He Has Lived for the Dead, as Evidenced by Mountains and Rivers

I wrote this book not to write about heroes. It's about writing about people who didn't become heroes. They had no earth-shattering deeds, no achievements that would go down in history, and they didn't even leave their own names. They are just ordinary people, soldiers, husbands, craftsmen, and garden keepers. They disappeared quietly like a speck of dust in the torrent of history. But they had truly lived. They have loved a person, raised a cat, planted a tree, and polished a lifetime of china. History books will not write about these things, but someone should remember them. So I wrote Chen Du. Let him live again for these people.