What do you mean, heaven dies, heaven stands? Why is there such a slogan?

The death of heaven is a challenge to the feudal ruling class. Heaven represents the feudal ruling class, and more directly, it is the king of the Han Dynasty. Huang Tian refers to the peasant uprising led by Zhang Jiao. The superficial meaning of this sentence is that heaven has become the past tense and yellow days have become the present tense. The implication is that the feudal ruling class is dead, and now it is a good opportunity for the lower class to grow up. The reason for saying such a slogan is to find a tenable excuse for your own uprising, so that you can be recognized by the whole world and let most people stand on your side.

This sentence is a slogan of the Yellow Scarf Uprising in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The Yellow Scarf Uprising was the largest peasant uprising in the feudal dynasty. Its direct influence was to shake the dominant position of the Han Dynasty, accelerate the demise of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and indirectly create the later Three Kingdoms period. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the king had become a marionette in the hands of powerful ministers, and the politics was in chaos. Politics has become a tool for powerful officials to show their status, and the people are living in dire straits.

Where there is oppression, there is resistance and struggle. People at the bottom of society have been unable to carry out normal production and life. In order to survive, to eat enough and to live with dignity, everyone followed the new forces of Zhang Jiao. They have lost confidence in the Han Dynasty and their last hope.

Although the Yellow Scarf Uprising ended in failure like most peasant uprisings in history, this spirit of resistance is commendable. After the Yellow turban insurrectionary uprising, local forces rose rapidly, and the central group of the Han Dynasty had no status at all. Everyone only shows respect on the surface, but no one really obeys the king's orders. Cao Cao became the biggest beneficiary in this troubled times and got the opportunity to bring the emperor before his ministers.