Author Li Ximing's Third Work on the Southern Yunnan Business Road

"18 Guild Halls": There are 18 guild halls from various places in Gejiu City (Shiping, Jianshui, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Guangdong and Guangxi, etc.). The novel takes Shiping Guild Hall as the main line and connects the other 17 guild halls in series, forming a pattern of "one guild hall leads seventeen, and a game of chess in southern Yunnan". - Time span: 1903-1945 (the last train for the imperial examination in the late Qing Dynasty → the golden period of tin mining in the Republic of China → the war of resistance against Japan). - Geographic axis: Shiping (root) → Kunming (literary) → Gejiu (financial) → Pu'er/Yiwu (tea) → Mengzi/Hekou (side) → Myanmar (outer).