The Six Hundred Treaties That Shackled China: The Lives of the Common Folk in Late Qing

The Six Hundred Treaties That Shackled China: A Chronicle of the People in the Late Qing is a hundred-chapter historical novel set against the backdrop of hundreds of unequal treaties signed during the Qing dynasty's final seventy-two years (1840–1912). At its heart is the century-long rise and fall of three generations of the Zhang family, tea merchants of Guangzhou's Thirteen Hongs. Told through the varied perspectives of princes and nobles, commoners and courtesans, and people from every walk of life, it paints a sweeping portrait of late Qing society in the shadow of those treaties.