Cao Cao — The Man Who Wrote "Don't Copy Me"

What Kind of Man Am I?

"What kind of man am I?"

A young man asked this, and the man he asked did not answer, they say.

The young man asked again and again. At last the other man opened his mouth.

"In a peaceful age, you would be a capable official. In a troubled age, you would be a jianxiong."

A jianxiong is a hero who is also sly and cunning. It could sound like praise. It could sound like an insult.

The young man heard this and burst out laughing, it is said. The story was written down by a historian of the fourth century, Sun Sheng. The man who answered was Xu Shao, famous for judging people's character. In another history, both his words and the way he came to say them are different.

The man who laughed was Cao Cao. He would one day rule the northern half of China. More than a thousand years later, he still plays the "villain" in stories.

This was China in the second century, near the end of a dynasty called the Later Han. Cao Cao is said to have been born in 155, in a town called Qiao in the state of Pei.

His grandfather, Cao Teng, was a eunuch, a man who served the emperor at the palace. Eunuchs could not have children, so his father, Cao Song, was an adopted son. Which family his father was born into, the historian Chen Shou says in his Records of the Three Kingdoms, "cannot be known in detail." That is all he writes.

According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the boy Cao Cao was quick-witted and good at schemes. But he liked to play the tough guy, ran wild, and would not change his ways. People did not think of him as a special child.

The Biography of Cao Man, said to have been written by a man of the rival state of Wu, has a story like this.

Cao Cao spent his days playing, and his uncle kept telling his father about it. Troubled, Cao Cao met his uncle on the road one day and twisted his face and bent his mouth on purpose. Surprised, the uncle asked what was wrong. Cao Cao answered, they say, that he had suddenly had a stroke.

The uncle told Cao Cao's father in a hurry, and the father called his son in. The boy's face was just as usual.

"I never had a stroke. Uncle doesn't like me, so he told you a lie."

After that, it is said, the father stopped believing anything the uncle told him.

Still, some grown-ups did see something special in this young man. Qiao Xuan, who had served as a minister, spoke to Cao Cao, the Records of the Three Kingdoms says:

"The world is about to fall into disorder. Only a man with the talent to carry an age can save it. The one who can bring it peace is you."

At twenty, Cao Cao became the captain of the north district in the capital, Luoyang. He was an official in charge of keeping order there.

The Biography of Cao Man says that when he took the post, he had the four gates of the office repaired and hung ten or so five-colored clubs on each side of the gates. Anyone who broke the rules, even someone from a powerful family, was beaten to death with these clubs.

A few months later, the uncle of Jian Shuo, a eunuch the emperor liked, walked the streets at night, which was forbidden. Cao Cao killed him at once.

The capital went quiet. But the emperor's men around him hated Cao Cao. They could not touch him, so, the story goes, they all recommended him for a "promotion" to be magistrate of Dunqiu, far from the capital.

What he wanted in those days, Cao Cao himself wrote down, more than thirty years later, in an order (a written command).

"When I had just been recommended as xiaolian, I was young. I was not a man who had hidden in the hills and made a name for himself. I feared that people would see me as ordinary and foolish. I thought: let me govern one district well, make a name, and let the world know who I am."

Xiaolian was a system for recommending honest young men who respected their parents to the government. Cao Cao, at twenty, was one of the men recommended.

Even a jianxiong will do.

Before long, the powerful men at court became more and more violent. Cao Cao could not go along with them and opposed them again and again. Afraid that disaster would reach his family, he said he was ill and went home. The Book of Wei, the history compiled by the Wei court, says he built a house outside the town and spent spring and summer reading and autumn and winter hunting.

In the same order, Cao Cao also reveals what he wanted after he was called back to office.

"I wanted to be made a marquis and a General Who Conquers the West, and then to have my tomb marked with the words, 'Tomb of Marquis Cao, late General Who Conquers the West of Han.' That was my ambition."

The tomb of the late General Who Conquers the West of Han, Marquis Cao. That was the grave the young Cao Cao wanted.

In 189 the emperor died and the capital fell into chaos. The general Dong Zhuo marched in with his troops and put a new emperor on the throne as he pleased. Dong Zhuo tried to give Cao Cao a high rank. Cao Cao refused, changed his name, and fled east by back roads.

In a town called Zhongmou, an official at a post station grew suspicious and arrested him. Someone in the town secretly knew who he was and spoke up for him, and so, it is said, he was let go.

Cao Cao killed people on this flight. But the story is very different depending on who wrote it.

It happened when he stopped at the home of an old friend, Lü Boshe. Boshe was not at home.

In the Book of Wei, Boshe's sons teamed up with some guests and tried to take Cao Cao's horse and baggage. Cao Cao drew his own blade and cut down several of them.

In the Shiyu, a book of the Jin period, the five sons were busy preparing to welcome a guest. Cao Cao had defied Dong Zhuo's order. He suspected they meant to seize him, and he killed eight people in the night and left.

The third story became famous later. More than a thousand years afterward, the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms added a scene with a traveling companion and a scene in which Cao Cao cuts down Boshe himself on the road, and turned it into the villain Cao Cao's signature line.

It was based on a passage in Sun Sheng's Miscellaneous Notes.

Cao Cao heard dishes clinking, was sure they were plotting to kill him, and killed them in the night. Then, it is said, he spoke sadly:

"I may turn my back on others. I will never let others turn their backs on me."

And with that, Cao Cao left.

White Bones in the Fields

In the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, in the winter of 189, Cao Cao gave away his family's fortune in Chenliu, gathered soldiers, and rose up. He was thirty-five. His target was Dong Zhuo, who was doing as he pleased in the capital.

The next year, armies rose in many places to strike Dong Zhuo, and the great-family lord Yuan Shao was chosen as their leader.

Dong Zhuo burned the capital, Luoyang, and moved west to Chang'an, taking the emperor with him. The Records of the Three Kingdoms says Cao Cao urged the other generals to march: now was the time heaven would destroy Dong Zhuo, he said, and one battle would settle the land.

But Dong Zhuo's army was strong, and Yuan Shao and the others would not be the first to move forward.

Cao Cao added the few soldiers Zhang Miao shared with him to his own troops and went west. At Xingyang he met Dong Zhuo's army and lost. Very many of his soldiers were killed or wounded. Cao Cao himself was hit by a stray arrow, and his horse was wounded too.

His cousin Cao Hong gave Cao Cao his own horse. On that horse Cao Cao escaped in the night.

When he got back to the camp at Suanzao, more than a hundred thousand soldiers had gathered there and were holding a feast every day. The Records of the Three Kingdoms says no one talked about advancing.

Cao Cao laid out a plan to the generals, and it is said he scolded them:

"Our troops rose for what is right. But you doubt, you hold back, and you betray what the whole land hopes for. In secret, I am ashamed for you all."

The generals did not take up his plan.

He did not have enough soldiers. Cao Cao went as far as Yangzhou in the south and gathered a little over four thousand men. On the way back, most of them rebelled. According to the Book of Wei, the soldiers set fire to Cao Cao's tent at night. Cao Cao took up his sword himself, cut down dozens of men, and escaped outside the camp. Those who had not betrayed him numbered about five hundred.

He had said the right thing. And what he had left was five hundred men.

A chill began to blow between him and Yuan Shao, the leader. Yuan Shao invited Cao Cao to put up a different man as emperor, and Cao Cao refused. Another time, Yuan Shao held up a jade seal he had gotten, in front of Cao Cao. Cao Cao laughed, but from then on he disliked Yuan Shao, the Records of the Three Kingdoms says.

There is a poem said to have been written by Cao Cao about the wars of those years. It is titled "Haoli xing." Haoli is the name of the place where the souls of the dead go.

"White bones lie bare in the fields. For a thousand li (a li is a bit under half a kilometer) there is no cry of a rooster. Of the people who lived, one in a hundred is left. When I think of this, my insides are torn."

Then news arrived.

His father, Cao Song, who had taken shelter from the wars, had been killed in the lands of Tao Qian, who ruled Xuzhou.

How he was killed differs from book to book. In one, Tao Qian sent soldiers and attacked the family. In another, the captain of the guard Tao Qian had assigned was dazzled by the family's goods and killed them.

The main text of the Records of the Three Kingdoms says only that Cao Cao set his mind on revenge and attacked east.

From 193 into the next year, Cao Cao invaded Xuzhou. He took five cities and pushed on to the seaside land of Donghai.

The main text adds just one phrase:

"Wherever he passed, he slaughtered many people."

How many were killed, the text does not say. About one hundred and fifty years later, the historian Sun Sheng wrote: "The fault was Tao Qian's, but to kill his people was a mistake."

The army of the man who wrote that poem mourning "one in a hundred left" was killing many people in Xuzhou.

In 194, while Cao Cao was in Xuzhou, Yanzhou, the land behind him, turned against him. His own friends Zhang Miao and Chen Gong welcomed in the fierce general Lü Bu.

Cao Cao turned back and fought Lü Bu at Puyang. His lines were broken. He rode through burning flames and fell from his horse. He burned his left palm.

The later book Spring and Autumn of Emperor Xian tells of this moment. A cavalryman of Lü Bu's caught Cao Cao. But he did not know who his captive was.

"Where is Cao Cao?"

"The one riding away on the yellow horse. That's him."

The cavalryman let Cao Cao go and chased after the yellow horse.

That year there were also swarms of locusts, and the price of grain shot up to over 500,000 coins for one hu (a measure of grain). People ate people, the main text says. Cao Cao let go the soldiers he had just gathered.

Then a messenger came from Yuan Shao, with an offer to join forces.

Cao Cao had lost Yanzhou, and his army's food was gone. He was ready to accept.

So This Is Really Goodbye

The man who stopped him was his retainer, Cheng Yu.

Cao Cao took his advice. He did not go under Yuan Shao.

Around the time Yanzhou turned against him, some people had left Cao Cao's side.

A retainer named Bi Chen had his family taken hostage by Zhang Miao, who had betrayed Cao Cao. The main text says Cao Cao told him:

"Your old mother is over there. Go."

Bi Chen pressed his forehead to the ground and swore he had no second heart. Cao Cao was moved and shed tears, it is said.

But as soon as Bi Chen left Cao Cao, he fled straight to Zhang Miao.

Cao Cao had also said that Wei Zhong, at least, would never abandon him. Wei Zhong ran away too. When he heard, Cao Cao was angry, and he said, it is said:

"That Wei Zhong. Unless he runs to Yue in the south or the Hu in the north, I will not forgive him."

A few years later, both men were captured. Of Bi Chen, Cao Cao said that a man who is good to his parents must be loyal to his lord too, that this was the kind of man he wanted, and made him an official. In Wei Zhong's case, the main text says he said, "Only because of his talent," and untied his ropes and used him.

In 196, Cao Cao welcomed the emperor and moved the capital to the town of Xu.

That year Cao Cao began the tuntian system. He called on people to farm the land and grow food. Many armies starved and raided, then grew full and threw it all away and fell apart on their own. In this year, the Book of Wei says, he gained a million hu of grain.

In the first month of the lunar calendar of the next year, 197, a general named Zhang Xiu surrendered to Cao Cao at the town of Wan.

But Zhang Xiu soon regretted it and turned on him. Caught off guard, Cao Cao was defeated and hit by a stray arrow.

According to the Book of Wei, compiled by the Wei court, Cao Cao's horse, Jueying, was hit by arrows in the cheek and leg, and Cao Cao was shot in the right arm.

The Shiyu of the Jin period says this: his eldest son, Cao Ang, gave his own horse to his father. Cao Cao escaped on it, and Cao Ang was killed.

His nephew An Min died then, too.

Dian Wei, the captain of his guard, kept fighting at the gate so that Cao Cao could escape. He took dozens of wounds, and he died, the Records of the Three Kingdoms says, glaring and cursing the enemy.

When Cao Cao heard that Dian Wei had died, he wept. He sent men to bring back the body, came out himself before the corpse, and cried aloud, it is said.

After he withdrew, Cao Cao gathered his generals, the main text says, and told them:

"I defeated Zhang Xiu and the others but did not take hostages at once. That mistake brought this. I know why I lost. Watch, all of you. From now on, I will never lose again."

He knew why he had lost.

But his son would not come back.

In the eleventh month of the lunar calendar that year, on his way to Wan again, Cao Cao held a memorial for the dead officers and soldiers by a river called the Yu. Cao Cao choked with sobs and shed tears, and all the soldiers wept aloud too, the Book of Wei says.

There was one more person who kept weeping.

Cao Cao's wife, Lady Ding.

Cao Ang was not her own son. His birth mother, Lady Liu, had died young, and Lady Ding had raised him as her own child.

According to the Brief History of Wei, Lady Ding always said:

"You killed my son, and you do not care at all."

And she wept without stopping, it is said.

Cao Cao grew angry and sent her back to her parents' home. He was waiting for her heart to soften, the Brief History of Wei says.

The Brief History of Wei tells what came after, too.

Cao Cao went to see her.

Lady Ding was weaving at her loom. A servant announced, "My lord has arrived," but she kept sitting at the loom, just as before.

Cao Cao went to her, stroked her back, and said:

"Look at me. Let us ride home together in the carriage."

She did not turn around. She did not answer.

Cao Cao stepped back, stood outside the door, and said once more:

"Still not?"

There was no answer.

I can state why I lost any time. But what could I say to her?

Cao Cao said:

"So this is really goodbye."

Barefoot to Meet Him

In 198, Cao Cao attacked Lü Bu. On the way, according to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, he "butchered" the city of Pengcheng. The word means he took the city and killed the people in it. He flooded the city of Xiapi, and in a little over a month he captured Lü Bu and Chen Gong and killed them both.

One great enemy remained: Yuan Shao, who held four northern provinces and had more than a hundred thousand soldiers.

His generals said they could not win. Cao Cao listed Yuan Shao's traits for them, the main text says.

"I know this man Yuan Shao. His ambition is big, but his wisdom is small. His face is stern, but his nerve is small. He has many soldiers, but his orders are not clear. His land is wide and his food plentiful, but it will only be a gift to me."

In 200, the two armies faced each other at Guandu.

His bold words were the opposite of his real position. According to the main text, Cao Cao had fewer than ten thousand soldiers, and two or three in ten were wounded. Yuan Shao built mounds of earth and dug tunnels to attack. Arrows fell like rain on the camp, and the soldiers walked with shields over their heads. Their food was running low, too.

Cao Cao wrote a letter to Xun Yu, who guarded the capital, and discussed pulling back to Xu.

Xun Yu's reply, the main text says, went like this. You are facing the strongest enemy with your weakest force. If you cannot hold here, he will surely take advantage. Now is the turning point of the whole land. Yuan Shao can gather men, but he cannot use them.

Cao Cao held his ground.

Then a man fled over from Yuan Shao's side. Xu You, who had been Yuan Shao's adviser.

The Biography of Cao Man, written by Cao Cao's enemies, tells it this way.

When Cao Cao heard that Xu You had come, he came out to meet him barefoot, clapping his hands and laughing.

When they sat down, Xu You asked how much food Cao Cao had left. A year's worth, Cao Cao said. Asked again, he said half a year. Xu You said he was not telling the truth. Finally, Cao Cao confessed, it is said:

"That was a joke. In truth, we have about a month's worth. What should we do?"

Xu You told him to attack Yuan Shao's supply convoy at Wuchao.

Cao Cao himself led five thousand soldiers and struck Wuchao in the night. When Yuan Shao's rescue cavalry drew near, the men around him asked to split the troops to hold them off. Cao Cao grew angry, the main text says:

"Tell me when they are at our backs."

The soldiers fought as if they would die, and Wuchao fell.

The Biography of Cao Man goes on to say that Cao Cao's army killed over a thousand of Yuan Shao's men and showed them off to Yuan Shao's army. Pei Songzhi, a commentator of the fifth century, also notes that many books record that Cao Cao buried alive eighty thousand (some say seventy thousand) of Yuan Shao's troops.

Pei Songzhi did not doubt this report. He argued the opposite: eight thousand men could not tie up eighty thousand fleeing men, so Cao Cao's army must not have been as small as the main text's "fewer than ten thousand."

Yuan Shao fled back north.

Among the papers Yuan Shao left behind, Cao Cao found letters that people in the capital, Xu, and men of his own army had sent to Yuan Shao.

Cao Cao burned them all. The Spring and Autumn of the Wei House says Cao Cao said at the time:

"When Yuan Shao was strong, even I could not be sure of keeping myself safe. How much more the others."

In the first month of the lunar calendar of 202, Cao Cao halted his army in his hometown, Qiao, and issued an order.

"The people of my hometown are almost all dead. I could walk all day in the land and not meet a face I know. I am sad, and my heart aches."

The order told his men to find relatives for soldiers who had died in battle with no heirs, to let them carry on the family, to give them good fields and oxen to plow, and to set up teachers to educate their children.

That same year, Cao Cao sent an envoy to hold a ceremony at the grave of Qiao Xuan. This was the man who had said to him in his youth, "The one who can bring it peace is you."

In the memorial text, Cao Cao wrote down an old promise. Qiao Xuan had said it half in jest, when they were relaxing together.

"After I die, if you pass by my grave and do not offer a measure of wine and a chicken, do not blame me if your carriage has gone three steps and your stomach starts to hurt."

It was a joke of the moment. But no one says such a thing unless they are very close, Cao Cao added.

In the fifth lunar month of that same year, 202, Yuan Shao fell ill, spat blood, and died.

In 204, Cao Cao took Ye, Yuan Shao's base.

Cao Cao went to Yuan Shao's grave and held a ceremony. He cried aloud and shed tears. He comforted Yuan Shao's wife, returned her household and treasures, and gave her silk, cotton, and food, the main text says.

To this scene the main text adds a conversation from when the two had first raised troops.

Yuan Shao asked: if things go badly, where will you make your stand? Cao Cao asked him back, and Yuan Shao said he would take the northern lands, add the troops of the non-Chinese peoples, and fight for the land.

Cao Cao's answer was this:

"I will use the wisdom and strength of all the people under heaven, and move them by what is right. Then there is nothing I cannot do."

Cao Cao was the one who won.

And he wept before his enemy's grave. About a hundred and fifty years later, Sun Sheng criticized this: to pour out grief at a rebel's tomb, he said, was to go wrong in the way of government.

Cao Cao left no word on why he wept.

Few Under Heaven Understand Each Other

Guo Jia was the youngest of Cao Cao's advisers. His courtesy name (the second name an adult used) was Fengxiao.

In 207, when Cao Cao planned a far-off campaign against the Wuhuan, a northern people, all the generals were against it. Only Guo Jia was in favor, it is said.

Cao Cao won. But on the way back, Guo Jia fell seriously ill. Cao Cao sent messenger after messenger to ask after him.

Guo Jia died. He was thirty-eight.

Cao Cao said this to his retainers, the Records of the Three Kingdoms says:

"You are all of my own age. Only Fengxiao was the youngest. When the affairs of the land were settled, I meant to leave what comes after in his hands. And he died in his prime. Was this fate, too?"

In 208, Cao Cao became Chancellor, the highest minister, who helps the emperor run the government. Jingzhou in the south surrendered without a fight, and Cao Cao's great army went south, chasing the fleeing Liu Bei.

The twelfth month of the lunar calendar. Red Cliffs.

The Records of the Three Kingdoms has only a short entry in Cao Cao's own biography. Cao Cao fought Liu Bei at Red Cliffs and was at a disadvantage. Plague spread, many soldiers died, and he pulled back. That is all it says.

On the way back, Cao Cao sighed, the main text says:

"If Guo Fengxiao were here, he would not have let this happen to me."

In a letter to Xun Yu, too, Cao Cao wrote about Guo Jia.

"Fengxiao was not yet forty. He spent eleven years with me. We tasted every hardship and bitterness together. (...) And he was a man who understood me. There are few under heaven who understand each other. That is why it hurts all the more, and why I miss him. What am I to do, what am I to do."

In the same year, 208, there was another death.

Cao Cao's son Cao Chong. He was thirteen. At five or six, the main text says, he had the wisdom of a grown man.

Once, Cao Cao's saddle was gnawed by rats in the storehouse. The keeper feared the death penalty. Cao Chong told him to wait three days and then come forward. Then he cut a hole in his own clothes with a knife, like a rat's gnawing, and went before his father with a sad face.

Asked why, he said that people say that if rats gnaw your clothes, something unlucky comes to their owner. Cao Cao said that was nonsense and told him not to worry.

Soon the keeper came and told him about the saddle. Cao Cao laughed, it is said:

"My son's clothes were right next to him, and they were gnawed. A saddle hanging on a post, all the more so."

The keeper was not punished at all.

Cao Cao often praised Cao Chong in front of his retainers. He wanted to make him his heir, the main text says.

Then Cao Chong fell ill. Cao Cao himself prayed to the gods for his life.

When Cao Chong died, Cao Cao's grief was deep. To Cao Pi, who came to comfort him, Cao Cao said this, the main text says:

"This is my misfortune. And it is your good fortune."

Cao Pi was Cao Chong's older brother. He would later take over from Cao Cao.

While Cao Chong was gravely ill, Cao Cao said one more thing he regretted.

Earlier, Cao Cao had had the famous physician Hua Tuo treat his chronic headaches. Hua Tuo wanted to go home. He used his wife's illness as an excuse and did not return after the deadline. When Cao Cao had it checked, it was a lie. Cao Cao threw Hua Tuo in prison.

Xun Yu begged for his life: Hua Tuo's skill was truly great, and many lives depended on it. Cao Cao answered, the main text says:

"Don't worry. Do you think the world will run out of rats like this one?"

Hua Tuo died in prison.

When Cao Chong was in danger, Cao Cao lamented:

"I regret killing Hua Tuo. I forced this child to die."

In the same year, 208, the famous scholar Kong Rong, who had opposed Cao Cao many times, was executed in the marketplace for speaking ill of Cao Cao to an envoy of Sun Quan. His two young children were killed with him.

In the twelfth month of the lunar calendar of 210, Cao Cao issued a long order. It was an answer to people who said: why not give up your soldiers and withdraw to your own lands?

"If the country had not had me, I cannot tell how many men would have called themselves emperor, and how many would have called themselves king. People see that I am strong and prosperous, and because I am by nature not a man who believes in the Mandate of Heaven, they may be guessing, on their own, that I have ambitions beyond my place. Every time I think of this, my heart is not at rest."

In the same order, Cao Cao wrote that he could never give up his soldiers. If he left his troops, he would be killed by others, and he was truly afraid of that.

And he wrote that he always told his wives what was in his heart.

"After I die, you will all marry and go elsewhere. Then I want you to pass on my heart and let other people know."

In 212, his retainers moved to raise Cao Cao to "Duke of the realm," a rank just below king, with a state of his own.

Xun Yu opposed it. Cao Cao was the man who raised righteous troops and set the court right. A gentleman loves others through virtue. This should not be done, he said.

The main text says that Cao Cao's heart was no longer at ease because of this.

That year Xun Yu fell ill at Shouchun and died in sorrow. He was fifty.

The Spring and Autumn of the Wei House preserves a different story. Cao Cao sent Xun Yu some food. When he opened it, the container was empty. Xun Yu took medicine and died, it says.

He was the man who had written to Cao Cao at Guandu not to turn back. He was the one Cao Cao had told of his grief for Guo Jia.

The next year, Cao Cao became Duke of Wei.

Do Not Copy Me

In the first month of the lunar calendar of 213, Cao Cao faced the army of Sun Quan in the south, at the mouth of the Ruxu River.

According to the Wu book Wu li, Sun Quan came out himself in a light boat to look at Cao Cao's camp. Cao Cao ordered his men not to shoot arrows at random. Sun Quan's boats, weapons, and ranks were all in perfect order. Seeing this, Cao Cao sighed and said, it is said:

"If I must have a son, I would want a son like Sun Zhongmou. The sons of Liu Jingsheng are like pigs and dogs."

Sun Zhongmou was Sun Quan. The son of Liu Jingsheng was the lord of Jingzhou, who had surrendered to Cao Cao without a fight.

A letter came from Sun Quan.

"The spring waters are rising. You had better go home soon."

A separate sheet said:

"Unless you die, I cannot feel safe."

Cao Cao told his generals that Sun Quan would not deceive him, and pulled his army back.

The next year, 214, Cao Cao set out on a campaign. He left his twenty-three-year-old son Cao Zhi in charge of his base at Ye and said:

"When I became magistrate of Dunqiu, I was twenty-three. When I think back on what I did then, I have no regrets even now. You are twenty-three now. How can you not give it your best?"

In 216, Cao Cao became King of Wei.

Around then, Cui Yan, a senior minister in charge of choosing officials, wrote in a letter that "a time of change will come someday." Someone told on him, saying it was a presumption beyond his place. Cao Cao was angry and sentenced Cui Yan to forced labor as a convict. Even so, Cui Yan did not bend in his words or in his face, it is said. Cao Cao issued an order and commanded his death.

According to the Biography of Cao Man, written by his enemies, another man, Bian Rang, who had also hurt Cao Cao with his words, was killed, and his whole clan was wiped out.

In an order of 217, Cao Cao wrote this about Cao Zhi:

"At first I thought Zijian was the one among my children I could trust with great matters."

Zijian was Cao Zhi's courtesy name. That year Cao Zhi drove his carriage along the road kept for the emperor, and had the Sima Gate of the palace opened to pass through. Cao Cao was furious, and the official in charge of the gate was charged and died. Another order of Cao Cao's says:

"Since Zhi, Marquis of Linzi, went out on his own, opened the Sima Gate, and went as far as the Golden Gate, I have looked at this child with different eyes."

In 219, Cao Cao tried to make Cao Zhi a general and send him to rescue his men, who were surrounded by Guan Yu. When he called him in, Cao Zhi was drunk and could not take the command. Cao Cao called it off. There is also a story that his older brother Cao Pi had forced him to drink.

Around that time, Cao Cao was fighting Liu Bei at Hanzhong. The Spring and Autumn of the Nine Provinces says that the order he gave was a single word: "chicken ribs." No one knew what it meant, but Yang Xiu began to pack. A chicken's ribs, he said, are a pity to throw away, but there is no meat to eat. The king means to go home.

That Yang Xiu was killed too. Cao Cao worried about the fight over who would succeed him, and, the main text says, he charged Yang Xiu, a man of talent and a nephew of the Yuan family, and had him killed. The main text does not say what the charge was, but the Dianlue, another old history, says it was leaking Cao Cao's instructions and being in contact with the lords.

In the winter of 219, Sun Quan, who had offered to attack Guan Yu, sent Cao Cao a letter calling himself his subject and urging him to follow the Mandate of Heaven. That meant: become emperor. Cao Cao showed the letter to the others and said, the Brief History of Wei says:

"This little brat wants to sit me over the fire of a furnace."

His retainers also urged him to become emperor. According to the Spring and Autumn of the Wei House, Cao Cao answered:

"If the Mandate of Heaven is with me, I will be King Wen of Zhou."

King Wen of Zhou held two thirds of the land under heaven and still served the king of Yin to the end. It was his son who founded the new dynasty.

The Biography of Cao Man, by his enemies, has an entry that in his last years Cao Cao had the office of the north district captain in Luoyang rebuilt, grander than before. This was the office where, at twenty, he had hung the five-colored clubs on the gates.

In the first month of the lunar calendar of 220, Cao Cao died in Luoyang. He was sixty-six.

His last orders (commands given at the point of death) survive in the main text of the Records of the Three Kingdoms.

"The land is not yet settled. We cannot follow the old rites of burial. When the burial is done, all of you take off your mourning clothes. Those who lead troops and guard their posts must not leave them. Officials, do your duties. Bury me in clothes of the season, and do not put gold, jade, or treasures in the tomb."

About eighty years later, the writer Lu Ji read these orders in the palace library and copied down other parts.

"Divide the leftover incense among the ladies. If you have nothing to do in your rooms, learn to make shoes and braided cords and sell them."

Lu Ji wrote that Cao Cao pointed at his youngest son, Bao, showed him to his four sons, said, "I am putting hardship on you," and shed tears.

And in the orders there is a passage where Cao Cao writes about himself.

"That I made the law be kept in the army was right. But my small angers and my great mistakes must not be copied."

"What kind of man am I?" When he was young, Cao Cao asked someone this, and it is said he burst out laughing at the answer.

His last answer, he wrote himself.

Cao Hong, who gave him his horse on the night of defeat. Cao Ang, his eldest son, who according to the Shiyu gave his horse to his father and died. Dian Wei, who fought on at the gate. Xun Yu, who wrote to him, do not turn back. On the road to the day Cao Cao finished writing his answer, these people were with him.

One of his wishes when he was young was to have his tomb marked, "Tomb of Marquis Cao, late General Who Conquers the West of Han."

The orders also say this. Let his concubines and singers live in the Bronze Sparrow Terrace built at Ye. On the first and the fifteenth of each month, let them play music toward his curtain.

"From time to time, climb the Bronze Sparrow Terrace and look out toward my tomb at Xiling."