During the late Eastern Han Dynasty, a peasant rebel army in Shandong marked themselves with red eyebrows, earning the name the Red Eyebrows, led by Fan Chong. Initially, their discipline was strict, with a verbal pact: "Killers shall die, and those who wound others shall be punished." The army won popular support and grew rapidly. Fan Chong organized his forces into thirty camps of ten thousand men each, marching west to attack Chang'an. They swept through all resistance, captured the capital, and Emperor Gengshi, Liu Xuan, surrendered.
However, after the Red Eyebrow Army entered Chang'an, discipline began to loosen, and conflicts frequently broke out among their generals. More critically, a severe famine struck the Guanzhong region, leading to cannibalism and fields littered with bones. Unable to hold their ground, they decided to retreat eastward. When Emperor Guangwu of Han, Liu Xiu, heard this news, he immediately deployed heavy forces at key crossroads to ambush them. Starving and exhausted, the Red Eyebrow soldiers were shocked by the sudden ambush, and their leader Fan Chong had no choice but to surrender. From the rebel army, Liu Xiu recovered the Imperial Seal, a seven-foot sword and a jade disc belonging to the former emperor Liu Xuan, along with vast amounts of weapons and armor. These spoils were piled west of Yiyang City, stacked as high as Mount Xiong'er.
The Red Eyebrow Rebellion, a fiery uprising that once shook the Han Empire, thus met its dramatic end.
“Ji Jia Shan Qi” means weapons and armor piled up as high as a mountain, describing an extremely large quantity.
According to the *Book of the Later Han*, "Biography of Liu Penzi," during the final years of the Western Han Dynasty, the empire fell into chaos. A wandering fortune-teller named Fan Chong gathered a group of starving refugees and formed a rebel army known as the Red Eyebrows, named for the red dye they painted on their faces to distinguish themselves in battle. As their ranks swelled to hundreds of thousands, they needed a figurehead, so they kidnapped a young descendant of the Han imperial family, a boy named Liu Penzi, and proclaimed him emperor. However, the Red Eyebrows were undisciplined and brutal, looting and pillaging their way across the land. When they finally entered the capital, Chang'an, they found the city in ruins. The young Liu Penzi, terrified and overwhelmed, was paraded through the streets on a horse. One day, a group of his advisors, hoping to restore some order, presented him with a set of imperial gifts from the emperor—a jade seal and a ceremonial sword. Liu Penzi, not understanding the gravity of the situation, simply played with the sword and asked, "Is this really mine to keep?" His advisors, exasperated, replied, "Your Majesty, these are symbols of your rule! You must use them to command the army!" But Liu Penzi, still just a frightened child, shook his head and said, "I don't want to command anyone. I just want to go home." This story illustrates how even the most powerful symbols of authority are meaningless without the will to wield them, and today the idiom "Liu Penzi's Sword" is used to describe someone who holds a position of power but lacks the ability or desire to use it.
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "积甲山齐" came to describe how someone holds a position of power but lacks the ability or desire to use it.