A Floating Life in the Late Ming Dynasty: Wanli

In the tenth year of Wanli, Zhang Juzheng came to an end, and the high-hanging curtain of the New Deal slowly fell. Deep in the Forbidden City, the young emperor gradually closed the palace door, marking the beginning of decades of neglect. The old people in the cabinet are fighting each other, the scholars in Donglin are raising their arms and shouting, the local powerful are annexing the land, the nine-sided war has begun, the Korean land has been trampled by Japanese pirates, and in the dense forests of Liaodong, the Jurchen tribe is quietly gathering strength. All living beings in the world rise and fall under the afterglow of the setting sun of the Ming Dynasty. Scholars from poor families traveled to Beijing, merchants traveled through water transport from north to south, soldiers at the border were at the ready, and ordinary people struggled with exorbitant taxes and famine. Some people pursue power and try to change the fate of the country in the court game; some people just want to live a stable life and defend a small family in troubled times. The illusion of a prosperous age slowly shattered, and long-standing evils seeped into the fabric of the dynasty like a serious illness. This is the magnificent Wanli era. There are no born heroes. Countless ordinary people make choices, struggle, persevere, and sink in the torrent of the times. A record of life in the late Ming Dynasty describes the joys and sorrows and fate of thousands of mortals in the dusk of the dynasty.