One road, two thousand years, the lives of seven generations.
In 212 BC, Qin Shi Huang ordered Meng Tian to build a straight road from Ganquan Palace to Jiuyuan, cutting through mountains and filling valleys across a distance of 1,800 li. The bones and blood of 300,000 conscripts were tamped into its foundation. The empire fell just two years later, but the road remained.
Meng Tuo was one of the road builders. He was not surnamed Ying, nor was he a general. He was merely a carpenter’s apprentice who took his master’s place when the conscription order came. With a bronze carpenter’s square tucked at his waist, he recorded every dead man’s name in the yellow earth and blood, then buried a carved stone deep beneath the roadbed. He had no idea the road would outlast every dynasty.
For the next two thousand years, generation after generation of Meng descendants walked the straight road.
Han Dynasty soldiers kept watch for the Xiongnu from beacon towers. Tang Dynasty frontier generals sought traces of their ancestors. Song Dynasty merchants found their way by studying the abandoned roadbed. Ming Dynasty military artisans used ancient rammed-earth techniques to repair the border walls. And in the present day, archaeologists uncovered a stone inscribed, “Built here by Meng Tuo.”
A stone, a bronze carpenter’s square, a copper coin worn through at the center. Each of them was searching for something along the road. Some sought their ancestors, some a way home, and some an answer: does a road built with blood deserve to be remembered?
Dynasties came and went like horses in a relay. The straight road fell into ruin, was rebuilt, and fell into ruin again. The wind blew for two thousand years, burying it under layer upon layer of yellow earth. But the roadbed remained.
The Road Through the Ages is a novel about a road, and an epic about people. It asks: Is it worth creating meaning in a meaningless world? Does anyone remember those whose names have been forgotten?
