"Western Border Fire" is a first-person story about the reform pioneer Shang Yang's reform.
My name is Shang Yang, and I am a native of Wei, but I have ignited a revolution in the land of Qin.
At that time, the Zhou Dynasty was in decline, the princes were attacking each other, and the Qin State was trapped in the western border, and was regarded as a "barbarian" by the Central Plains. The nobles enjoy their titles and salaries, while the common people are exhausted in the fields and cannot even find enough to eat. Qin Xiaogong held the "Order for Seeking Talents" and said, "Qin will become stronger." The light in his eyes made me see hope.
The road to reform is a knife step by step. In the waste mine fields, the old nobles slapped their ancestral bronze swords and scolded me for digging their roots; standing trees are trustworthy, and the people's words of laughing at the government never count; the prince broke the law, and I cut off his master's nose and stabbed his master in the face, taking away all the hatred of the clan.
In the past ten years, the granaries of the State of Qin were overflowing, the soldiers were shouting with guns in hand, and the old farmers were teaching their sons to recognize the boundaries of the land on the newly marked field ridges. But the resentment in the dark has already become a rope - as soon as Xiaogong left, I became a target.
When I was escaping, the shopkeeper said, "Shang Jun's law is that you can't keep customers without credentials." Then I realized that the rules I set up eventually blocked my own way. On the day the car broke apart, looking at Qin Qi at the top of Xianyang City, I felt at ease: the new law was alive, which was more important than my life.
The posterity compiled this book, not to express how miserable I was, but to tell those who followed the reform: To make the rules stronger than the titles, and to make the actual work stronger than the empty talk, you have to dare to throw the bones into the fire. There has never been a bloodless change in the world, but the law can protect the people and strengthen the country. It is worth burning my whole body.
