田延年 / Tian Yannian (Western Han)

Overview

田延年 / Tian Yannian enters the wiki through Hanji 412-1 as a trusted 霍光 confidant whose rapid Western Han rise ends in suicide after a corruption case. The episode presents him as part of a Huo Guang, 张安世, and Tian Yannian governing triangle, but makes the decisive issue his denial to Huo Guang after evidence of embezzlement emerges.

Current Profile

Tian Yannian’s career is built on Huo Guang’s confidence. The source says Huo Guang recruited capable young men into his府 team, promoted Tian from ordinary staffer to longshi, and later gave him a high-risk first local post as Hedong taishou. Tian’s Hedong service is remembered as administratively effective but harsh: the episode says he selected capable people, punished local strongmen, and made wrongdoers afraid, while noting that Ban Gu placed him in the cruel-official tradition.

His fall comes while serving as da sinong during Han Zhaodi’s sudden death. The court lacks prepared mausoleum materials, merchants have stockpiled valuable funeral supplies, and Tian solves the immediate shortage by charging them with profiting from imperial death and confiscating the goods. The merchants then retaliate by exposing a more concrete fraud: Tian allegedly rents thirty thousand ox carts at one thousand cash each while reporting two thousand each to the court, pocketing about thirty million cash.

The episode’s core judgment is that Tian’s fatal mistake is relational as well as legal. Huo Guang asks him about the accusation, and Tian denies it. Once Huo Guang knows he has lied, the case is no longer only whether a patron can cover corruption. It becomes whether Huo can preserve an information order in which close subordinates tell him the truth. When Tian Guangming probes through 杜延年 about whether Tian Yannian’s past merit can justify a fine, Huo Guang signals public procedure instead of protection; Tian then kills himself.

Key Characteristics

• Huo Guang confidant whose rise depends on personal trust, staff proximity, and exceptional promotion.
• Effective but harsh administrator, with the episode placing his Hedong service near the cruel-official tradition.
• Fiscal official responsible for urgent funeral logistics after Han Zhaodi’s sudden death.
• Uses political accusation against merchants to solve a mausoleum-material shortage, creating enemies with motive to retaliate.
• Falls through a concrete embezzlement allegation involving inflated cart-rental accounts.
• Loses protection because he lies to Huo Guang when truthfulness to the patron matters most.
• Functions as a case where prior service and political closeness do not cancel later misconduct.

Evidence

Rise through Huo Guang’s trust:

• Hanji 412-1 says Huo Guang selects Tian Yannian into the great-general府 staff and promotes him to longshi after judging him clever, careful, and useful.
• Hanji 412-1 says Tian becomes Hedong taishou without prior local administrative experience, and that Hedong is Huo Guang’s home commandery.
• Hanji 412-1 says Tian later serves as da sinong and remains deferential to Huo Guang despite high office.

Effective but harsh governance:

• Hanji 412-1 says the historical record credits Tian in Hedong with selecting worthy people, eliminating local strongmen, and deterring illicit conduct.
• Hanji 412-1 says Ban Gu includes Tian in the cruel-official biographies, which the host reads as a sign of harsh methods.

Corruption, denial, and suicide:

• Hanji 412-1 says Tian confiscates merchants’ mausoleum-material stockpiles after charging them with profiting from the emperor’s death.
• Hanji 412-1 says the merchants then gather evidence that Tian inflated rental accounts for thirty thousand ox carts and kept about thirty million cash.
• Hanji 412-1 says Tian denies the accusation when Huo Guang asks, after which Huo Guang lets the case proceed and Tian kills himself.

Qualifications

This page is source-scoped to Hanji 412-1. It does not reconstruct Tian Yannian’s full biography, exact dates of appointment, complete legal record, all primary-source wording, or the full institutional procedure after Tian Guangming verifies the case. The episode’s interpretation that Tian might have lived had he confessed to Huo Guang is preserved as source judgment rather than independently proven counterfactual.

What Changed

• Created the page from Hanji 412-1’s Tian Yannian career and downfall case.

Relationships

• 霍光 - patron whose trust enables Tian’s rise and whose withdrawn protection makes the case fatal.
• 张安世 - named by the source as another member of the Huo-centered governing triangle.
• 杜延年 - intermediary used by Tian Guangming to probe Huo Guang’s preferred handling of the case.
• 欺瞒式靠山信任崩塌 - concept directly created from Tian’s lie to Huo Guang.
• 西汉 - court and administrative setting.