"Everyone is drunk and I am alone sober" is pride and the beginning of purgatory.
From the bluestone roads in the Jiangnan water town, to the bloody clothes of the student protests in the provincial capital, to the smoke in the Shanghai Concession, he spent his life measuring the cracks in the collapse of old China. The "rebellious" seeds planted in the 34th year of Guangxu's reign grew wildly in the warlords' melee and the frenzy of the New Culture Movement, but they also made him a treacherous son spurned by the clan and a "dangerous element" pursued by those in power. He is a witness to history, and he is also a "minority" who has been repeatedly crushed by the giant wheel of the times. Looking back in old age, those sacrifices made to ignite the spark, those perseverance in the abyss of loneliness, were they a futile struggle, or...?
When the entire era is pretending to be asleep, how can a person who is awake escape the fate of being crushed?
