The Silver-Eyed General

The new work The Silver-Eyed General tells the sweeping story of Zhang Dingyuan, a boy from Taoyuan. In the late Qing and early Republican era, he grew up tempered by life in Luhuatan. His lion-dance saber techniques and The Art of War shaped his earliest sense of duty to his country. From the fiery trials of Huangpu Military Academy to the fame he won on the Northern Expedition, he endured the flames of the War of Resistance against Japan and guarded his homeland as the “Silver-Eyed General.” Yet in the torrent of his times, the rift between faith and loyalty drove him to shoot himself on the snowy plains of northern Shaanxi during the Chinese Civil War. The Yuan River flows on, and the dragon lanterns shine forever. His legend became a symbol of the local spirit, bearing witness to the fall of an old era and the dawn of a new civilization. Rooted in regional folk customs and animated by love of family and country, the story sketches a tragic epic in which an individual’s fate intertwines with the tides of the times.