The Long Song of Liberation

A dense work about the arc of the underdog, the loneliness of the reformer, and how history is reimagined. In 1644, Chongzhen hanged himself on Meishan; in 1665, the Ming army conquered Shenjing; in 1677, Shi Zulong conquered Bintian, leaving the foundation for the later "Qianwu Shengzhi". This is not the Southern Ming Dynasty that makes people beat their chests when reading about it in the official history - when King Hui used "Buddha's Heart" to string together the "Three Kings Covenant", when King Ying suppressed the Donglin gentry with an iron fist, when Zheng Sen transformed from a maritime hero to an imperial loyalist, the tilting balance quietly tilted to the unknown side. This is a serious historical reflection on "possibility". I tried to break through the conventions of traditional Southern Ming narratives: instead of writing about the golden-fingered Long Aotian-style technological crushing, I wrote about the institutional ice-breaking of clearing the father-in-law's land and the transformation of craftsmanship; instead of writing about the simple confrontation between loyalists and traitors, I wrote about the complex game between the gentry of Donglin, the generals of the feudal town, and the powerful officials of the Eight Banners; I did not write about the closed narrative of the Huayi debate, but about the in-depth intervention of external forces in early globalization. Instead of writing about the triumphant progress of Martian Soldiers and Martian Qian, it writes about how Nan Ming fell down and got up again and again in the face of non-combat attrition, currency depreciation, and the moral talk of the gentry. After reading this introduction, you should have realized that this is not a cool article, and I don't want to write a cool article. This book will be the first part of the fictional world view I have conceived, and it is also the beginning of the question: If the Ming Dynasty survived the Jiashen National Disaster, where would China's history go?