Great Qin: Comparing Our Sons Makes Ying Zheng Jealous

It's all empty talk to not abolish Qin's policies. As long as Shang Yang's laws remained in place, the demise of the Qin Dynasty was inevitable. Don't think too highly of the Qin Dynasty's twenty-rank military nobility system; how could it only have rewards and no punishments? The Qin Dynasty's military rank system was paired with laws that weakened the common people. To advance through military merit, one not only needed to be brave but also extremely lucky.

I laughed when I read the comments. Everyone seems to think they're all more impressive than the ancients, offering their opinions and criticisms. Using modern eyes to judge the shortcomings of the ancients is also a sign of talent! At least those people were outstanding figures in their time. And you? Who are you to us in modern times?

Sixty percent of a chapter is nonsense. A sentence that could be explained in ten words is expanded into two or three hundred words – that's quite an achievement! This is the first time I've seen an author so adept at padding out a chapter.

Qin law was truly harsh because it was so detailed and the judgments were so severe. Besides land tax, Qin also had a fodder tax: fodder for cattle and horses. Qin regulations stipulated that for every qing (a unit of land area), regardless of whether it was cultivated, two shi (a unit of dry measure) of fodder and three shi of fodder had to be paid annually.

He keeps talking about the Twenty-Military Merit System, which, unsurprisingly, shows he has no understanding of it at all. First, he included everyone in the Qin state in the Twenty-Military Merit System. Ordinary people without the lowest military merit in the Twenty-Military Merit System were no different from slaves.

The Qin dynasty's demise after only two generations is entirely the fault of the First Emperor. Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's uprising began in the first year of the Second Emperor's reign. Before Hu Hai (the Second Emperor) could even make his own fatal mistake, rebellions had already erupted outside the capital. The empire was already in chaos shortly after his ascension.

It's a complete mess; 80% of it is just descriptions of policies and architecture. Where's the plot? Did you eat it all? Is this what you wanted to see?

I've read filler articles before, but I've never seen one this filler-like. Something that could be explained in a few hundred words has been stretched into three or four chapters, and you're still trying to reach the word count. With your filler-writing skills, you could run for the title of "King of Filler Articles" on Feilu (a Chinese online literature platform).

What could be explained in a single sentence, yet insists on filling an entire chapter, would require more than the waters of the four seas, or even the bursting of the Milky Way.

The book is good, but it's too padded. It treats readers like idiots, expecting them to just read the chapter titles; the content is just repeatedly explaining those titles.