In 235 BCE, after being implicated in a scandal involving the Queen Dowager Zhao (Ying Zheng's mother) and her illicit lover Lao Ai, Lü Buwei was stripped of his posts and titles and was banished to the remote Shu region in the south of Qin.

Apart from his political career, Lü Buwei is also known for sponsoring the Lüshi Chunqiu, an encyclopaedic compendium of the ideas of the Hundred Schools of Thought that was published in 239 BCE.

[1] The primary sources of information about Lü Buwei date from the first century BCE: Sima Qian's Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), and Liu Xiang's Zhan Guo Ce (Strategies of the Warring States) and Shuoyuan (說苑, Garden of Stories).

[2] Lü Buwei's biography in the Shiji mentioned that he was from the Wey state and he became a successful travelling merchant earning "thousands of measures of gold".

""Now if I devoted my energies to labouring in the fields, I would hardly get enough to clothe and feed myself; yet if I secure a state and establish its lord, the benefits can be passed on to future generations.

King Zhuangxiang appointed Lü Buwei as his chancellor (相國; or prime minister) and enfeoffed him as "Marquis Wenxin" (文信侯) with a taxable fief covering 100,000 households in Luoyang.

He invited famous scholars from all over China to Xianyang, the Qin capital, where they compiled the Lüshi Chunqiu (Lü's Spring and Autumn [Annals]), an encyclopedic compendium of the ideas of the Hundred Schools of Thought.

The Shiji says that Lady Zhao (who became the Queen Dowager after Ying Zheng ascended the throne) pursued many illicit sexual activities, and Lü Buwei, fearing that discovery would cause disaster to befall him, secretly sought a man with a large penis, Lao Ai [嫪毐], whom he made his retainer.

Sometimes he would have music performed and order Lao Ai to put his penis through a wheel of paulownia wood and walk about, making certain that the queen dowager would hear about it to entice her.

The queen dowager therewith covertly gave a generous bribe to the officer charged with castrations to falsely sentence him and to pluck out his eyebrows and beard to make him appear a eunuch.

Ying Zheng stripped his mother of her position as the Queen Dowager and ordered the two sons she secretly had with Lao Ai to be put into sacks and beaten to death.

As a result of the Lao Ai affair, Ying Zheng removed power from most of Lü Buwei's retainers and followers (one notable exception being Li Si) and restored it to the hereditary Qin aristocracy.

In the West, we would regard Lü as a merchant-prince, a patron of culture and literature, an eminent statesman and wise counsellor, a kind of Medici prince who influenced not merely Florence and Italy, but all of European civilization.