A Lament for the Great Qing

The novel is divided into two parts. The first begins with the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875. It vividly depicts how Empress Dowager Cixi placed the four-year-old Zaitian on the throne, then, driven by her lust for power, gradually turned the Guangxu Emperor into her puppet. During the Reform Movement of 1898, she cultivated her own faction, stifled dissent, executed patriots such as Kang Youwei and Liu Rui, and imprisoned the Guangxu Emperor, leaving him frustrated and unfulfilled. Militarily, she indulged in personal extravagance, withheld funds from the navy, rebuilt Yuanmingyuan, and foolishly believed the Boxers' claims that they were impervious to bullets. She enraged the foreign powers and provoked a war, leading to the invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance and setting the Qing dynasty on the road to decline.

The second part begins with the enthronement of Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, and ends with his abdication. Along the way, it recounts Yuan Shikai's attempt to restore the monarchy and crown himself emperor, as well as revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen and Cai E opposing imperial rule, championing a republic, and overthrowing the feudal dynasty.