I kinda got the impression he was insane...wanting to prolong life. Btw, his name is just Qin Shi. The last two parts, Huang di denote "king".
You must realise this guy killed more people than Caesar and hussein combined, in both wars and the building of the wall.
his name is Yin zheng as Yin is the surname of royal Qin family
Qin, the tiltle of the kindom and the later empire was derived from name of fiefdom that Qin shi huang's ancestor received roughly around 800 BCE
Shi means 'the first' and Huang means 'the emperor'.
you should not be quite suprised that he was fascinated by the idea of extenting his life through some ritual means...as western people was fascinated by the idea of alchemy
BTW, i could not agree with what Bright_as_sun said in his thread about the reason that european could not get unified... surely the Babarian was one key point. however id say... the most important reason is the Phonetic alphabet system that people in Europe use. with changing the order of spelling, u could easily change the pronouncation as well as meaning of the words. it creates a great issue of communication among people in Europe with different dialects, even in the time of christianity when most part of Europe was religiously unified.
On the other hand... where china also have thousands of different dialects,and never religiously unified, however, the Chinese written system seized the possibility of misunderstanding to a very low level, surely u might not understand what others saying, but once it had been wirtten down, everyone knows what it is. and through thousands of years of implementing such practice that chinese people has been bounded together. Thus, the greatest work Qin shi huang has ever done was not put those kingdoms into one empire but unified the chinese character which chinese people is still using today( may not be percisely the same, but certianly u could find familiarity between morden character and those anicent one), it is those little character assured China could stand as the most long lived civilization in the world