A famous tactician known for supporting King Wen of Zhou and his son, King Wu.
He is also called Lü Shang, as his clan name was Lü and his given name was Shang, or Jiang Ziya, as his ancestral name was Jiang and his courtesy name was Ziya.
The name "Taigong Wang", whose characters nowadays refer to a fisherman, is derived from one of Lü Shang's legends.
Already an old man, Lü Shang had been casting a fishing line along the banks of the Wei River, avoiding the world, when King Wen of the Zhou Dynasty passed by and spoke to him, finding him to be an outstanding man.
King Wen thought that he was the man that his father, the Grand Duke, had been hoping for, and he took Lü Shang as his military strategist.
For this reason, Lü Shang was called "Taigong Wang (Grand Duke's Hope)", which later came to describe a fisherman as well.
According to the Ming Dynasty novel "The Investiture of the Gods", Taigong Wang was a Taoist from Kunlun named "Fei Xiong", who used his powers to defeat King Zhou of Shang's favorite concubine, Daji, who was the incarnation of a fox.
It is also said that one of the most famous books on the art of war in China, "Six Secret Teachings", was written by Taigong Wang.
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