A Tragic Tale of the Three Kingdoms: What a Crude and Rude Fellow

"When the realm prospers, the people suffer; when it falls, the people suffer" is not a simple lament, but a spiral:

--When it falls, human lives are burned like firewood.

--When it prospers, the ashes are pressed into bricks again, to build new city walls.

In Zhao Sanhu's sixteen years, he went from "being burned" to "being built into the wall," and then became that pile of ash "drinking beneath the city wall."

His final curse, "What a rude and uncouth fellow," was really the most polite and most vulgar greeting imaginable, spoken on behalf of all those "history has passed by."