Introduction to The Sea of Hatred and the Sky of Sorrow
Husang
Told from the first-person perspective, this book recounts the journeys of Shen Yumou, a soldier from western Hunan, to and from Qinghai.
In the late Qing dynasty, Shen Yumou was ordered to join a western expedition with the army. He took part in several campaigns to suppress bandits and, during this time, married a local woman named Zhuo Zhen.
After the revolution broke out, the Sichuan Army mutinied. Shen Yumou gathered 109 soldiers from Hunan and trusted followers, and set out for the interior by way of Gansu. They lost their way in the desert and ran out of food for more than half a year. In the end, only seven survived.
Zhuo Zhen, who had followed Shen Yumou across thousands of miles and faced death alongside him, died of smallpox in Xi’an.
This book brings to life the breathtaking love story of Shen Yumou and Zhuo Zhen, a Tibetan woman who stood by him through thick and thin, and paints a magnificent portrait of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the late Qing dynasty.
The book is 70,000 words long, with 45 chapters of about 1,500 words each.
