Seventeen Years of Storm: the Last Gambling Game of the Ming Dynasty

Seventeen Years of Storm: The Last Gambling Game of the Ming Dynasty In the early morning of March 19, the 17th year of Chongzhen, Meishan, Beijing. Under a crooked locust tree, thirty-three-year-old Zhu Youjian put Bai Ling around his neck and kicked over the stones under his feet. Seventeen years ago, it was also a full moon night. The seventeen-year-old King Xin knelt on the cold floor tiles of Qianqing Palace. Hidden in his sleeve was a piece of dry food given to him by the princess - it was the only thing he could hold onto when facing this crisis-ridden palace. His brother had just passed away, and Wei Zhongxian's royal guards were guarding the palace gate. In this way, he took over the Ming Dynasty. This is not a rehabilitative book. It only wants to do one thing: make Chongzhen a "human" again. He was only eighteen years old when he brought down Wei Zhongxian, and he sharpened a knife with three months of forbearance; he only slept for two hours a day, melted the gold and silver vessels in the palace and minted them to pay for the army, and did not change his dragon robe until it faded. But the natural disasters of the Little Ice Age, Liaodong Huang Taiji's cavalry, Li Zicheng's millions of hungry people, the Gonggun princes in the court who could only say "Your Majesty the Holy Ming" - every card was better than the one in his hand. The book covers everything from the succession to the tragedy of Meishan, Yuan Chonghuan's bloodbath outside Guangqumen and Ling Chi at Caishikou, Huang Taiji's ten-year chess game in the Dazheng Palace in Shengjing, and the map Li Zicheng drew on the dirt when he had only eighteen riders left in Shangluo Mountain. They are rivals and prisoners of that era. The game is over. But this song is an elegy for a person who has been symbolized and for an era crushed by natural and man-made disasters. It deserves to be listened to again.