A famous anecdote relates the young Sima Guang saving a playmate who had fallen into an enormous vat full of water.

When he was barely twenty, he passed the Imperial examination with the highest rank of jìnshì (進士; 'metropolitan graduate'), and spent the next several years in official positions.

Sima believed that civilization was created when the sage kings transformed humans from their original animal state using hierarchical order, property rights, moral instruction, and penal law.

He wrote multiple memorials detailing how to make the government more effective and argued that his views were in accord with history (in contrast with Wang Anshi's emphasis on the Classics) and Heaven-and-Earth.

[2] Accordingly, he disliked commercial growth (which he believed encouraged social change) and preferred a recommendation-based imperial examination system.

[3] Rulers were supposed to only determine official assignments, reward achievement, punish failure, care about their servants, have good morals, and be immune to outside influence.

Yingzong overruled this belief and, partly due to personal affection for his biological father, gave Zhao Yurang high ritual honors in 1066.

He opposed Shenzong's irridentism and favored a defensive stance towards the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Western Xia, and Liao dynasty.

Frustrated with Wang Anshi's dominance over court and despite Shenzong's urging for him to stay, Sima retired to Luoyang in 1071, which would become the center of the conservative opposition.

[6] Massive famines and droughts fueled resentment towards Wang Anshi and garnered support for Sima, contributing to the conservative restoration of 1085.

[24] Sima was soon made chief councilor by Empress Dowager Gao, the regent for Emperor Zhezong and herself a staunch conservative.

Zhang Dun's call for moderate abolition was reasonable considering the shock that followed the rapid abolishment of the Baojia system.

Cai Que's refusal to remove the labor recruitment law led to his character assassination by the conservatives Liu Chi and Su Che; this pushed him to resign as chancellor of the right and he was reappointed as the administrator of Chenzhou.

[33] 21 days after Cai Que resigned, Zhang Dun was demoted to a prefectural-level post after offending Empress Gao during a debate.

[34] The green sprouts law was intended to give low-interest loans to farmers but, like many of the aforementioned policies, became a method of revenue extraction.

His argument that the law could boost the dynasty's base revenue annoyed Sima Guang and he was only saved by Wang Yansou's intervention.

It chronologically summarized events in Chinese history from 403 BCE to 959 CE and served as a prospectus for sponsorship of his ambitious project in historiography.

The emperor issued an edict for the compilation of a groundbreaking universal history of China, granting full access to imperial libraries, and allocating funds for the costs of compilation, including research assistance by experienced historians such as Liu Ban (劉攽, 1022–88), Liu Shu (劉恕, 1032–78), and Fan Zuyu (范祖禹, 1041–98).

Scholars interpret the "Mirror" of the title to denote a work of reference and guidance, indicating that Shenzong accepted Sima as his guide in the study of history and its application to government.

From the late 1060s, Sima came to assume a role as leader of what has been identified as a conservative faction at court, resolutely opposed to the New Policies of Chancellor Wang Anshi.

In 1071, he took up residence in Luoyang, where he remained with an official sinecure, providing sufficient time and resources to continue the compilation of Zizhi Tongjian.

Though the historian and the emperor continued to disagree on policies, Sima's enforced retirement proved essential for him to complete his chronological history over the following one and a half decades.

Contemporary accounts relate that, in order to work more and sleep less when he was writing his great opus, the Zizhi Tongjian, he had a wooden pillow made from a log that was designed to slip from under his head whenever he rolled over.

For Sima, dynastic succession was instead a result of power struggles; dynasties rose and fell according to consistent factors.

[38] Sima and the other Yuanyou faction conservatives (except for Su Shi, who had an unorthodox interpretation of the Tao) would be positively associated with Neo-confucianism.

[41] As well as his achievements as a statesman and historian, Sima Guang was also a lexicographer (who perhaps edited the Jiyun), and spent decades compiling his 1066 Leipian ("Classified Chapters", cf.