Library

If it hadn't been for that big connection, I might be like many people now, marrying a wife and having children, buying a house and land, traveling somewhere during the Golden Week and so on. When I get older, I can practice Tai Chi, ballroom dance, or drive to the reservoir to fish. It was that trip when I was seventeen years old that made me realize that there are so many unfathomable dark levels deep in the human heart, which I could hardly imagine... This discovery actually affected my life.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, foreign powers invaded, social turmoil occurred, and people's lives were miserable. In a posthouse in Tongzhou, an important town in Gyeonggi Province, there is a group of patriots lurking, Lin Yicheng, Sanniang, Zhang Mu, Li Er, Wang Pin... They worry about the world, and have established a deep friendship in their common life, helping each other; but they are also their own masters, either the "imperialist party", or the "rear party", or the "revolutionary party". They have different political opinions and monitor each other. In their eyes, what did the Boxer Rebellion, the invasion of the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the struggle between emperors and empresses, the Revolution of 1911, etc. Look like, and what was their fate like?

The author Xue Ping is based on his personal ward life, trying to pay attention to certain aspects of real life through subjective feelings. In this novel, he more deliberately depicts momentary feelings and delicate psychological descriptions, bringing an end to the youthful years that cannot be reproduced. After leaving the ward, Xue Ping's works have given more thought to human nature, humanity and the human heart, strengthening the shaping of characters and inner portrayal, while trying to downplay dramatic conflicts and plot development. Around him, there are all kinds of people who are shrewd and cunning, persistent, betrayal, entangled, they come, they leave, and their stories gradually drift in the wind... He uses his state of depression to digest these people and things, and from this perspective, everything becomes like the image in the mirror, distorted, chaotic, weird and absurd.