According to the biography of Shi Liji, during the Chu-Han dispute, Liu Bang was besieged by Xiang Yu and wanted to give up the elevation. At this time, the counselor Shi Li advised Liu Bangdao: I heard that he who knows the destiny is king. The king regards the people as the sky, and the people regard food as the sky. For ordinary people, food is the most important thing. At present, the place where Chu is stationing grain is called Aocang, but the Chu army did not send heavy troops to guard Aocang. If the King of Qi sent troops to attack Aocang and seized the grain of Chu, it would be tantamount to netting the people of Chu. In this way, the king is bound to turn the tide and defeat the Chu army. Liu Bang greatly appreciated it, so he sent his troops to capture Aocang, and the situation was reversed. In Hanshu, Li Chiqi's sentence became "the people are the sky, and the people take food as the sky", and the word "people" was removed, which became our "people take food as the sky" today.
According to the record of "Searching for the Gods" written by Sima Zhen for Historical Records in Tang Dynasty, "Wang takes the people as the sky and the people take food as the sky" was the earliest thought of Guan Zhong. Guan Zhong's original words are: "Jun regards the people as the sky, and the people regard food as the sky. Those who can know the sky can do it." Compared with Shi Li's flexible use of knowledge, Guan Zhong's words are more logical and far-sighted: the most important thing in the lives of ordinary people is food, and the most important thing in the king's career is the people, which naturally leads to a conclusion: the king must pay attention to the food problems and people's livelihood problems of ordinary people. In this sense, "food" is both the day of the people and the day of the king. The country takes food as the sky, and the king takes food as the sky. This "food" is not the food that "dominates others", but the food that ordinary people live on. Among the "eight policies" listed in Shang Shu Hong Fan, "grain" ranks first, "goods" (business) ranks second, and others such as sacrifice and military affairs are behind, so the "eight policies" are also called "eight policies for agriculture", which shows that the former king attached importance to food. It is precisely because food is the primary problem of the people, so in addition to attaching importance to agricultural production, rulers of past dynasties should also consciously reduce the burden on farmers, so as to ensure their enthusiasm for growing grain. The Analects of Confucius recorded that in case of famine, the agricultural tax should be raised to two tenths for fear that the king would be short of food, but Confucius' students still advocated one tenth, saying, "If the people are not rich, how can they be rich? The people are rich, how can you not be rich? " This sentence well embodies the dialectical relationship between monarch, people and food: food is the sky of the people, and the sky of the people is wide, so is the genius of the monarch.
Although "the king regards the people as the sky, and the people take food as the sky" are two closely related sentences, the former sentence is not new, but the latter sentence is grounded, because it is common in Confucian classics, such as "the people want what they want, and the sky will obey it" and "only the sky benefits the people, only the king".