卜式 / Bu Shi (Western Han)

Overview

卜式 / Bu Shi enters the wiki through Hanji 362-2 as a figure 汉武帝 repeatedly held up for officials to emulate and as the author of an unusually severe attack on 桑弘羊 during a 110 BCE drought.

Current Profile

The episode defines Bu Shi mainly through fiscal remonstrance. He argues that the court should live from taxation rather than place officials in shops to sell goods and seek profit. By saying that rain would come only after Sang Hongyang was cooked, he translates opposition to direct official commerce into the period’s disaster-responsibility language.

Key Characteristics

• Western Han figure publicly promoted by Han Wudi as an example for other officials.
• Critic of officials entering ordinary market trade and pursuing commercial profit.
• Defender, in the episode’s compressed formulation, of taxation as the court’s proper support.
• Remonstrant who links drought relief to the removal and execution of the fiscal official he blames.

Evidence

Public example and remonstrance:

• Hanji 362-2 says Han Wudi frequently set Bu Shi up as an example and that Bu submitted his criticism during the drought.

Fiscal position:

• Hanji 362-2 attributes to Bu Shi the distinction between tax-supported government and officials who sit in shops selling goods for profit.

Disaster language:

• Hanji 362-2 gives Bu Shi the formula that cooking Sang Hongyang would make Heaven send rain.

Qualifications

This profile rests on one short podcast summary. It does not reconstruct Bu Shi’s wider biography, offices, economic thought, relationship with Han Wudi, the full memorial text, or whether his execution-and-rain language was literal belief, rhetorical escalation, or both.

What Changed

• Created the page from Hanji 362-2’s drought remonstrance and criticism of official commerce.

Relationships

• Emperor Wu of Han / 汉武帝 - ruler who promotes Bu Shi as an example and receives his drought memorial.
• 桑弘羊 / Sang Hongyang (Western Han) - fiscal official whom Bu Shi blames for official profit-seeking.
• 官营商业垄断式汲取 / State Commercial Monopoly Extraction - policy mechanism Bu Shi’s market-shop criticism exemplifies.
• Auspicious Omen Politics / 祥瑞政治 - adjacent sign-politics frame linking governance judgments to weather and celestial events.