The long rest of life

In 466 AD, Emperor Ming of Liu Song, Liu Yu, and his nephew Liu Zixun, who had declared himself emperor in Xunyang, reigned concurrently. The civil war almost engulfed the entire Liu Song dynasty and subsequently escalated into a war with Northern Wei. Wang Zhong'er, born into a middle-class bureaucratic family in the Southern Dynasties, was forced into the conflict, her family destroyed. Two years later, at the age of thirty, she was taken as an ordinary palace maid to Pingcheng. However, her fate unexpectedly became intertwined with the "son honored, mother killed" system, drawing her into a vortex of power struggles. As a palace maid and then a Buddhist nun, she became a pivotal figure in raising two generations of emperors, living in the Northern Wei court for fifty-six years. Professor Luo Xin uses epitaphs and other historical materials to recount Wang Zhong'er's long and tumultuous life, viewing the era through her eyes. He reconstructs emperors, empresses, imperial relatives, court officials, eunuchs, and palace maids as concrete individuals, observing their joy, suspicion, arrogance, and despair in the face of power. Wang Zhong'er's life story unfolds alongside nearly eighty years of Northern Wei history, from Emperor Xianwen and Emperor Xiaowen to Emperor Xuanwu and Emperor Xiaoming, as well as the many people swept away by the turbulent currents of the era. We focus on ordinary people from distant times because they are an integral part of real history; without them, history is incomplete and unreal. Luo Xin, born in Hubei in 1963, is a professor at the Center for Ancient Chinese History and the Department of History at Peking University. His research focuses on the history of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the history of ancient Chinese ethnic groups. His major academic works include *A Study of the Names of Northern Peoples in the Middle Ages* (2009) and *The Northern Wei Emperors on the Black Felt* (2014). He is also the author of the travelogue *From Dadu to Shangdu – Rediscovering China on Ancient Roads* (2018) and the academic essay collection *The Rebellious Who Choose Not to Act* (2019).

出版日期/Publication Date：July 1, 2022
出版社/Publisher：同心出版社
出品方/Imprint:Ideal Country
页数/Page: 322