The Great Wave, Volume 6

This volume is one of the chapter-based electronic installments of Li Jieren's novel The Great Wave in the "Chinese Classics Series." It is the sixth volume of the series, about 62,000 characters long, and contains chapters 70 to 79 (information from the Dangdang e-book edition). The Great Wave is the concluding work of Li Jieren's "Great River Trilogy" (Ripples Across Stagnant Water, Before the Storm, The Great Wave). Set against the 1911 Sichuan Railway Protection Movement, it chronicles the whole process from the Qing court's sale of the right to build the Hankou-Sichuan Railway, through the founding of the Railway Protection League, the bloody suppression of petitions, and the movement's shift from petition to armed resistance, to the independence of Chengdu and the downfall of Duanfang. The novel uses the old text of the 1937 Zhonghua Book Company first edition (the 2018 Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House edition was collated from it). The narrative unfolds along two threads: the family of Huang Lansheng in the Huang residence, and Fu Longsheng, owner of an umbrella shop at Yanshikou. It interweaves official intrigue in the halls of power with the food, daily life, and dialect of the streets and alleys. With its many characters and dense events, Guo Moruo praised it as "a modern history in novel form." Because this volume is divided by chapter and falls in the later part of the book, its plot continues from the previous volume; it is better suited to continuous reading than to standing alone as an independent story.