李息 / Li Xi (Western Han)

Overview

李息 / Li Xi enters the wiki as the Western Han official who receives 汲黯’s warning about 张汤 but does not transmit it to 汉武帝 because he fears Zhang’s power.

Current Profile

Hanji 333-2 identifies Li Xi as 大行 when Ji An visits him before leaving for Huaiyang. Ji argues that Zhang Tang rejects correction, decorates error, tracks imperial desire, and expands punitive government, then warns that failure to clarify the danger early may eventually put Li himself at risk.

Li hears the warning but remains silent. His significance in the bounded source is therefore institutional rather than biographical: accurate private diagnosis cannot become governing feedback when the recipient fears the official being criticized. The episode says Han Wudi later learns of the conversation after Zhang’s fall, but it does not provide Li’s full career or the consequence for his silence.

Key Characteristics

• Western Han official identified as 大行 in the episode.
• Receives Ji An’s pre-departure warning about Zhang Tang.
• Does not report the warning to Han Wudi because he fears Zhang.
• Illustrates the gap between privately hearing correction and converting it into official action.

Evidence

Warning recipient:

• Hanji 333-2 says Ji An visits Li Xi before leaving court and gives him a detailed warning about Zhang Tang’s conduct.

Fear and silence:

• Hanji 333-2 says Li fears Zhang and does not relay a word of the warning to Han Wudi.

Later disclosure:

• Hanji 333-2 says the emperor eventually hears about the exchange after Zhang’s downfall.

Qualifications

The page is bounded to Li Xi’s warning-recipient role in Hanji 333-2. It does not establish his complete biography, office sequence, later military activity, exact knowledge, inner motive beyond the episode’s fear attribution, whether reporting could have changed Zhang’s career, or what consequence followed when the emperor learned of the conversation. A later source note normalizes a military commander’s transcribed name to 李息, but this page does not merge that brief appearance into the profile without a fuller bounded treatment.

What Changed

• Created the page around the blocked transmission of Ji An’s warning.

Relationships

• 汲黯 / Ji An (Western Han) - warning speaker who asks Li Xi to explain Zhang Tang’s danger to the emperor.
• 张汤 / Zhang Tang (Western Han) - powerful official whose feared retaliation or influence produces Li’s silence.
• Emperor Wu of Han / 汉武帝 - intended recipient who learns of the warning only later in the episode’s account.
• Court Feedback Collapse / 君臣反馈失灵 - broader failure pattern in which heard criticism does not become protected decision input.