After the Opium War, the country was poor and the people were weak. The Qing Dynasty was faced with huge compensation payments to the world's powers. The Taiping Rebellion rose again and swept across most of China. Heroes emerge from troubled times. The protagonist firmly grasps the trend of the times and becomes a trendsetter of the times from an unknown soldier.
Several major historical unsolved cases affect the fate of the country. Did Hong Xiuquan really commit suicide before Nanjing, the capital of the Taiping Rebellion, was breached, or was there something else he was hiding? It is said that the holy treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom contains tens of millions of taels of silver. The empress dowagers of the two palaces and the emperors both hoped to use this huge sum of money to enrich the treasury. Is this true?
The top officials of the imperial court were fighting openly and secretly, and the Manchu and Han ministers were also fighting secretly and secretly. The Hunan Army power group and the Huai Army power group that emerged later are even more competing with each other. And foreign invasions continued. Foreign forces invaded the land of China through multiple channels and forced many unequal treaties to be signed. The Manchu Qing regime was in turmoil. In this state, the Taiping Rebellion, the Nian Army rebellion, and the Westernization Movement emerged.
How do little people take advantage of the various changes in troubled times? If they use scheming, they can step by step climb from a small soldier to a first-class feudal official. Conspiracy, conspiracy, alliance, party struggle, internal fighting, assassination, frame-up, humiliation, love, power and money are intertwined and become indispensable elements in troubled times.
This novel is different from other historical novels in that it is a history of the struggles of small people in the troubled times of the late Qing Dynasty. Knowing the present through history may be helpful to us today.
Reader comments
I haven't gotten into the theme yet when I read Chapter 8, and I don't know who the protagonist is.
I haven't gotten into the theme yet when I read Chapter 8, and I don't know who the protagonist is.