In the seventh year of Daoguang's reign, in Huaxian County, Guangdong Province, Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar, stood outside the examination booth for a long time. He failed the sixth college examination and was already thirty years old.
He picked up a copy of "Good Words to Encourage the World" on the streets of Guangzhou.
What happened next is very poorly written in the history books: in 1851, Jintian Uprising; in 1853, Tianjing was established as the capital; in 1864, Tianjing fell.
In fourteen years, from Jintian to Tianjing, from "fields to be cultivated together, people to eat together" to kings dividing their empires and killing each other - it was like a dream falling from a height, falling faster and faster, and finally with a "snap", nothing was left.
Twenty million lives.
This book begins with the fall of Hong Xiuquan and ends with the destruction of the last remnant of the Taiping Army on the Yunnan border. Neither "great achievements" nor "heinous crimes" were written. Writing about people - about Hong Xiuquan's transformation from piety to madness, about Yang Xiuqing's transformation from a charcoal burner to nine thousand years old, about the night before Shi Da opened the sword by the Dadu River, and about Li Xiucheng who wrote tens of thousands of words of confession after being captured and was eventually killed.
Write about those people who have no names - the first farmers in Jintian Village to sign up, the last batch of soldiers guarding the city in Tianjing City, and the Hakka children who followed the King to his last breath and did not even leave their names.
The story of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is about a group of desperate people who had the longest, most intense, and most absurd dream.
I woke up from the dream. Ashes everywhere.
