Talk:Consort Qi (Han dynasty)

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by WikiProject Royalty and Nobility.

China Mid‑importance

	China portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject China, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of China related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChinaWikipedia:WikiProject ChinaTemplate:WikiProject ChinaChina-related articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Women's History Low‑importance

	History portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women's History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Women's history and related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women's HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject Women's HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Women's HistoryWomen's History articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Untitled[edit]

I just performed some quick clean-ups timestamp (03:42, 5 May 2005) but forgot to write an edit summary.

My changes were:

Name disambiguation (the reader may not be familiar with the personal names of emperors)
simple grammar fixes (verb tenses, gender)
Removal of wiki links to extremely trivial common nouns
Clarification of the reason for Liu Bang seeking an alternate heir
Clarification of some of the story of the plot against Qi

This article needs some serious work.

I am definitely not an expert in this area, but I wasted so much time trying to understand what was written in this article, that I thought I could contribute something to improve it.

The most troubling part of the article is the large block quote apparently cited from 'Records of Grand Historian' I don't have access to that text, but it seemed unlikely that a published book would have such poor spelling and grammar. Furthermore, this quote appears in at least 2 other web sites:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Consort+Qi

There is another copy at:

http://www.fact-index.com/c/co/concubine_qi.html

But not much elsewhere. Note the pop-up links on the first site correspond to the trivial wiki links (which were removed), suggesting that this wikipedia article was originally copied from there.

I have tried to minimise the substantive changes I made to the block quote, due to the lack of sources with which I can correlate the story. It seemed to me that one was not likely to survive long after having their arms and legs cut off. That's why I changed it to 'hands' and 'feet'. One reference that supports this is: http://www.china.org.cn/english/TR-e/19450.htm

I would suggest in future that the block quote be removed - it is no longer a true quotation. (the text has been modified by others as well). Perhaps the original source can be found, and assuming it has proper grammar, the quote could be fixed.

This, from Gaozu of Han seem to be more clear[edit]

Succession:

Crown Prince Liu Ying, the eldest son of Liu Bang and Empress Lü, was the heir apparent of Liu Bang. However, Liu Bang disliked him because he considered Ying to be too weak as a ruler. His favorite son was Ruyi, Prince Yin of Zhao, by Lady Qi, one of his favorite concubines. Liu Bang attempted to make Ruyi crown prince but failed because most of his ministers remained loyal to Ying and his mother Empress Lü.

Liu Bang's affection for Lady Qi and Ruyi inflamed Exmpress Lü, and after she became empress dowager after her son's accession after Liu Bang's death, she poisoned Ruyi and tortured Qi to death.

== On changing the date

The 'Aug 4' date was an example of a silly translation for 八月 (8th month). While this works when the Chinese are using the Western calendar (they often do), it is nothing short of confusing when they use western names for their lunar calendar. A simple translation of the NUMBER makes much more sense than 'August'