Biography
Born into the Ji clan (姬) of Zhou, he had two younger brothers, Zhongyong and Jili. The King of Zhou wished to make Jili, who had become renowned for his wisdom, his heir. Taibo fled to Jin and Jili became King Ji. His son Chang later became King Wen. Taibo and Zhongyong settled in Meili in present-day Jiangsu province.
According to Sima Qian, Wu Taibo was the founder of the State of Wu. The Wu aristocracy learned the written Chinese language and adopted Chinese political institutions and military technology. Meanwhile, in Jin, thousands of families of natives came to Taibo raise him as the ruler in the region. Traditional accounts attribute the cultural changes to Taibo. Originally considered a barbarian state, the people of the Wu Kingdom became Sinicized during the Warring States Period.
Taibo made Meili his capital, after which it is said that he ordered the Canal Du to be dug. During his reign, Taibo also developed irrigation and encouraged agriculture. When Taibo died, he had no heir and passed the throne to his younger brother Zhongyong. Taibo's shrine was set up in today's Meicun, although the original wood structure was destroyed during later wars. It has been renovated several times and today's architecture is mostly from Qing dynasty. A stone carved with Confucius's comment can still be seen in today's Taibo Shrine.
Much later, when King Wu had ended the Shang dynasty, he made Zhouzhang – a descendant of Zhongyong – the king of Wu.
Diplomatic visits to Japan by the later Wei and Jin dynasties recorded that the Wō people of Japan claimed to be descendants of Taibo.
Read more about this topic: Wu Taibo
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)