"Han Palace Fu"

Introduction to the work This is a story about watching. In the spring of the second year of Jianping's reign, I read a line in the "Book of Han: Biography of Ni Xing": "Emperor Ai was lucky enough to sleep with Dong Xian, and he slept in the daytime. But the history books didn't say what was underneath the blade. Dong Xian, who was "unwilling to move", what was he thinking when he woke up and saw the cut-off sleeves? The emperor who would rather destroy a robe than wake up the person next to his pillow, what color is the world he looks out through his crown? So I decided to fill in for them those nights that the historians did not want to write about. This novel is not about the hegemony of emperors. The intrigues in the court, the wars on the frontier, and the games among powerful ministers are all just distant views, like the distant bells by the imperial pond, which disappear after hearing them. All the pen and ink sink into the pillow between the two people - Liu Xin's trembling and anxiety, Dong Xian's withdrawal and clinging; how they recognized the part of themselves in each other that had never been seen, and how they were burned by the warmth of recognition. I choose to use the first person, so that the word "I", which is supposed to symbolize supreme power, softens little by little into longing, shrinking, jealousy and clumsy tenderness. Dong Xian never gained the right to independent narrative, and it was not until the last chapter that he took over the microphone. That is a belated answer I leave to him and to the readers: the person being watched also has his own voice. During the writing process, I repeatedly warned myself: Don't write about "deep palace sadomasochism", but write about "two lonely people meeting each other by chance". Don't write about the pitiful love of a male, but write about the first time a person feels "I don't have to run away" in the eyes of another person. I don't shy away from lust, but I always let lust retreat behind the gaze - the way Liu Xin gazes at Dong Xian is closer to the essence of love than any physical contact. The novel ends in one summer. When I finished writing the last word, the wind started blowing outside the window, and I suddenly thought of Dong Xian's smile when he looked back by the pool. He probably already knew the outcome, so he walked slowly enough every time he returned to the capital. If you are willing to read on, you will meet the last emperor of the Western Han Dynasty and the boy who always stayed at twenty years old next to him. History books say that they were "born in the same quilt and died in the same cave", but they were not buried together. I wrote a story about gaze, and ultimately I wrote about the end of gaze—how the person who has been seen faces the dawn alone after the gaze dissipates. A mere ten thousand words. There is no country, only the breath exchanged by two people in the dark night. Purpose: The purpose of this work is not to write about the curiosity of a forbidden love, but to use twenty-three characters in the history books to ask about a more common life proposition: how does a person gain existence in the gaze of another person, and how does he face his own annihilation after the gaze dissipates. Liu Xin was the emperor, possessing the supreme power in the world, but he was "seen" in Dong Xian's eyes for the first time - not as a dragon robe and Mianqi, but as a young man who was confused, clumsy, and afraid. Dong Xian is a humble official who has lived in the expectations and neglect of his father and brother all his life, but under Liu Xin's gaze for the first time he felt that he "doesn't have to run away anymore". Their love is essentially a "recognition" of each other's souls by two lonely people. However, this recognition is destined to be short-lived. When external political forces crush this fantasy, Liu Xin dies due to illness, and Dong Xian commits suicide. The novel ultimately points not to the romance of sacrificing love, but to the cruel dialectics of gaze: once the self is excessively placed in the eyes of others, when the light is extinguished, the self has nothing to rely on. The work does not intend to beautify the tragedy, but tries to let readers see: love can save loneliness, or it can double loneliness; being seen is both luck and a prison. History books have left behind the allusion of "cut sleeves", but they have never recorded what kind of long nights the two people each swallowed under those cut sleeves. This work is to light a lamp for that long night, to illuminate the process of two hearts groping for each other's outlines in the darkness, and also to illuminate the inevitability of those outlines eventually dissipating in the morning light.