?
One line shouting through the ceiling of bloodline. The man shouting it was a conscript; months later he was defeated and dead, and Sima Qian set him soberly among the “hereditary houses”. That step is not a record; it is a stance.
My note: the weightier thing is the pair of mirror images. In the “Annals of Gaozu”, Liu Bang watching the First Emperor says, “嗟乎，大丈夫当如此也” — “Ah, a great man should be like this.” In the “Annals of Xiang Yu”, Xiang Yu watching the same man says, “彼可取而代也” — “He can be taken and replaced.” One envy, one defiance: Sima Qian pins both men’s base colour to their openings with a single sentence each.
On “verdict”: the weight of “the Grand Historian says”
谚曰「桃李不言，下自成蹊」。此言虽小，可以谕大也。
— The Biography of General Li
My own working translation: The proverb says, “The peach and the plum do not speak, yet a path forms beneath them.” Small as the saying is, it can illustrate something great.
“The Grand Historian says” is the voice peculiar to the Shiji, and where it most resembles “a school of my own”. Li Guang never got a marquisate in his life; Sima Qian does not argue for him, he only sets this one line at the chapter’s end: what is good need not advertise itself; people will come to the tree.
My note: reading the biographies, I often go to the closing “the Grand Historian says” first. It is the chapter’s signature, and the one place the author allows himself to speak — facts laid out in front, and the last line laying his cards down.
On “doubt”: he questions even Heaven
或曰「天道无亲，常与善人」。若伯夷、叔齐，可谓善人者非邪？积仁洁行如此而饿死！
— The Biography of Bo Yi
My own working translation: Someone said, “Heaven’s way has no favourites, it is ever with the good.” If Bo Yi and Shu Qi were not good men, then who were? They piled up benevolence and kept their conduct clean — and starved to death!
This is the least history-like passage in the book. “The Biography of Bo Yi” is very short, and nearly half of it is Sima Qian asking: if there really is a Heaven “ever with the good”, why did the benevolent Bo Yi and Shu Qi starve to death on Mount Shouyang?
My note: this is the hardest spot in the whole book. A historian is supposed to record coolly, and here Sima Qian goes straight at Heaven itself. Placing “The Biography of Bo Yi” first among the biographies is itself an interrogation by position.
On “profit”: he writes about money too
故曰「天下熙熙，皆为利来；天下攘攘，皆为利往」。
— The Biographies of the Money-makers
My own working translation: Hence it is said: All under heaven bustles — all for profit it comes; all under heaven jostles — all for profit it goes.
危险In a tradition used to talking about “righteousness”, Sima Qian writes a whole chapter about “profit”. “The Biographies of the Money-makers” gives merchants their biographies: why some places are rich and others poor, how trade moves, how money is made.
My note: this chapter has made many later readers uneasy, as “too vulgar”. But Sima Qian was writing what he actually saw — people coming and going, most of them bound for profit. Writing the unflattering fact into official history is also a kind of honesty.
A trap in selections
The first Shiji I read was an extracted “famous passages” selection: the Feast at Hong Gate, the return of the jade, Jing Ke’s attempt on the king. Excellent — until I went back to the full book and saw that the tables and the treatises that were cut are exactly where Sima Qian shows the most craft. Drop those two parts and the Shiji is only lively stories.
There is also the matter of “supplements”: a few of the 130 chapters were continued by later hands (some by Chu Shaosun), and the chapter ends usually mark it1. Telling apart which stretch is Sima Qian and which is later is what it means to read the Shiji2.
Two readings of Xiang Yu’s placement in the basic annals
Writing Xiang Yu, a loser who never took the throne, into the “basic annals” has two long-standing explanations:
- One says it is partiality: Sima Qian sympathises with the defeated hero and uses the form to give him an emperor’s seat.
- One says it is method: in the years between Qin’s fall and Han’s rise, decrees “issued from Yu”, and he was in fact the holder of power then; the basic annals are written for whoever in fact held power.
The two need not conflict. But I would rather believe the second: in Sima Qian’s irregularities, feeling and rule are often the same thing.
4. What I Actually Use
- Do not skip the tables and treatises. Force yourself through one table — the “Chronological Table of the Six States” — or one treatise, “On Rivers and Canals”. The first teaches you to line up time sideways; the second shows how the ancients managed a river. No other history gives you either.
- Assemble a person with the mutual-seeing method. To see Liu Bang, look at him in the “Annals of Gaozu”, the “Annals of Xiang Yu”, the “Hereditary House of Zhang Liang”, and the “Biography of the Marquis of Huaiyin”. One man written four times — and the fourth time is the real one.
- Read “the Grand Historian says” as commentary, not as conclusion. When it speaks, Sima Qian is showing his hand. Read it apart from the narrative, and the distance between the two becomes visible.
5. Closing
What I admire most after finishing is not how much it records, but how it dares to queue people up with its own hand. Who enters the annals, who enters the houses, who is fit only for a biography — placed one after another, the book becomes one man’s judgement. The sources are public; the arrangement is private — that is probably how “a school of my own” was actually done.
Next: Dream of the Red Chamber. From a historian’s arrangement to a novelist’s: Cao Xueqin also sorts people, with his verdict poems and the register of the twelve beauties. I want to see whether two kinds of arrangement, two thousand years apart, come down to the same thing.
Footnotes
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A few of the present 130 chapters were continued by later hands — several usually attributed to Chu Shaosun — and some chapters’ dating is still disputed; watch the textual notes at chapter ends in the punctuated edition. ↩ ↩2
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The standard “three commentaries” are Pei Yin’s Collected Explanations, Sima Zhen’s Searching Out the Obscure, and Zhang Shoujie’s Correct Meaning; the later Zhonghua Book Company punctuated edition combines all three and is the more usable base text. ↩
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