Chapter 26 postscript

The year before last (Jiashen year), I completed a book on the history of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. This is "1644: The Rise and Fall of Chinese-style Dynasties" published in 2005 last year.After the book was published, many readers gave me enthusiastic encouragement, which encouraged me, an amateur history buff, and gave me great confidence in my subsequent creation. I wrote a history book about the "Anshi Rebellion" last year.Because this period of history of the rise and fall of chaos has always been valued by people.In the early period of Tang Xuanzong's reign, the society presented unprecedented prosperity; in the later period of his reign, a social turmoil rarely seen in history broke out.Tang Xuanzong fully demonstrated the complexity of a historical figure.

The "Anshi Rebellion" was actually the turning point of the Tang Dynasty from its peak to its decline, and from a historical perspective, it was also a turning point of China's destiny.Since the Anshi Rebellion, in terms of the brilliance of the overall cultural governance and education, China has begun a long-term decline. Even if the later dynasties had a short period of martial arts prosperity or territorial expansion, it was insignificant as a whole.After the book was completed, my mood has been difficult to calm down.The Tang Dynasty was the most prosperous feudal dynasty, with brilliant achievements in culture, politics, economy, diplomacy, etc. The Tang Dynasty was at its peak, even the Roman Empire could not match it.But it is worth noting that after the fall of the Roman Empire, there was no more Rome.After the fall of the Tang Dynasty, China was still there, followed by Song, Ming, and Qing.This obviously proves that what the Tang Dynasty surpassed the Roman Empire was not only national strength, but something deeper.

Based on this kind of thinking, I began to pay attention to the history after the "Anshi Rebellion", and wanted to write another book about the demise of the Tang Dynasty.Undoubtedly, the Huangchao Uprising is the best entry point. When Huang Chao was young, he took part in the imperial examinations many times, but he was not named Sun Shan. He wrote a poem "Fu Ju Poem after Budihou" to express his injustice: "When autumn comes, on September 8th, my flowers will bloom and the flowers will kill. Chang'an will be filled with fragrant fragrance, and the whole city will be covered with golden armor."

It is full of heroic and uninhibited spirit, and its momentum is rare in poems.In 880 A.D., Huang Chao finally led the peasant uprising army into Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, and realized his ideal of "the fragrance of the sky penetrates Chang'an, and the city is full of golden armor". Although Huang Chao failed to destroy the Tang Dynasty with one hand, the Tang Dynasty collapsed sharply after his failure, which triggered another social turmoil since Qin Shihuang unified China, following the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sixteen Kingdoms.It can be said that Huang Chao was the direct gravedigger of the Tang Dynasty.So there is this "City Full of Golden Armor".

Here I would like to express my special thanks to Mr. Liu Tairong for encouraging me to write, to Wu Haitao and Fu Yuelong for their professional and meticulous work, to the leaders of Hainan Publishing House and Ms. Yang Lihong for their enthusiastic guidance and care, so that this book can be published smoothly; An avid reader who leaves a comment on the blog.