In 184 AD, there outbreaking a peasant rebellion, the Yellow Turban Rebellion ( 黄巾之乱 ) , which against Emperor Lingdi ( 汉灵帝 ) of the Han Dynasty ( 汉朝 ) . It is named for the color of the scarves which the rebels wore around their heads. The rebels were associated with secret Taiping Taoist societies and the rebellion marked an important point in the history of Taoism. The rebellion is the opening event in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms ( 三国演义 ) .

A major cause of the Yellow Turban Rebellion was an agrarian crisis, in which famine forced many farmers and former military settlers in the north to seek employment in the south, where large landowners took advantage of the labor surplus and amassed large fortunes. The situation was further aggravated by smaller floods along the lower course of the Yellow River . Further pressure was added on the peasants by high taxes imposed on them in order to build fortifications along the Silk Road ( 丝绸之路 ) and garrisons against foreign infiltrations and invasions. In this situation, landless peasants banded together in gangs and the landowners set up militias, setting the stage for an armed conflict.

At the same time, the Han Dynasty showed internal weakness. The power of the landowners had been a problem of for a long time already, but in the run-up to the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the court eunuchs in particular gained considerably in influence on the emperor, which they abused to enrich themselves. Consequently, the government was widely regarded as corrupt and incapable and against this backdrop, the famines and floods were seen as an indication that a decadent emperor had lost his mandate of heaven.

The Yellow Turban Rebellion was led by Zhang Jiao ( 张角 ) and his two younger brothers Zhang Bao ( 张宝 ) and Zhang Liang ( 张良 ) . The brothers had founded a taoist religious sect in Shandong Province . They considered themselves followers of the Tai Ping Dao ( 太平道 ) and venerated the deity Huang-Dao ( 黄道 ) , who according to Zhang Jiao had given him a sacred book called the Crucial Keys to the Tai Ping Dao. The sect propagated the principles of equal rights of all peoples and equal distribution of land; when the rebellion was proclaimed, the sixteen-word slogan was created by Zhang Jiao: 苍天已死，黄天当立，岁在甲子，天下大吉 ("The Blue Sky (ie. the Han Dynasty) has perished, the Yellow Sky (ie. the rebellion) will soon rise; in this year of Jia Zi, let there be prosperity in the world!")

In 184 AD, the Yellow Turban Rebellion started in the provinces Shandong and Henan . At this time the rebel force consisted of approximately 360,000 fighters. He Jin ( 何进 ) , the half-brother of the empress, was placed in charge of putting the rebellion down. The rebels were defeated in February 185 AD, but only two months later, the rebellion broke out again. In 185 AD, it spread to the Taihang Mountain Range on the western border of Hebei Province and in 186 it reached Shaanxi , Hebei , and Liaoning , in 188 it reached Shanxi . In the same year, a second independent uprising took place in Sichuan , but it was not coordinated with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in other parts of the country. In December 188 and early in 189, the rebels threatened Luoyang , which was the capital city of the Han Dynasty at the time. As a reaction, imperial troops were sent both west and south to confront the rebels. Although the southern detachment was able to score a victory, its commander, Lu Zhi, was arrested for not keeping on the offensive against the rebels. In 192, Cao Cao ( 曹操 ) was able to defeat the rebels again after they marched into Yanzhou, who eventually ceased to pose a military challenge by the year 205.