Liú Ān 劉安 (179?–122 BCE), King of Huáinán 淮南王 from 164 BCE, was a grandson of the Hàn founder Liú Bāng 劉邦 (Hàn Gāozǔ) and son of Liú Cháng 劉長 (King Lì of Huáinán 淮南厲王), thus a half-nephew of Emperor Wén and elder cousin of Emperor Wǔ 武帝. The standard biography in Hàn shū 44 records his appanage as the great kingdom of Huáinán in the lower Huái valley (the territory of the modern Ānhuī–Húběi border), his reputation for letters (biàndá shàn shǔwén 辯達善屬文 — “discriminating, articulate, skilled in composition”), and the great salon he gathered at his court — the celebrated “Eight Worthies” (Bāgōng 八公: Sū Fēi 蘇飛, Lǐ Shàng 李尚, Zuǒ Wú 左吳, Tián Yóu 田由, Léi Bèi 雷被, Máo Bèi 毛被, Wǔ Bèi 伍被, Jìn Chāng 晉昌) plus the disciples of “Greater and Lesser Mountain” 大山小山 — among whom the Huáinánzǐ 淮南子 (KR3j0010) was composed. The Hàn shū records his presentation to Emperor Wǔ in 139 BCE of the Huáinán nèipiān 淮南內篇 (the surviving 21-juan recension), an outer miscellany of 33 piān and a middle (alchemical / esoteric) recension of 19 piān; only the inner is fully extant. Liú Ān is also credited with a Lísāo zhuàn 離騷傳 (interpretive commentary on the Lísāo, presented to Emperor Wǔ in a single morning’s composition) and with poetry collected in the Wén xuǎn. In 122 BCE the Hàn judiciary, on a charge of plotting rebellion (in the historiographical tradition, the charge is reckoned at least partly fabricated), drove him to suicide; his sister Liú Líng 劉陵, the King of Héngshān 衡山王 Liú Cì 劉賜 (his half-brother), and many thousands of clients perished in the same purge. The Daoist hagiographic tradition (already current by Wáng Chōng 王充’s day) holds that he ascended into the heavens “with his dogs and his chickens” 雞犬升天, and he is canonised in the Daoist pantheon as a zhēnrén 真人. He is also traditionally named as the inventor of bean curd (dòufu 豆腐), an attribution that emerges only in SòngYuán sources and lacks Hàn-period testimony.