In the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign, the Great Ming Empire collapsed. Inside the Forbidden City, the seventeen-year-old emperor Zhu Youjian had worked diligently for seventeen years, yet he himself pushed the empire into the abyss. On the loess plateau, Shen Tieshi, a farmer’s son from northern Shaanxi, was driven to desperation by natural and man-made disasters. He went from tenant farmer to refugee, then from refugee to rebel. In Suzhou’s waterways, workshop owner Lu Baichuan was squeezed at every turn by the Imperial Weaving Bureau, then passed the exploitation he suffered on to the weavers under him. Three men, one chain of exploitation. Those at the top feed on the middle, the middle feed on the bottom, and the bottom feed on those even lower. Everyone thinks they are a good person, and everyone does evil. This is not a story about a foolish emperor bringing down his country. It is a story about a system that devours people.
