In the spring of the second year of Xining in the Northern Song Dynasty, a piece of "Notes on Nothing Happened in This Dynasty for a Hundred Years" shocked Bianjing. Wang Anshi met Shenzong and ignited the fire of reform with the words "change customs and legislate laws", but he did not know how this reform would tear the entire empire apart.
In the Chui Gong Hall, Sima Guang smashed a tea cup and angrily said, "How can the laws of our ancestors be changed lightly?"; In the market of Xiangguo Temple, grain merchants secretly discussed how the "Shi Yi Si" would cut off their livelihood; in the Hangzhou official office, Su Shi was sentenced to write "Is it because I heard the Shao and forgot the taste? You have eaten without salt for three months." Before the ink was dry, it was included as evidence of "slandering the New Deal."
From the peasant riots caused by Qingmiao Loan in Shaanxi to the "Picture of Refugees" submitted by Zheng Xia at the risk of his own life; from the lone wild goose at the top of Jinling City when Wang Anshi resigned as prime minister, to Sima Guang's bedside monologue when he abolished the new law - this book uses rigorous research to restore those turbulent years. When the dust of the ten-year reform has settled, both the reformists who hold high the "New Meanings of the Three Classics" and the conservative parties who guard the "Zi Zhi Tong Jian" have to admit in the mirror of history: there are no winners, only all living beings swept away by the torrent of the times.
The fate of those scholars who sat in meditation outside Xuande Gate, those farmers who lost their lives because of the legalism of Baojia, and those bureaucrats who were ups and downs in party struggles, together weave a Ukiyo-e of the Northern Song Dynasty that is more realistic than "Along the River During the Qingming Festival". Here, every memorial is a flash of sword, every poem is a footnote of the times, and history is always moving forward difficultly in the paradox of "reform" and "conservation".
