Han Que

Han Que is a historical novel set in the Western Han by the Yunnan-born web novelist Qiyue Xinfan (real name Li Yunfan). It began serialization on Qidian Chinese Network on October 13, 2019, and was completed in October 2023; the full text runs to about 1.99 million characters in 595 chapters. The story begins in the third year of the Yuanfeng era of Emperor Zhao of Han (78 BCE): Huo Guang is in power, the Xiongnu have not been destroyed, the Silk Road is all but cut off, and Wei Qing and Huo Qubing have long since died, yet the Han spirit of exploration still lives among the people. The protagonist, Ren Hong, comes from the Ren clan, which was ruined in the witchcraft persecution; he is a grandson of Ren An and a petty clerk at the Xuanquan post station in Dunhuang, whose daily work is no more than greeting and seeing off travelers and copying documents. He knows the geography and customs of the Western Regions and speaks the Loulan language. After receiving passing military officers and hearing how Fu Jiezi was sent to the Western Regions and killed a Xiongnu envoy, he throws down his brush and sighs: "A true man has no other ambition, yet he should still follow Zhang Qian and Fu Jiezi, win merit in foreign lands, and thereby earn a marquisate." From then on he sets out on the frontier. The book's main line follows Ren Hong's rise from a lowly garrison soldier and post-station clerk to a frontier general who can hold his own: he travels west with Fu Jiezi, takes part in the Han-Xiongnu struggle in the Western Regions, manages military colonies, post stations, and diplomacy, promotes the establishment of the Protectorate of the Western Regions, weakens the Xiongnu by a strategy of "cutting off the arm," and is finally enfeoffed as King of He for his merits. Drawing on the textual scholarship of a master's degree in history, the author weaves Han postal institutions, military supply, the city-states of the Western Regions, and Hu-Han relations into the plot, and through the eyes of an ordinary frontier soldier writes a stirring lament for "the sons of Han who never stop opening new lands."