ABSTRACT
According to the laconic record of the Han-shu, on the first day of the eleventh month of the first year of T'ai-ch'u, the day of the winter solstice, the Emperor made sacrifice to the Supreme Power in the Hall of Spirits. Officials who saw something of public affairs must have felt that the Han Empire was achieving its purposes, and they must have felt part and parcel of the state. The Emperor's attendants were regularly clothed in black, which was the colour of Water, and it seemed strange that the Han dynasty had still kept Water as its patron element. The difference in 104 lay in the choice of an expression which had much more panache about it, and which looked to the future rather than to the past. So hopes ran high in 104 bc, at a time when the Emperor's government had reached the highest point of its achievement.
