The Section Chief of a State-Owned Enterprise Was Engaged in Trouble in the Cold Palace in the Late Qing Dynasty

In the third year of Xuantong's reign, the city of Beijing was like a giant corpse wrapped in a splendid shroud. On the outside, it still retained the majestic outline of the Celestial Kingdom, but on the inside, it had long been hollowed out by time, exuding a smell that was a mixture of sandalwood, opium and rotten wood. Here, time is not a river flowing forward, but a slowly fermenting and recurring quagmire. The sun rises, the moon sets, the bells and drums tell the time, everything has strict rules, but the purpose of these rules seems to be just to prove that the rules themselves still exist. The floor tiles in the Qianqing Palace are still bone-chilling, and the inscriptions on the memorials are still as red as blood, but between the lines, the confidence that they had during the Kangxi and Qianlong years has long since disappeared, and only a set of exquisite and tired formulas are left, maintaining the last dignity of a huge empire.