Fuxi’s Utopia

Lu Xun once praised Sima Qian’s “Historical Records” as “the swansong of a historian, a rhymeless lissa”. This is undoubtedly a great historical work. It not only created a model for Chinese cultural and historical writings, but also established the relationship between Chinese literati and Chinese scholars. Rigorous standards and attitudes must be adhered to in historical materials and historical research. However, as Huangfu Mi, a historian of the Western Jin Dynasty, said, there is a shortcoming in “Historical Records”, which is that it only records the Five Emperors and subsequent events. Therefore, Huangfu Mi wrote “Emperor Century” as a supplement, and prefaced the book: “From the establishment of heaven and earth and the human emperor, to the second year of Wei Xianxi, there were 272 generations, with a total of 2.767 million One hundred and forty-five years, divided into ten periods…classified into chapters, for the purpose of extensive research.”

In the process of compiling “Century of Emperors”, Huangfu Mi quoted extensively from other sources, including classics, biographies, illustrations and miscellaneous books, leaving behind a large number of first-hand research results for later generations. Due to the lack of historical materials during the period of the Three Emperors (Fuxi, Shennong, and Huangdi) and the Five Emperors, Huangfumi carefully examined the scattered historical materials scattered in different books by the pre-Qin scholars, as well as the “Book of the Five Emperors” in “Historical Records”, and compared it with previous works. On this basis, it systematically researches and sorts out some major historical events in the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors era, and also provides quite detailed descriptions of the lineages and names of monarchs in ancient times, the Three Dynasties and the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Therefore, “Historical Records” and “Century of Emperors” should be regarded as the two most classic history books in Chinese history, and “Century of Emperors” is also an authoritative historical work before the era of the Five Emperors.

In “Century of Emperors”, Huangfu Mi wrote this: “Fuxi, surnamed Feng, has great sage virtues. He succeeds to the throne of heaven. He is located in the east, like the brightness of the sun, and rules the world with virtue. Look up and see. Astronomy can be used to observe geography. Take objects from afar and draw the Eight Diagrams to understand the virtues of the gods and imitate the emotions of all things. “Fuxi may not really be the legendary man with a human head and a snake body, but I believe it is history. At least, we have found many records and myths about Fuxi. In studying the nature of Chinese culture, these historical materials are sufficient.