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Case file s1250 · Ghosts and legends · 543 BCE
543 BCE
Zi Chan: Zi Chan (子產, 子产), also known as Gongsun Qiao (died 522 BC), was the most outstanding statesman of the State of Zheng in ancient China during the Spring and Autumn Period.
Zi Chan. 《三才圖會》,王圻及王思義撰寫. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
543 BC (Liang Xiao, called Bo You)
Place
Xinzheng, capital of the state of Zheng, Henan, China
Field
Hereditary ministers of Zheng · Politics and government on the timeline
Legal tradition
Zhou ancestral sacrifice and hereditary office; Zuo zhuan, Duke Zhao year 7
Historical event
The Spring and Autumn period; Zichan's government of Zheng

Zheng's minister was killed in the sheep market, his rivals died on the days his ghost named, and Zichan gave his son office to stop the haunting

Kind 2: what the Zuo zhuan says. Liang Xiao, called Bo You, was senior minister of Zheng; his family had held power for three generations. He drank through the night in an underground room. In 543 BC he tried to force Gongsun Hei to go as envoy to Chu. Gongsun Hei used the troops of the Si clan to burn Bo You's house. Bo You fled, came back into the city through a tomb-gate drain and attacked. Si Dai led the townspeople against him, and he was killed in the sheep market. The minister Zichan dressed the body, wept over it and had it buried. Years later the people of Zheng ran in panic, shouting "Bo You is coming." In 536 BC someone dreamed that Bo You walked in armor and said he would kill Si Dai on a renzi day and Gongsun Duan on a renyin day the next year. Si Dai died on the renzi day. Gongsun Duan died on the renyin day in 535 BC. The next month Zichan gave office to Bo You's son, Liang Zhi, and to Gongsun Xie. The panic stopped. Zichan said a ghost that has a place to return to does not become malevolent, and that he had given Bo You one. Asked in Jin whether Bo You could be a ghost, Zichan said a man of a great house who dies by violence can. Historian Paul R. Goldin cites the passage as evidence that the dead were thought to be aware.

What the law took from it

Restoring a dead man's line to office and sacrifice was the remedy the state chose when his killing had cut it off.

Sources
  1. zh.wikisource.orgScholarship
  2. zh.wikisource.orgScholarship
  3. ealc.sas.upenn.eduScholarship

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Zheng's minister was killed in the sheep market, his rivals died on the days his ghost named, and Zichan gave his son office to stop the haunting,” story s1250, https://www.celebrity.estate/boyou-ghost-543-bc, updated 30 October 2026.

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