City-State Gangs: Volume 1 and Volume 2 (20th Anniversary Edition)

When those in power are the biggest enemy, how can small individuals fight back?
In 1949, while the Nationalist government was smuggling 200,000 taels of gold into Taiwan, a bald young man was mysteriously killed.
16 years later, the gang leader who was a threat to the country was assassinated in the Botanical Garden on Nanhai Road, leaving behind a 44-word mystery;
At the same time, a prodigy was born in a military dependents' village in Taipei. He mysteriously disappeared every few years, always returning with martial arts skills...
Seven strange books, five bullets, and a 17-year-old mystery reveal a lost chapter in the turbulent history of the Republic of China.
The Dai Li plane crash, the tung oil loan, the Qing Gang's fight against the Hongmen, the Ximending theater fire... A contemporary legend that is closer to reality than reality!
Readers eagerly await the 20th anniversary edition──
★Cover design by internationally renowned ink artist Rongshan Chang★ A 20,000-word prequel to the novel is revealed for the first time (included after the second volume)
★Specially written title page by the author★Complete character relationship diagram is revealed for the first time. City-State, an invisible city.
Get a double-barreled shotgun, 1,800 rounds of ammunition, and fire at the map of Taiwan.
After the bullets are fired, the sum of all the bullet holes densely packed on the map is the city-state.
In August 1965, at the pavilion by the lotus pond at the Nanhai Road Botanical Garden, Wan Yanfang, a powerful leader of the Qing Clan, was meeting with six close friends. He was struck by five bullets and killed. With his remaining energy, he left a 44-character riddle on his palm. His senior disciple, Wan Defu, sensed the hidden agenda and parted ways with his fellow clique members, embarking on a solo quest that spanned over half a century to solve the riddle and track down the murderer.
At the same time, a remarkable child, Sun Xiaoliu, was born in a Taipei military dependents' village. Starting at the age of two, he mysteriously disappeared every few years for periods exceeding a hundred days, returning with a repertoire of martial arts skills. One day, in a dangerous encounter with pursuers, he unleashed the long-lost martial arts technique of the Piaohua Sect: Flower Rain. When asked where he had learned this unique skill, he naively replied that he had learned it from the ruins of the Xinsheng Theater in Ximending, a haunted and fire-ravaged theater.
Seventeen years later, Zhang Dachun, a friend of the "Children's" from the military dependents' village, encounters an elderly fortune teller in a bookstore on Chongqing South Road in Taipei. The fortune teller alleges that seven books left to him by the writer Gao Yang foretell their future lives of constant flight. Zhang Dachun initially believes himself to be an outsider, but as the mystery unfolds, he discovers he's already been caught up in the action, gradually falling into a trap set by the enemy...
Three strange cases set off a national and family storm that spanned three generations and lasted for half a century.
Evil and righteousness, good and evil, where should a tiny individual go in the vast world?
◆ Zhang Dachun: "Such a world is a reflection of our lost selves."
This book takes this intertwined story as its core, incorporating major events in Taiwan over the past half century. It incorporates the inside story of the struggle that led to the migration of major political parties to Taiwan in 1949: the tung oil loan, the Dai Li plane crash, the history of the underground gangs of the Qing Gang, the Hongmen, and the Bamboo Union, as well as the Ximending theater fire, and other social news into the background. By contrasting reality with fiction, it brings countless forgotten local histories back to the readers' eyes.
In addition to historical clues, the author also places traditional martial arts in the old-fashioned Taipei city, hiding masters in the market: setting up positions on Zhonghua Road, New Park, and the back hills of Bitan, using Mantis Fist, hearing about the Eight Heroes of Jiangnan assassinating Emperor Yongzheng, and the Seven Idle Men of the Bamboo Forest eliminating all traces - as the plot twists and turns, characters from various factions arrive one after another, bringing vivid fighting scenes and intrigues and calculations of grudges... Chang Da-chun fully demonstrates the infinite possibilities of "knights and hidden men" in "City-State Gangs".

2019-09-04

新經典文化

896

9780020191773