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This book is about Western consultants in China. For more than three hundred years from the 1620s to the 1950s, these people contributed excellent skills to the Chinese people. At the beginning, it introduced the theory of celestial body movement, and finally allowed the Chinese to see the magical skills of air combat tactics and atomic science. Shi Jingqian selected 16 representatives from hundreds of foreign consultants working in China. These sixteen people each have their own specialties - astronomers, soldiers, doctors, administrative experts, translators, engineers, and a professional revolutionary. Although their careers spanned three centuries, the life course they accumulated has an amazing continuity. They experienced similar excitement and danger, embraced similar feelings, and endured similar setbacks. Their actions reflected their times and highlighted China's inherent basic values.

This book contains Shi Jingqian's most representative papers, reflecting his efforts to think about China as accurately, fairly and thoroughly as possible. The content is divided into five parts: cultural exchanges between China and the West, Confucian theory and state power, Chinese social history, revolutionary China, and the introduction of my mentor. The title of the book is "China Zongheng", which partly comes from the author's respect for the poet Wallace Stevens, because he likes the word "Zongheng", which means twists and turns without losing purpose, and also implies the efforts to clarify the context of "convergence and advancement" with some kind of logic.

"The Death of Wang" is not large in length. It reproduces the lives of the rural people in Yancheng and Zichuan, Shandong Province in the early Qing Dynasty. One of the protagonists, Mrs. Wang, could not bear the pressure of life and eloped with others, but died tragically at the hands of her husband. The author Shi Jingqian has always focused on literary narrative, trying to reshape or capture the lost time, space and characters' lives behind rigid historical materials through superb narrative skills and keen perception. In terms of data, "Tancheng County Chronicle" and local chronicles of several other places are important basis for this book. The third source used in this book, "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio", is a fictional novel. The author used it extensively to construct the mental images of local people in Shandong in the early Qing Dynasty. From the perspective of today's cultural history research, this method of combining historical documents and literary works shows the author's creativity and foresight.

Shi Jingqian, a genius in studying Chinese history in Europe and the United States, uses his profound historical knowledge to write wonderful literary works that are easy to understand. His works are sharp, profound, unique and "good-looking", making him not only an internationally renowned sinologist, but also a master of writing academic bestsellers. The Taiping Rebellion lasted for ten years, tens of millions of lives were lost, and China's top political figures, military and financial resources were almost exhausted. When trying to trace the religious enthusiasm in Hong Xiuquan's heart, the author is also thinking: Some people firmly believe that they have a mission to make everything "a wonderful and beautiful new creation, and the heaven and the people will be amazed by it." They rarely calculate the consequences. Is this the great pain of history? People are no strangers to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Hong Xiuquan, and academic circles have also done a lot of research and elaboration. Shi Jingqian did not intend to write a complete history of the Taiping Rebellion, but wanted to understand Hong Xiuquan's inner world and pursue the logic of his behavior by providing an orderly historical context.

While writing about Zhang Dai's life, inner transitions and recollections of the past, it also explores more deeply how Zhang Dai, as an intellectual, established his own existence value through memories and history revision. Between gain and loss, only by capturing fading memories and using writing to fight against forgetfulness can we calmly face, or even resist, the changes in world affairs and the impermanence of life. This undoubtedly reflects the nature and relationship between history and writing.

The key to why the Manchu Qing regime maintained its rule for 260 years was that the Manchus gradually realized after entering the country that force alone was not enough to maintain long-term peace and stability. More importantly, long-term and effective ideological rule was needed to make the Han intellectuals ideologically accept the rule of the Manchus. The book "Dayi Jue Mi Lu" published by Yongzheng, in addition to political motivations, also contains inner and deep cultural significance. This book tells the detailed process of the formation, circulation, and banning of the strange book "Dayi Jue Mi Lu". It contains many intriguing and incredible details, thus reflecting the relationship between ancient Chinese monarchy and intellectuals and the fate of the old literati.

This book focuses on Cao Yin's life when he was in charge of weaving in Jiangnan. It describes and explores the interactive relationship between the ruler and the prosperous area of ​​Jiangnan and its representatives, and depicts the racial contradictions and social conflicts under the surface of Kangxi's prosperous era.