Yan Jiming

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Yan Jiming (顏季明; 730 – 756) was a Chinese official of the Tang dynasty. He was the son of Yan Gaoqing, who was serving as the Grand Protector of Changshan at the outbreak of the An Lushan Rebellion in 755. He was also the childhood sweetheart and husband to He Shi, who became a Hidden One.

In cooperation with the Hidden One Li E, Jiming and his father formed an army to resist An Lushan's forces. Jiming personally led his troops to attack Tumen Pass, occupying it after Li E assassinated three Yeluohe commanders there. He then waited for Tang reinforcements while Li E proceeded to Taiyuan to request them. However, both Jiming and Gaoqing were later defeated by An Lushan and sent to An's newly captured capital of Luoyang in chains, where they were summarily executed.

Biography

Yan Jiming was born in 730 and hailed from a lineage which had been employed in the Tang government for generations. By the time of his father, Yan Gaoqing, they were an established family which could relatively have been regarded as nobility although they were not particularly wealthy. Whereas his father served as Grand Protector of Changshan Commandery, his thirteenth uncle Yan Zhenqing—more precisely his first cousin once removed—was the Grand Protector of Pingyuan Commandery. Apart from his family's connections, Jiming grew up playing with a girl named He Hong'er, and the two fostered romantic affections in childhood.

A new friend falls from heaven

Because Gaoqing was preoccupied with his duties in that office, Jiming attended the Flower Banquet of 754 in Chang'an in his place, accompanied by Uncle Chen. The young man found the splendid bouquets of flowers which blanketed the city on this occasion to be mesmerizingly beautiful, and he felt that it was sad for so many of these to go to waste after the festival was over. He resolved to collect batches of them that were originally meant to be thrown away and donate them to children outside Chang'an. To that end, Jiming and Uncle Chen took a flower disposal wagon as their transport out of the Xingqing Palace grounds.

While they were moving down the avenue to the gate, a young man spontaneously fell right out of the sky, plunging directly through the wagon roof and landing on the floor in front of Jiming. Miraculously he was unscathed although the same could not be said for the roof. Jiming stared in confusion at the mysterious stranger with his hand on his sheathed sword, asking who he was, but as soon as the man noticed him, he swiftly lunged at him with a wrist blade drawn towards his chin. With his other hand pressed against his sword-arm, the signal was clear that he was not to give him away.

In front, Uncle Chen called out from the driver's seat to check on the situation, and Jiming lied that he had accidentally destroyed the ceiling with a kick while practicing martial arts. Uncle Chen did not believe him, pointing out frankly that he lacked the skills for that, but he was relieved that they had not run anyone over and did not feel the need to question further. Per Li E's command, Jiming shouted at Uncle Chen to resume driving, and he promptly complied.

This gave the stranger a reprieve which allowed him to relax, retract his blade, and settle into his seat. His hostility immediately subsided, and he apologized for his threat, remarking that he had mistaken this for an empty disposal wagon. Blushing, Jiming shared his reason for riding in one, and it was a motive that warmed the stranger's heart, causing him to reassure him that he would not harm him and that his only objective was to leave the palace grounds safely.

At these words, it dawned on Jiming that the stranger was an assassin, but their carriage was stopped at the gates at that moment. The guards informed Uncle Chen that they had orders to check every carriage moving in and out of the palace due to the infiltration of a criminal that night, and they shouted at the passengers to come out and report their identities. Pulling aside the curtain with the assassin still in hiding behind him, Jiming declared his name and his status as the son of Grand Protector Yan Gaoqing of Changshan.

Because the guards recognized his family name, they were embarrassed and tried to explain that they mistook him for a commoner by the plain carriage, to which Jiming affably corrected them that he really was a commoner. He almost panicked however when they asked if he had chanced upon any suspicious individual. Despite the stranger having threatened his life earlier, Jiming willingly lied to protect him, and their carriage was finally allowed to pass through unmolested.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Dynasty