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Wu Jie
Southern Song general who, with his brother Wu Lin, beat back the Jin at Heshangyuan in 1131 and Xianrenguan in 1134, holding the passes into Sichuan
At dusk on a hilltop, a large tent stands open with a table holding a map marked with small stones inside, a saddled horse tethered outside, and fire stands burning; campfires dot the river plain below, and one tiny sentry stands on the slope.
Also known as Zi Jinqing · Fu Wang · Shi Wuan
Wu Jie, courtesy name Jinqing, came from Longgan in Deshun, present-day Jingning in Gansu, and rose through the ranks fighting the Western Xia on the northwest frontier. After the Song defeat at Fuping in 1130 he gathered the scattered troops and held Heshangyuan east of the Dasan Pass. When the Jin commander Wanyan Zongbi attacked there in the tenth month of 1131, Wu Jie and his brother Wu Lin ambushed the army and routed it, and Zongbi fled with an arrow wound. In early 1134 Zongbi and Salihe invaded again, and Wu Jie threw them back at Xianrenguan, keeping the routes into Sichuan in Song hands. As deputy pacification commissioner for Sichuan and Shaanxi he then settled soldiers on farmland around Hanzhong. He died at Xianrenguan in 1139 aged forty-seven, received the posthumous name Wu'an, and was later named Prince of Fu. His brother Wu Lin and nephew Wu Ting held the Sichuan passes after him, until Wu Ting's son Wu Xi went over to the Jin in 1206.
Life and times
Dates 1093 CE–1139 CE