"The Oral History of Ancient Tree Spirits" uses a thousand-year-old locust tree spirit that grows in the land of China and has experienced many vicissitudes as the narrator, listening to the historical whispers buried deep in the growth rings. The seven chapters of the book are seven unforgettable years that the tree spirit has experienced and sealed: it has witnessed the swan song of infatuated love without sending a love letter under the feudal ethics; the corpses wrapped around the roots tell the bloody conspiracy of the three dynasties; the war has left the names of soldiers scratched on the tree trunks, and the shocking moment of the reflection of reincarnation is unexpectedly glimpsed in the thunder and sky fire. It uses tree holes to shelter the angry accusations of failed scholars, and the blood and tears of scholars under the shackles of the imperial examination soak into the decaying wood grain; it also uses roots to imprison the greedy woodcutter's madness in trying to "borrow his life", and witness the strange cause and effect of human greed triggering the destruction of families and people. In the end, when the roar of modern bulldozers crushes the last inch of homeland, and when the body carrying memories turns into crumbs and dust, will those thousand-year memories woven by love, hate, blood, and fire also die with it? Or, in the form of some undecipherable life code, sinking into the depths of the earth and becoming an eternal echo?
