In the second year of Shunzhi, Shen Ziqian, a talented man from the south of the Yangtze River, returned from the north to take an examination. He saw that his Suzhou mansion "Wanxiang Garden" was reduced to ruins, and all his family members were lost in the war. Scholars who used to be well-off and well-off became overnight refugees living in ruined temples. When he was struggling to survive in the sewers of troubled times, his only thought was to find his sister Shen Ling, who was rumored to have been abducted by Qing soldiers.
The world collapsed, and the old learning and the new power collided fiercely: he used pen and ink as a blade to compete with the government in the public trial; using market rumors as a banner, he connected beggars and homeless people to weave a web of information. From pawning pen and ink to survive to using paper to stir up turmoil among scholars, Shen Ziqian shed his pride as a scholar and rebuilt his bones on the ruins. When he dealt with the three religions and nine schools in the shadow of the City God's Temple, and witnessed the struggle for power in the public trial at the school, he finally understood: in troubled times, the backbone of a scholar lies not only in the books of sages, but also in the decision to join the game. This is an ukiyo-e from the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty. It describes how a scholar picked up his broken family and country from the ashes during the change of dynasties, and carved inscriptions of survival amidst the light and shadow of swords.
