明修栈道，暗度陈仓 — Appear repairing the road boards, while stealthily accessing Chencang

---

War context of the famous Chinese adage

Mingxiu zhandao, andu Chencang (明 修 棧道 ， 暗 度 陳倉). This phrase from Chinese folk wisdom, coined as such in a writing of the Yuan dynasty around the 13th century AD. C., alludes to a fabulous episode of antiquity three centuries before our era. This is something that happened in a time of political instability shortly after the death of the great emperor Qin Shihuang in 210 BC. Accessing this history and its context has the potential to pave a path for cultural dialogue with the East.

The inaugural emperor had succeeded in bringing under his authority in the short space of two decades the six warring kingdoms north of the Yangtze and even the hundred yue peoples from the south as far as the seas begin. However, lacking this very personal symbol of the celestial authority that was the man Ying Zheng, the Qin power declined as mortals do.

The first sign of weakening was marked by the relative and fleeting success of the popular uprising led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang between the fall of 209 and the spring of 208. The adventure lasted until the terrible General Zhang Han took up the matter. These two raised men-at-arms came from the common people and had the category of small troop leaders. They were originally from the central areas of China, in present-day Henan. They had been sent to station a thousand kilometers from their homes, in the areas of what is now the northern highlands of Beijing, near the lovely town of Miyun, not far from the northern fringes of the Great Wall. On the way they rebelled against their fate under the slogan "Are kings, nobles, generals and principals of another kind?" (王侯 將 相 ， 寧 有種 乎). They got rid of their mayors in that set and convinced the soldiers who surrounded them, but not before having prepared the ground by using a fortune teller who explained to them how to do the convincing spells: they had to put a piece of cloth with the words "Chen Sheng king ”in the belly of the freshly caught fish that the soldiers would later cook. This would be complemented with other suggestions. The soldiers believed in spirits and were impressed; they perhaps imagined that Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were the revived prince Ying Fusu and the paladin Xiang Yan who came to seek revenge against the abuses - recent and ancient - of the Qin court. For the rest, according to historical Memoirs, it seems that what really convinced the itinerant garrison were the usual appeals to the glory of making a name in this century, to restoring the great kingdom of Chu, to which in any case they had great probabilities of dying without pain or glory in their original destination on the dangerous border ... They became strong in the town of Dazexiang and from there they continued their advance collecting loyalties on the march towards Xianyang, the Qin capital, until Zhang Han definitively stopped the feet of the rebellion at the Battle of Dingtao. The last insurgent to be arrested and annihilated was Xiang Liang, the son of General Xiang Yan, who this time seemed dead dead, the usurper of his spirit and the continuator of his lineage already dead.

However, the revolt showed that the resuscitation of a great kingdom capable of confronting Emperor Qin was possible, all the more so since the dynasty seemed to be suffering from the erosion of its own internal intrigues associated with the succession to power. In fact, in the summer of 208 a. C., a couple of months before dying in Dingtao, Xiang Liang had appointed a grandson of the old and beloved King of Chu new monarch of the restored kingdom. It was the occasion that Commander Xiang Yu, who was the grandson of champion Xiang Yan and nephew of Xiang Liang, took advantage of to aspire to overthrow the Qin. Carrying the insurgent consciousness of the subjugated kingdom of Chu, but emerging from the regions south of the Yangtze where previously the kingdoms of Wu and Yue had flourished, Xiang Yu finally drove back the armies of Zhang Han in the region of the kingdom of Zhao, north of the Yellow River. When crossing the last great current, which were the waters of the Zhang, he made a Rubicon out of them, giving the order in the dead of winter to "break the cauldrons and sink the ships" (破釜沉舟, pofu chenzhou). With this mandate –which has long been an essential phrase of the Chinese popular heritage-, Xiang Yu's ambition went further than Hernán Cortés himself would later have, because, from that moment, his armies knew, not only that they had no retreat to their regions of origin if they did not win, but could not survive more than three days with the food they had, so they had to take theirs from the opponent. Before crossing the symbolic river, Xiang Yu had removed General Song Yi, to whom he was subordinate, because he preferred to wait for the hosts of the Zhao kingdom to weaken Zhang Han and only then stand up to him. Xiang Yu showed his disapproval to Song Yi more than eloquently by cutting off his head. Wielding it in front of the squalid soldiery, he invented that he was a traitor, which is why the King of Chu had secretly entrusted him to annihilate him. Apparently, what the monarch had launched was a kind of military contest among his dispersed generals so that the first to subdue the Guanzhong region - that is, the vast region around Xianyang, the capital of Qin - could be his King. It no longer mattered, in any case, what the King of Chu had said, because what was clear was that Xiang Yu was now the alpha male and in a hurry. With no other lord than that fearsome leader, the soldiers would obey and achieve their objective in the battle of Julu. There, Xiang Yu, the man with the "two-pupil eyes," began to win fearful followers beyond the borders of Chu.

Zhang Han was forced to retreat south and, cornered by Xiang Yu's armies against the water barrier of the Zhang River, suffered another partial defeat around August 207 BC. C., shortly before surrendering. Perhaps he would have been able to do battle, if Prime Minister Zhao Gao, as de facto regent, at the Qin court had not denied him the reinforcements he requested in the spring. This Zhao Gao is one of the great conspirators in Chinese history: initially he was Emperor Qin Shihuang's own carriage chief; As soon as he died in the summer of 210, he got rid of the crown prince Fusu and, already from his new state dignity, he managed to immediately raise Ying Huhai - who was only the eighteenth male child - as the second Qin emperor. . The seventeen heirs who preceded him were eliminated along with the sisters as part of the conspiracy. Zhao Gao himself was appointed prime minister and three years later he also killed Qin II when he was only twenty-three. The young emperor was still alive when the battle of Julu, but, it seems, was clearly influenced by the prime minister, who led him to ignore Zhang Han's request for help. The general himself, finding himself helpless by the Qin authority and sensing that Zhao Gao would want to get rid of him, he chose to give up as said. Misfortune both internal and external was primed with the kingdom of Qin in those months until finishing it, because, according to the chronicles, Xiang Yu, who continued to go towards the Qin capital full of hostages, decided towards the end of 207 to exterminate by surprise in a night to the more than two hundred thousand men-at-arms of Zhang Han, so that they would "not disobey" when they arrived in their regions. This happened in a city called Xin’an (新安) at the time, literally a new tranquility, which was found for various reasons by victims and executioners. The chronicles laconically refer that he buried them alive. Perhaps they were lying half dead on a pile of rales at the bottom of some landslide. Although historians doubt the scale of the massacre, the truth is that during the construction of the Longhai railway line in 1912, huge masses of human bones were found outside the city of Yima, in the so-called Chu Trench. Xiang Yu decided not to end the life of General Zhang Han and two other Qin commanders there, contemplating that they could be his vassals in the territories that were soon to be occupied and subdivided.

However, what would not be the surprise of the terrible chieftain of Chu when, shortly after, arriving at the Hangu Pass, which symbolically marked the entrance to the historic dominions of Qin on the banks of the Yellow River, he found it closed. There he learned that another general had overtaken him and had taken Xianyang, definitively overthrowing the imperial dynasty ... or what was left of it after Zhao Gao's sadistic intrigues. The Chu general who subdued the Qin capital was Liu Bang, known in sources as the Duke of Pei, the protagonist of the saying about Chencang that is being contextualized here. He had entered Qin through the Wu Pass and defeated the local militias in the Indigo field, already in the vicinity of the city. When he entered the gates of the surrendered city in mid-November 207, the new imperial replacement placed by Zhao Gao had only reigned for forty-six days; According to some chronicles, Ying Ziying - Qin III's full name - had not had time other than to manage to have his prime minister executed. As can be seen, Zhao Gao, who was a eunuch, had been slicing through the consistency of the Qin court, thus giving back in existential harmony, perhaps unconsciously, to the system that condemned him to live castrated. In the end, court and eunuch destroyed each other. You never get someone loyal by cutting what can make you fruitful, trying to save gonadic problems.

For the rest, King Qin only had to draw the white flag, which he did in the literal sense of the expression to reinforce the contrast with the black color that that kingdom used as a symbol in its banners and decorations. One of Liu Bang's advisers encouraged him to forcefully implement the reward advertised by the King of Chu and, for that, to close the Hangu Pass, through which the friendly armies had to arrive.

The successful Duke of Pei gave fuel to seduction and posted a border guard, but otherwise, warned by some of his loyalists, he acted with temperance: he made an inventory of goods and people in Xianyang, but did not settle in the city, nor he let his troops plunder at will. He also did not finish off the ruler of the House of Qin; Everything indicates that, in his aspiration to become king of the Guanzhong plains, he envisaged having the dethroned emperor as chancellor of the new kingdom. Meanwhile, Xiang Yu's forces broke through Hangu's barriers and planted themselves twenty kilometers from where Liu Bang had set up camp along the Ba River, some distance from Xianyang, somewhat to the southeast. This had been the area of ​​the last battle against the hosts of Qin for the Duke of Pei and could now be the final one before he was buried, with only a quarter of the soldiers accompanying Xiang Yu assisting him. Perhaps he thought from that enclave that he could escape into the mountains behind him by a nearby pass that later became known as the Rodeo Valley Trail. In any case, aware of his military inferiority, he wanted to be perceived as a contributor to the overthrow of the Qin rather than as a competitor in the ambition to create a new kingdom.

Perhaps in panic or envy, one of his marshals named Cao Wushang, at his own risk and sent a footman from camp to camp to convey to Xiang Yu that the advance had seized the treasure of the Qin in his plan of establish himself as king in the area, counting on the assistance of the previous royal house in his government. The matter was not clear because it was evident that the Duke of Pei, camped as he was with his militias more than an arduous day's march from Xianyang, was not enjoying the golden and carnal spoils of the Qin. However, Advisor Fan Zeng convinced Xiang Yu that he should annihilate Liu Bang, because his doomsayers had scrutinized the clouds that hovered over the Duke of Pei and found that the forms of the dragon and tiger were manifested in them. the five pure colors of the universe, undoubtedly a harbinger of his potential to become "child of Heaven." On that journey it was decided that the next morning Xiang Yu's warriors would be satisfied with the spoils of Liu Bang and his hosts.

Where a human passion was precipitating a catastrophe, another passion offered a way to avoid the bloody fratricidal confrontation: Xiang Bo, Xiang Yu's paternal uncle who was also one of his intendants, was close to Zhang Liang, one of the nobles who accompanied Liu Bang. In old Xiang there was a feeling of friendship stronger than battle orders. He rode at night to the camp where his friend was and, secretly, he proposed to flee with him, escaping an absurd death. Zhang Liang replied to Xiang Bo that in conscience he should warn Liu Bang. When the Duke of Pei learned of the imminent devastation that threatened him, he confessed to Zhang Liang his dire ambition and, in despair, dared to vent to his interlocutor: “且 为之 奈何？” (qie weizhi naihe? ?). Invited to be part of the solution with that simple hopeful question, Zhang asked permission to inform Xiang Bo that the Duke of Pei would not dare to oppose Xiang Yu. Upon learning that the warlord's uncle was there, Liu Bang wanted to talk with him: he assured the old man that he had awaited the coming of Chu's other troops, not daring to fight them or proceed against what was ethical. Xiang Bo was of the opinion that only the excuses directly presented by Liu Bang to Xiang Yu could avoid misfortune. The Duke of Pei agreed to go himself the next day to fix the misunderstanding, and for now arranged the marriage of their children with Xiang Bo, as an unequivocal sign that they loved each other well. It was a world in which throats were cut easily, but hardly dared to lift the neck against parental authority. After these late-night conversations, that veteran rode back to his camp at dawn to persuade Xiang Yu that it would not be fair to fail to acknowledge Liu Bang for his help in conquering Qin and to ingratiate himself with him. The nephew did not dare to snub his uncle. Graceful and humble virtues began to make their way into that quagmire of superb perdition.

Learn to dance to master Tianxia

Thus, at the beginning of 206, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu met in Hongmen, lit. the Wild Swans Gate, on the outskirts of Xianyang. There they managed to metabolize their moral discomfort by draining it on Marshal Cao Wushang. However, the anticipation of Liu Bang in something as marked as rendering the court of an empire, made that compatriot someone too uncomfortable and not everything was voices of fraternization in the camp. Be that as it may, the rite required. When the shadows lengthened they held a famous banquet, a mixture of agape and conspiracy, where Liu Bang was in a trance of death. The same advisor who had communicated with the cloud seers agreed with Xiang Yu on how to take his life: the attack signal would be to lift the jade pendant three times. However, Xiang Yu, who was sitting next to his uncle Xiang Bo, did not react to the signal. For this reason, Fan Zeng went out and went to find Xiang Zhuang, the Supreme Commander's younger cousin and Xiang Bo's nephew, to persuade him not to let the disturbing diner out alive: he would enter to toast everyone and bring Then, as a show of courtesy and amusement, a sword dance, that tradition of the Chu culture evoking martial values; in due course, he would plunge the steel into the upstart. The cunning Fan Zeng must have plotted that this way the insults would remain in the family and it would be more difficult for there to be retaliation. He began that brazen folklore of fleeting shadows, heavy eyelids, blazing blades, and bulbous gouges. Suddenly, an unexpected dancer joined the scene. Xiang Bo himself also grabbed his sword and joined his nephew's dance. Every time Xiang Zhuang got dangerously close to Liu Bang, the old man artistically stood between the two bodies. At that feast served by hypocrites with burger sauces, not all were stone guests, and the future Emperor Han saved their lives. He escaped from that set by going to the toilet and excused himself from his escape through Zhang Liang who faced the perplexed Xiang Yu. Upon arriving at his camp, Liu Bang immediately sentenced Marshal Cao to capital punishment as one who administers an antacid to digest the excess stress that he had suffered in the past hours. The great Han dynasty would thus be integrated in its origins in the uninterrupted series of human strongholds marked to some extent by the bloody mechanism of atonement that identifies scapegoats to ward off their fears.

Seeking to get rid of his own, Xiang Yu soon after entered Xianyang and executed King Qin along with his entire household. From there he began to deploy a political program according to his ambition. Flaunting a peculiar meritocratic philosophy, he must have been persuaded that all things start from scratch, because he reduced the royal palace to ashes. He had been credited as an effective destroyer of the authority of others, but now faced the inextricable task of building his own. There were, however, two figures that disturbed him: the King of Chu and Liu Bang. The first, called Xiong Xin, had been chosen two years earlier, as is said, symbolizing the restoration of Chu; the strategists of the kingdom saw in this member of the longed-for royal house someone capable of unifying the hearts of the people and the nobles in order to fight against Qin, as indeed had happened. However, Xiong Xin had clearly stated that the post of Guanzhong's king was reserved for whoever would first "appease" the territory. He himself must have preferred Liu Bang to occupy this position and, therefore, he would have sent him more directly along with his troops to the Qin capital. On the other hand, Xiang Yu must not fail to feel a certain ascendancy over King Chu by virtue of his own ancestry, for it was his uncle Xiang Liang who had elevated Xiong Xin to royal dignity. Obsessed by the forcefulness of the action, the leader was not able to perceive the symbolic importance that the King of Chu had had in the formation of the conquest project. In addition, he did not want to stay in western China, because it would be like “wearing finery while walking in the dark”, but he wanted to return to the regions of Chu where he could be admired as sovereign based on the merits of the deeds. warfare of him.

Map which represents the chinese situation

Come the lunar New Year of 206 BC. C., Xiang Yu proclaimed himself "supreme king" (霸王) of a territory that he called Western Chu, with capital in Pengcheng -currently Xuzhou, in the north of the province of Jiangsu-, but at the same time he began to manage everything that is under heaven (天下, tian xia) in connection with the cosmopolitanism that Emperor Qin had inaugurated. Specifically, it was about the geography of the kingdoms constricted in the natural corridor between the channels of the Yangtze and the Yellow River, including the valley that projects towards the Pacific Ocean south of the long river, as well as the more civilized areas to the south. north of the ocher channel to the Bohai Sea that already faces Korea. In reality, beyond Qin Shihuang's obsession with conquest, for any ruler whose deeds could be recorded in Chinese characters, what was obviously valuable were the low, flat and fertile lands, such as those found mainly in the territory described, in contrast to the south of present-day mainland China which is much more riddled with hills.

The new sovereign was interested in having strong vassals capable of dominating his vast territories, for which he chose above all the generals and assistants who had accompanied him in his movement to reconquer and overthrow the Qin. However, if he ascended to the category of king with epithet, the Chu monarch must also undergo some change in nomenclature, for that reason, he or someone from his clique came up with renaming him as "just Emperor Chu" (楚义帝, Chu Yidi). It was like preparing for himself a dignity of imminent inheritance and for Xiong Xin a sarcophagus with sounding trims. That same 206, after being sent into exile south of the Yangtze, that ethereal emperor would be assassinated by Ying Bu, the man with the marked face, who was following orders from who is already known. For these and other reasons, Xiang Yu has been characterized in Chinese performing arts as the tyrant par excellence, representing with that famous black and white mask with sad eyes from the Beijing opera the despotic and contradictory man, poisoned by his own ambition, unable to consolidate their loyalties.

The second disturber of the new tranquility to which Xiang Yu aspired was Liu Bang, someone who was not lagging behind in self-esteem and who was destined for secular glory thanks to his ability to know how to wait, grow others and forge alliances. . All the feudal control measures taken by the supreme king failed to appease his suspicions towards someone like Pei's strategist, for whom Xiang Yu would never be more than a military man from the kingdom of Chu who had assumed a spurious dignity; especially, it was that duke living memory that the new boss was manipulating the authority of the rightful king of Chu at will. Although the chieftain did not want to stay in Guanzhong, he would feel that the vast region around Xianyang bore too much bearing on the memory of recent power to entrust it to the Duke of Pei. With his authority, he set up yet another version of divide et impera, trying to capitalize on the hunting and political efficacy of that unfading and literally diabolical universal that has accompanied homo sapiens since prehistoric times: Guanzhong was subdivided into three parts and entrusted to Zhang Han and the other two former Qin generals, which is why they were renamed "the three Qin." They were territories that spread out on both sides of the axis described by the gentle course of the Wei River, the main tributary of the Yellow River. The westernmost Qin was the Yong kingdom. Zhang Han was put in command of that region. Although Yong's court was located in Feiqiu, near what had been the first capital of the great unified China, the general would be based in the bordering square of Chencang, one hundred thirty kilometers west of the flames that were devouring Xianyang.

Liu Bang was primarily assigned the jurisdictions of Hanzhong, Ba and Shu. The former bordered Guanzhong to the south, in what is now southern Shaanxi, but the two regions were only connected by steep passes. Hanzhong was transversely watered by the Han River and had the city of Nanzheng as its capital. A little more at noon the Ba and Shu territories began, occupying parts of present-day Chongqing and Sichuan respectively, areas with few extensive plains and a lot of hills despised by ancient landowners - although, in this, Chengdu and its surroundings were the exception. which confirms the rule. The supreme king deported good portions of the Qin population to those two vast regions, so that Liu Bang - established in Hanzhong - acted as a defensive cushion against possible revolts motivated by the desire to restore the glories of Xianyang. Nothing had to be left to the bashuística. Obviously, Liu Bang, who received the title of King of Han, felt deprived of something for which he had done merit such as reigning over Guanzhong, but he and his advisers had the lucidity not to force the situation before the Supreme King in a disadvantageous position. Hanzhong was like a cage in the mountains, but he did not stop having the strategic value of being close to Guanzhong, so he chose to receive that accolade of sour consolation that Zhang Liang and Xiang Bo's arrangements managed to earn him. In May 206, he and his loyalist troops withdrew to Hanzhong across the Qinling Range on the main trail, after which they burned the wooden structures that allowed passage through some difficult-to-walk mountainous areas. They voluntarily cut off their new holdings from the Guanzhong Plains, save for one appendix to the west. Xiang Yu and his trustees informed that those infrastructures had burned, relaxed the level of vigilance of the danger that could come from the south more or less directly to Xianyang. Further west there was still a winding road that, crossing the ridges of Qin, entered the Wei valley almost opposite Chencang, but it would be guarded by the fierce King of Yong ...

The intangible heritage of the roads of Shu

Throughout this western part of ancient China there was a network of routes that today is partially preserved, constituting a first-class cultural heritage. The steps of planks and carved rocks had been built primarily for military and administrative purposes. They connected, first, the Guanzhong and Hanzhong region through the Qinling Mountains and then the Hanzhong Valley with Ba and Shu, again crossing the Daba and Micang mountain line. The most famous of these paths is known as Shudao (蜀道), the path through Shu. In a strict sense it ran through the current province of Sichuan to the border with the province of Shaanxi, more specifically, from approximately Chengdu to the mountain pass of Qipan. However, in a broader sense, if one adopts precisely the perspective of the old northern powers that had an interest in developing it, it can be considered that the Shu path stretches for more than six hundred kilometers, crossing two parallel ranges of mountains up to the current capital of the pandas. If, in addition, there are several branches that connect the Wei and Han valleys through the Qin mountain range through different strategic steps, it is possible to find vestiges of the Shu path along more than a thousand kilometers of path. Of him, almost a millennium after the deeds that are narrated here, the poet Li Bai wrote in the 8th century AD. C .:

“Ay, ay, ay, in the language of Shu!

What a danger! How much altitude!

It is hard to walk the path of Shu

more than the celestial fullness ”.

From the Xianyang area, Liu Bang withdrew towards Hanzhong along the main eastern branch of the Shu Road, now known as the Ziwu Path, that is, the meridian. With that name he wanted to commemorate an ode of the second century AD. C. engraved on stone in those pierced mountains that the then king of Han, according to a scathing mandate, went from north to south, entering some hills to soon emerge through the narrows prepared to become the founder of the empire of the same name. In the ancient Chinese astronomical system of the twelve positional branches that served among other things to divide the day into portions according to the shadows that the gnomon casts on the earth, the north was consigned as zi (子) and equated to the point where a at midnight our star was at its nadir. On the other hand, the noon space was coded as wu (午) in the two hours around the zenith, with a flat azimuth. To designate something as ziwu was, then, to describe its orientation to the south as someone who uses a sundial as a compass rose.

The path of the meridian was certainly a stretch whose entablatures the mesnadas of Liu Bang burned ignorant of the future. Although it can be deduced from the sources that not only that. According to the Book of Han, Zhang Liang, who had escorted the new King of Han on his way through the Qin massif to the place where he was to give content to this title, agreed with him to also apply an incandescent oxygenation to the steps of the path by which he was about to return. General Zhang had to return to his lord - to whom he was already paying vassal before entering the campaign - to accompany him on his return to the kingdom of Handi. This was evidently an alternative branch to the already impassable Ziwu by which he had come, namely the Baoxie Trail which offered a natural exit to the Qin ridges from the north through the steep valley pass, some thirty miles east of the old path. Upon reaching the Wei Basin, Zhang Liang would convey to the Supreme King's ears that all accesses to Hanzhong had fallen into flames.

The intangible value of a heritage that is tangibly destroyed can only be increased if you have the courage to recreate it, and behold, the king of Han and his mighty men had it. However, quite a few of the soldiers sent to Hanzhong deserted in those early days. Once the region was pacified, they longed for their eastern provinces and disappeared in search of a peaceful life with their relatives. One of those militiamen who had been sent to the Han River basins was Han Xin, a disappointed military man from Xiang Yu who had relied on Liu Bang's protection and has been part of his troops ever since. He was assigned a humble position as manager of supplies. As the historical memoirs narrate, one day he was tried along with twelve other men in a council of war; Disappointed as he felt, perhaps he had wanted to escape home with some supplies himself. When he was about to be beheaded with the neck in the hands of the executioner, he looked up and shouted at one of the officials from the Pei region who were instructing and supervising the cause: under the sky? And yet what they do is slaughter their brave knights! " The officer was impressed by Han Xin's cunning genius and did not execute him. Shortly after, this disillusioned man won the respect of said officer and others in the circle close to the king of Han. He had the lucidity to put his finger on the wound without pressing too hard, presenting to those idle heroes the grotesqueness of their situation: they were far away of the people of his affections, arbitrarily confined in a strange land, allowing his existential frustration to turn against his neighbors. Han Xin seemed to have nothing to lose and spoke parrhesia. He highly recommended Liu Bang. As the boredom passed in that limbo of so-and-so, the King of Han could not retain whoever still wanted to return to his orientations, other than offering to have authority in an ambitious project to return, yes, to cross China, but to overthrow Xiang Yu . Thus, knowing how to perceive his talent and untamed passion, he appointed Han Xin general of his army.

After those months of latency beyond the ridges of Qin in which Liu Bang and his trained hosts did not stop considering continuing to fight, the propitious occasion arrived to access the land that the already ill-fated King of Chu had promised. Where he had not been able to make a pledge, the former Duke of Pei wanted to prey upon learning at the end of the summer of 206 that, in the northeast of the empire, a rebellion had broken out in the region of Qi. The arbitrary division of powers of the supreme king had caused obvious dissatisfaction everywhere. The King of Han understood that his time to take Guanzhong had come. The endeavor was certainly risky, for the then clogged Liu Bang did not miss what Xerxes foolishly underestimated, namely, that a battalion frayed by a gorge is weak as a rope of unbraided strands. Despite the Thermopilean dangers, the time had come to sing the now or never on the path that led to Chencang.

In theory, there were several ways to martially enter the region of the three Qin, but appearing in the west and conquering one of the main cities towards the eastern capital was the way to avoid being attacked later from the rear. In fact, with the main roads that communicated with Hanzhong burned, it seems that only that option remained: the absence of ancient testimonies prevents us from concluding that another branch that exists today - the Tangluo path - had already been breached or effectively enabled at that time. Han Xin's advice to recover Guanzhong was, precisely, to take the westernmost branch of the Shu road, the so-called Chenchang path or old path to stand before Zhang Han, the iron guardian of that western square of the territory. In the meantime, it was essential to have a tactic that would render Zhang Han's efforts to control entry into Guanzhong in vain; the attack had to be a surprise. This was where, according to a tradition recorded more than a dozen centuries later, Han Xin himself requested that an important part of soldiers be sent to rebuild the burned architecture of the ports and straits, while others headed towards Chencang. Liu Bang's forces would fix the supervisors' attention at one point to relax it at another.

The oldest sources do not record the combination of these two deployments - one reconstructive, the other raiding - as part of the victorious onslaught of the armies of Han. In fact, beyond describing how Zhang Han and the kingdom of Yong were fatally surprised. For these, there is not properly an explicit allusion to the diversionary tactic by which these troops would have appeared rebuilding the wooden roads on one side, while accessing the desired objective on the other. There are, yes, some local archival materials, as well as historical compilations of the Qing, dating from the 1830s, in which it is reported that, according to tradition, it was Fan Kuai - one of the famous mayors of Liu Bang - who built the bridge over the Fan River, located in the first quarter of the stretch between Hanzhong and Guanzhong on the Baoxie branch. As it is known that, later, Fan Kuai would participate in the occupation of the Wei Valley in order not to return to those areas, this work would have to do with the episode of the reconstruction of the infrastructures. It was an affair that Yong's spies could observe. In any case, they are inconclusive testimonies, too recent, based on oral or perhaps other unknown written traditions and, therefore, unverifiable in principle. There is no choice, then, but to speculate on the concrete development of the southern attack on Guanzhong by the hosts of Liu Bang. Perhaps the diversionary maneuver involved, in addition to reconstruction work near the mouth of the steep valley, an extra trick, apart from the burning, because some sources seem to indicate that Zhang Han arranged his troops at the mouth of the Chencang trail, whereupon Liu Bang was stopped there. However, an individual named Zhao Yan, who was aware of another small alternate path in the vicinity, would have appeared and suggested employing it. Who knows, then, if there was not a third combustion at the entrance of the old path, which later served to deploy the engineering paraphernalia not far from the Chencang palisades, while another front attacked on a different flank of the city. Be that as it may, ways were used there to try to evade surveillance as one who bets everything he has without looking back. And they were effective because the one who seeks finds, even if he does not want to open up to the one he calls. The blockades of the dreaded King of Yong were blind to the unforeseen path by which all of his Qin was penetrated.

The Han and the world's history

Liu Bang took the square and, from there, was able to advance without significant opposition to the east until he took control of all of Guanzhong by the beginning of 205 BC. C. Zhang Han was taken captive after which he signed an armistice in red ink with the relentless fate of him choosing to be a victim of himself. Well into the spring, the already imminent Han Emperor would find the right excuse to launch a total war against Xiang Yu, summoning the different kingdoms and lords to compensate the martyrdom of the just emperor, Xiong Xin. Three years of open warfare would follow, ending the supreme king cornered along the Yangtze. There he cut his throat in the tiny corner where today the Anhui and Jiangsu provinces border.

Thus were inaugurated the four centuries of the first imperial dynasty that embodied the contemporary political concept of mainland China. In times of prosperity, the Han came to enter into commercial relations with the Roman Empire thanks to the need to develop the Silk Road to the regions of central Asia as a means of control over the Xiongnu. In addition, they ended up giving their name to a melting pot of peoples mixed with the waters of the Yangtze and the clays of the Yellow River in what is now considered a single ethnic group. Four hundred years of a shared destiny that changed the course of human history. It all began with a surviving stroke of ingenuity both in the proverb of a town and in the colored stories of its past: appearing repairing the planks of the road, while stealthily accessing one's own destiny.

Ignacio Ramos Riera

tachisj@comillas.edu