The Forgotten Seventy-Two Years

It's called The Forgotten Seventy-Two Years. Not because this stretch of history went unrecorded. The official histories, unofficial histories, and notebooks are all packed with records, running to tens of millions of words. It's because it was skipped over. Think back. How much space did the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period get in your history textbook at school? Probably a page, perhaps half a page, or maybe just a paragraph. A few dynasties lined up side by side, followed by a list of the “Ten Kingdoms,” with a little note saying, in essence, “China was divided once more, and wars were frequent.” Then you turned the page, and there was the Song Dynasty. Seventy-two years, millions of lives, and countless stories, all skipped over just like that. Why was it skipped? Perhaps because it was too chaotic. It was too much for textbooks to cover, too hard for teachers to explain, and too difficult for students to remember. Perhaps also because it was too tragic. Human lives were worth less than grass: someone could become emperor today and lie dead in the open tomorrow. There was no “flourishing age,” no “wise ruler and worthy ministers.” It didn't fit the kind of “dignified history” we like. And perhaps because it came uncomfortably close to the unbearable. This stretch of history tore open civilization's most painful wound: once people lose all order, they can become like that. And so it was left there, gathering dust, year after year. Yet it was only seventy-two years away. It wasn't an ancient legend. It was a road our civilization truly walked. A road three million Chinese people walked with their lives. So I wrote it down. Most importantly, web novels have already made our younger generation forget what history really looks like…