The Rise and Fall of the Vermilion Gates: A Portrait of All Humanity

When the powerful family collapsed: a "life rehearsal" that you must experience Imagine this: you are standing in the courtyard of a deep house with carved beams and paintings, watching the vermilion door, which symbolizes power and glory, slowly topple down with a loud noise like a sigh. In the dust, prominence and humbleness, sincerity and calculation, perseverance and decadence - everything you thought was stable has revealed its most real cracks. This is not a story about a distant dynasty. This is a mirror that shines upon reality and the heart as unfolded for you by "The Ups and Downs of the Rich Family". I just closed the book, and the coolness and heaviness of the paper still seemed to remain on my fingertips. The most breathtaking thing about it is far more than the interlocking and breathtaking intertwining of fates. What really keeps me awake at night is the "core warning" that penetrates the back of the paper when the curtain falls on each chapter. It is not a dry preaching, but a crystallization of the flesh and blood of the story. It is a lonely lamp of contemplation left for us by the author after the hustle and bustle of the times has dissipated. You will see that at the end of the chapter "The official career is lost", when Jiji Yingying's life has come to nothing, the warning clearly reads: "The clinging vines will never become a pillar." Is this more than a trial of lust for power? It asks every soul seeking shortcuts in reality: Is what you rely on the ground under your feet, or the big tree that will eventually fall? At the joys and sorrows of "Weighing Weights of Friendship", the story grimly reveals: "Friendship filtered by interests and losses, even the residue is left when it is ruined." This directly pierces the exquisite utilitarian veil in modern interpersonal relationships, forcing you to look around you: Which ones are the mellow wine brewed together, and which ones are just fragile glass? The chapter of "Eclipse of the Foundation" is like a slow Ling Chi. It describes how prosperity can fester from the inside, and concludes: "The tiny cracks that are ignored are often the prelude to the beginning of collapse." This makes us reflect on ourselves: In our personal life and career, are those "little things" that are ignored and the "little evils" that are condoned hollowing out the pillars of our lives? This is the depth of this book. It is not satisfied with telling "what happened", but persistently asks "why it happened" and "what does this have to do with me". Through a group of flesh-and-blood characters - from the little guy struggling to survive to the lost master - it demonstrates the ultimate destination that various life choices may lead to. Every trade-off, every compromise, every throbbing or annihilation of conscience is like a multiple-choice question before us. Reading it is like going through a "stress test" of the soul. You will involuntarily put yourself in and ask yourself at those thrilling turning points: "What if it were me?" This strong sense of substitution and the subsequent profound refinement of meaning make reading go beyond entertainment and become a precious moral experience and thinking training. It allows us to rehearse many risks in life from a safe distance, and also catch a glimpse of the bean-like but never-extinguished glimmer of conscience and original intention in the darkness. After closing the book, the shock was hard to recover from. What it gives us is not a simple black-and-white answer, but something more precious: the ability to soberly examine the flashy world, a profound compassion for the complexity of human nature, and a deep courage to strive to anchor oneself in the rapids. If you are tired of frivolous stories, if you long for a reading that truly shakes your cognition and clears your mind; if you want to know what is worth holding tightly in your hands when the layers of life are peeled off - then, please open "The Ups and Downs of All Living Beings". This is not an easy escape, but a necessary return. It's about them, but also about us; it's about the past, and it also illuminates the present and the future. In this ups and downs, you will eventually see, and must see, your own shadow.