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The Yandanzi 燕丹子 "Prince Dan of Yan" is a short story about the attempted assassination of the king of Qin 秦 and eventual First Emperor of Qin 秦始皇 (r. 246/221-210 BCE). No author is known, but the story must have been very famous already in the 2nd century BCE and might have been compiled by retainers of Prince Dan from the state of Yan 燕. The book is first recorded in the imperial bibliography Jingjizhi 經籍志 in the official dynastic history Suishu 隋書. The book was lost for a while between the Ming 明 (1368-1644) and the Qing 清 (1644-1911) periods and was only reconstructed from the encyclopedia Yongle dadian 永樂大典 during the compilation process of the collectaneum Siku quanshu 四庫全書.
The story in the book is largely identical to the reports in the histories Shiji 史記 and Zhanguoce 戰國策, except some phantastic stories, like the following: When Prince Dan was still a hostage in Qin and requested to be allowed to return, the king of Qin said that he would not be allowed to go unless he would be able to turn a crows's head white, or that a horse grows a horn. Another passage speaks of a golden dish with which the prince presented Jing Ke after he had hit a frog with a stone. A third popular story is that instead of killing the king, Jing Ke was only able to cut off his ear, before being killed himself by the bodyguards.
The Yandanzi describes the fear of prince Dan that the Qin might conquer his home state. In order to stop the conquest machine of Qin, a mission was dispatched. The chief embassador Qin Wuyang 秦舞陽 took with him the head of the defected Qin general Fan Yuqi 樊于期, and a map of the Yan commandery of Dukang 督亢 (modern Zhuoxian 涿縣, Hebei). Inside the folded map, a knife was hidden. On the presentation of the map to the king of Qin, Jing Ke took out the knife to kill him, but he failed.
The Yandanzi is included in the collectanea Pingjinguan congshu 平津館叢書, Dainange congshu 岱南閣叢書, and Congshu jicheng 叢書集成. In 1985 the Zhonghua shuju press 中華書局 published a modern edition.
Source: Cao Chuji 曹礎基 (1986). "Yandanzi 燕丹子", in: Zhongguo da baike quanshu 中國大百科全書, Zhongguo wenxue 中國文學, vol. 2, pp. 1128-1129. Beijing/Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe.
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Chinese literature according to the four-category system
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