Fragments Gathered from the Long River

What is a regret of history? The forty years cut short in the Xia Dynasty. The defection at Muye in the Shang Dynasty. The falsified edict at Shaqiu in the Qin Dynasty. The Five Barbarians' devastation of China after the Rebellion of the Eight Princes in the Western Jin. The golden age that collapsed during the An Lushan Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty. The culture cut down in its prime during the Jingkang Incident in the Northern Song. The one hundred thousand corpses floating on the sea at Yashan in the Southern Song. The eight hundred thousand people whose names were never recorded in Yangzhou at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The Zhiyuan, sunk in the Yellow Sea during the First Sino-Japanese War. The three hundred thousand unquiet souls beneath the walls of Nanjing. They are the things that could have been remembered, but whose stories were erased. In five thousand years, every dynasty has suffered its most devastating blow.