Western Jin

Sima Yan took the throne from Wei and founded the Jin; in 280 he conquered Wu, and the three kingdoms became one. In the Taikang years the land knew a spell of peace.

It did not last. The emperor's grants of land to royal princes burst into the War of the Eight Princes, and the peoples along the frontier pushed in. Luoyang fell in 311 and Chang'an in 316 — the Western Jin was gone.

The tales of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove belong to the Wei-Jin years. Their freedom and their sorrow are the other face of the age.