The "chicken" game of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, if we compare Chinese history to a relay race:
Qin and Han were the first sprint
In the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, someone fell down and everyone huddled together
The Sui and Tang Dynasties stood up again and ran wildly
What about the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms? It's time to hand over the baton, bang! The stick fell to the ground!
The "big brother" of the Tang Dynasty ran away for almost three hundred years, and finally ran out in 907 AD. As soon as he fell down, the dozen or so "little brothers" waiting next to him immediately exploded: "I'll take over!" "I'll take over!" "Everyone get out of the way, it's my turn!" When writing this history, I often think of the ordinary people whose names have not been left behind. History books only record emperors and generals, but what really supported that era was every ordinary person who worked hard to survive. They got married and had children in troubled times, plowed fields and weaved cloth, did business, read, believed, and looked for possibility in the impossible. Their stories are not recorded, but their descendants are us.
History is not just about princes, generals, and generals, but also the traces of countless ordinary people living hard in the tide of the times.
