Rule Jie is known to have lived a lavish lifestyle with slaves and treated his people with extreme cruelty. However,
Yuri Pines notes that the
Rong Cheng Shi, a more recent excavation from 1994, depicts Jie's crimes in a fairly mild light. Comparing with other classics like the
Bamboo Annals, he argues that these texts seemingly condemn
Tang's overthrow of Jie through its description of a drought that occurred for several years. In the sixth year of Jie's regime, he entertained envoys from vassals and neighbors. He received an envoy from the Qizhong barbarian people (歧踵戎). In the 11th year, he summoned all his vassals to his court. The Youmin Kingdom (有緡) did not come, so Jie attacked and conquered it. About that time, he began using the Nian (輦), or sedan chair, on which he was carried by servants.
Alcohol lake According to
Liu Xiang's book
Lienü zhuan written much later, around 18 BC, Jie was corrupted by his infatuation with his concubine
Mo Xi (妺喜 or 末喜), who was beautiful, but completely lacking in virtue. Among other things, she liked to drink, enjoyed music, and also had a penchant for jugglers and
sing-song girls. Apparently, she had Jie order a lake of wine made. She then commanded 3,000 men to drink the lake dry, only to laugh when they all drowned. The narrative of the wine pool and meat forest notably mirrors similar, more common accusations made towards
Di Xin during the
Western Zhou period. Song dynasty scholar
Luo Mi noticed this in their text
Lushi "Grand History," where they argue that the similarities between Jie and Di Xin are due to "copy-paste" forms of historiography, and that this resulted in their collective crimes being greatly exaggerated: 大抵書傳所記桀紂之事多出模倣。如世紀等倒拽九牛、撫梁易柱、引鈎申索、握鐡流湯、傾宮瑤室、與夫璿臺三里、金柱三千、車行酒、騎行炙、酒池糟丘、脯林肉圃、宮中九市、牛飲三千、丘鳴鬼哭、山走石泣、兩日並出、以人食獸、六月獵西山、以百二十日為夜等事。紂為如是，而謂桀亦如是，是豈其俱然哉？ "Generally speaking, the affairs of Jie and Di Xin recorded in books and traditions mostly arise from imitation. For example, in works like
Records of the Grand Historian, there are stories of dragging nine bulls backward, bracing beams and swapping pillars, stretching bronze hooks, grasping hot iron and flowing hot water, leaning palaces and jasper chambers, along with a jade tower three
li around, three thousand golden pillars, carts that travel through wine, riders that travel over roast meat, pools of wine and mounds of lees, forests of dried meat and gardens of flesh, nine markets inside the palace, three thousand drinking like cattle, mounds that wail and ghosts that cry, mountains that run and stones that weep, two suns rising together, humans eating beasts, hunting on West Mountain in the sixth month, and making one hundred and twenty days into a single night. If Di Xin is said to have done these things, and Jie is also said to have done the same, how could it be that both were truly like this?"
Jie's cuisine A great deal of effort was spent on Jie's
cuisine and his requirements.
Vegetables had to come from the northwest, fish had to be from the
East Sea, seasonings and sauces had to come from
ginger that grew in the south, and sea salt had to come from the north. Several hundred people were employed just to supply Jie with his meals. Anyone that got his meal wrong was
beheaded. Jie was also a known
alcoholic, but he did not drink regular wine. He drank a specific type of high-quality wine (清醇). The people working for him who could not supply this drink were killed. Many people died because of this. While he was drinking wine it was also required that he ride on someone's back like a
horse. In one incident Jie was riding the back of a top
chancellor like a horse. After a while the chancellor was tired to the point that he could no longer crawl or move. He asked King Jie to spare him. Jie immediately dragged him out to be executed. Another chancellor, Guan Longfeng (關龍逢), told the king that he was losing the trust of his people along with the Xia dynasty's
rivers and mountains (江山). After yelling at Guan, he too was dragged out to be killed. ==Collapse of the Xia dynasty==