In the Chinese Han Dynasty, the popular songs were mostly simple, straightforward, and expressive ballads about passionate love or bitter hatred. One example from that time contains the words: “Till the mountains are flattened, and all the rivers run dry; till it thunders in the winter and snows in the summer; till the earth and sky become one, only then will I part from you.

The people of the Han Dynasty also dared to sacrifice their lives for honor. Historical records shoe more than 200 cases of suicide that are directly related to the sense of honor. Some people killed themselves rather than go to prison; others died rather than go to trial. A scholar of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu, famously said, “Better to die for honor than live in disgrace.”

The Han Dynasty was a period of expansion and opening up for China in which men all wanted to achieve merit and honor. Cao Cao (a famous poet, politic) wrote the poem, “The old warhorse is in the stable, but his heart is in the field, the warrior may be aged, but his heart will not yield.”