"The present King Zhou of the Shang dynasty heeds only the words of women, forsakes the sacrificial rites of our ancestors, and neglects his country... allowing cruelty to reign over the common people..." This passage, quoted by Sima Qian in the *Records of the Grand Historian* (*Shiji*), originally served as a declaration of war between two rival dynasties. How much truth or exaggeration it contains is hard to determine today. However, because King Wu of Zhou was revered as a sage by Confucian scholars, his words were taken as gospel truth. As a result, for thousands of years, the Chinese people unknowingly fell into a misconception, believing that King Zhou of Shang was a completely incompetent and brutal ruler from top to bottom, inside and out ——