Pen and Sword: Xianyang to the Red Chamber

As soon as a person is born, he is lining up to die. Some people have a long queue, some people have a short queue, but the end of the queue is the same. This is the fairest and cruelest thing in the world. There is a group of people in history who have seen this fact clearly earlier than others. They are talented, sensitive and thoughtful, so death stings them much more deeply than it does to ordinary people. But they did not choose to close their eyes and not look, nor did they choose to muddle along. They opened their eyes, stared at the end, and then used up their whole life to answer a question: Since you are destined to die, how should you live this life? This answer lasted for three thousand years. In the past three thousand years, one after another romantic figures have stepped onto the stage of history and handed in their answers. There is no standard answer. Everyone's answer is different. Some people die heroically, some people live transparently, some people bloom in suffering, and some people make wine in the ordinary. This is not a book about the rise and fall of dynasties. Open it and you will see those romantic figures spending their whole lives answering that question.