The Case of the Great Wei and Qing Dynasties

This is a story about how idealists are swallowed up by the times and how they are remembered by time. It snowed heavily in the south of the Yangtze River. Su Zhigu, a third-rank official, knelt outside the Meridian Gate for five days to impeach powerful officials for embezzling disaster relief money. Afterwards, classmates and friends established Baize Society, an association of scholars to impeach corrupt officials, redress unjust imprisonment, and plead for the people. They once shook the government and the opposition, but because of their excessive momentum, they touched the back of the imperial power. Constructed, imprisoned, tortured, beheaded, all came in the name of the country, like clear water falling into the ink pond, being swallowed up silently. Many years later, the unjust case was overturned, and a new generation of scholars gathered under the plum tree in the snow and named it Wenxin Society—their ideals were crushed, but sprouts sprouted again from the debris. The mountains and rivers can crush the clear stream, but the bones of the clear stream will become the backbone of future generations.