Feast at Swan Goose Gate
Western Han dynasty mural depicting the feast, discovered in the Northwest 61st Tomb in the Luoyang Ancient Tombs Museum. One of the earliest excavated depictions of the event. | |
| Native name | 鴻門宴 |
|---|---|
| English name | Feast at Swan Goose Gate |
| Date | 206 BCE |
| Venue | Hongmen |
| Location | Xinfeng, Xi'an, Shaanxi |
| Type | feast |
| Motive | to assassinate Liu Bang |
| Target | Liu Bang |
| Perpetrator | Fan Zeng Xiang Zhuang |
| Organised by | Xiang Yu |
| Outcome | Liu Bang fled |
| Feast at Swan Goose Gate | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 鴻門宴 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 鸿门宴 | ||||||||||
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The Feast at Swan Goose Gate, also known as the Banquet at Hongmen, Hongmen Banquet, Hongmen Feast and other similar renditions, was a historical event that took place in 206 BCE at Swan Goose Gate (Chinese: 鴻門; pinyin: Hóng Mén) at Xinfeng, outside Xianyang, the former capital of the Qin dynasty. Its location in present-day China is roughly at Hongmenbao Village, Xinfeng Town, Lintong District, Xi'an, Shaanxi. The main parties involved in the banquet were Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, two prominent leaders of insurgent forces who rebelled against the Qin dynasty from 209 to 206 BCE.
The Feast is often memorialised in Chinese history, fiction and popular culture. It was one of the highlights of the power struggle between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu leading to the outbreak of the Chu–Han Contention, a violent civil war for supremacy over China which concluded with Xiang Yu's defeat and death at the Battle of Gaixia, followed by Liu Bang's establishment of the Han dynasty with himself as its founding emperor.