General outline
Title of the novel: "Who Awakens the Big Dream First - A Hundred Years of Ups and Downs of a Late Qing Scholar"
Protagonist: Lin Mo (zishen), born in Zhenhai, Zhejiang, in the fifth year of Guangxu (1879). In the 21st year of Guangxu (1895), he became a scholar at the age of seventeen, and later went to Shanghai to study at Gezhi Academy. After three eras, including the late Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China, and New China, he transformed from a traditional scholar into a scholar, newspaperman, educator, and industrialist who integrated Chinese and Western methods.
Core theme: How does a Chinese intellectual find a way to save the country, a way to settle down, and maintain himself in the torrent of history to complete his mission in the "great changes unseen in three thousand years".
Time span: 1895 (after the Sino-Japanese War) to 1965 (around the death of the protagonist), spanning seventy years.