Royals › Monarch / Emperor
King Wei of Qi
King of Qi who reformed his officials by boiling a corrupt magistrate and rewarding an honest one, and whose armies under Tian Ji and Sun Bin twice beat Wei
In a side chamber of a palace, a yellow ceremonial robe embroidered with a dragon hangs on a wooden stand, its hem worked with waves and rocks, before a carved folding screen, while a black lacquer chest sits on a low table by a lattice window and no person is in view.
Also known as Tian Yinqi
- Roles
- Monarch / Emperor
King Wei of Qi, personal name Tian Yinqi, was a son of Duke Huan of the Tian house of Qi. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says that at first he left government to his ministers while neighbours attacked Qi for nine years. Then he rewarded the magistrate of Jimo, slandered at court but governing well, and boiled alive the magistrate of E, praised only because he bribed the king's attendants, together with the courtiers who had spoken for him. He made Zou Ji chief minister, and the Intrigues of the Warring States (Zhanguo ce) tells how Zou, comparing himself with the handsome Master Xu, persuaded him to reward anyone who named his faults. With Tian Ji as general and Sun Bin as adviser his armies beat Wei at Guiling and Maling. By the chronology revised from the Bamboo Annals, he met King Hui of Wei at Xuzhou in 334 BCE, the two recognising each other as kings, and died in 320.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown–320 BCE