The Five Dynasties' Flames of War Reach the Song Era

When the flames of the salt traders’ uprising lit the Vermilion Bird Gate of Chang’an, the young Li Sanlang had no idea he would become the living history of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.

From a naive foot soldier in Huang Chao’s rebel army to a surrendered soldier struggling under Zhu Wen; from a minor administrator bringing order to a Later Tang garrison state to a battle-scarred veteran of the Later Zhou imperial guards, he lives through Chang’an falling three times and Luoyang’s palace going up in flames. He sees people driven to the point where “human flesh is cheaper than dog meat,” and witnesses brief moments of clarity under policies of equal land distribution and reduced sentences. The dragon banners of Liang, Tang, Jin, Han, and Zhou change one after another before his eyes. The hooves of Shatuo cavalry trample the Central Plains, while the cries of those seized in the Khitan raids known as “foraging expeditions” carry across the Huai River and Yangtze. Yet he survives, always finding a way through the cracks of a broken age: watching actors assassinate an emperor, warlords proclaim themselves emperors, Chai Rong’s elite troops water their horses in the Huai, and Zhao Kuangyin suddenly don the imperial yellow robe.

When white-haired Li Sanlang stands in the morning mist of Bianjing and looks at vendors hawking sesame flatbreads along Vermilion Bird Avenue and candidates waiting outside the examination hall for the results, he finally understands: the bark he chewed in Langhu Valley, the blood spilled on the Gaoping battlefield, and the cities burned and rebuilt in the fires of war all helped raise a new age, one in which emperors are no longer judged by the strength of their armies and horses.

This is no heroic legend. It is the story of an ordinary man who, through a century of turmoil between the Tang and Song dynasties, records the flames of war, the smoke rising from cooking fires, and the human heart. It runs from the dark storms of the waning Tang to the first faint light of the Great Song.