Dingsong

Dingsong is a long historical time-travel web novel by the online author Caoshangfei, serialized on Chuangshi Chinese Network (and simultaneously on Qidian and other platforms) from around 2013. The book totals 161 chapters and roughly 669,400 characters, and is complete. The protagonist, Wang Chong, is an ordinary salesman in modern society who wakes up to find himself nine hundred years back in the Song dynasty. The boy whose body he inhabits was a locally famous "child prodigy of Huayang," but the intrusion of his modern soul seems to have wiped out the original's talent. Wang Chong must therefore re-establish himself within a new network of family and social ties. Armed with "an ordinary man's wits," he navigates among relatives, teachers, local gentry, and officials, moving his pieces step by step like a bystander. The opening pairs the lines "Love him—send him to the Song; hate him—send him to the Song" to capture the coexistence of prosperity and deep-seated ills in the Northern and Southern Song: benevolent rulers and worthy ministers, brilliant scholars, and a legacy of a thousand years, alongside foolish emperors, treacherous officials, sycophants in power, and the lingering grievance of the Jingkang catastrophe. As the plot advances, Wang Chong is drawn into the Song's upheavals. He mocks himself with "a slip, a slip" and "I overdid it," yet he genuinely rewrites the original course of events. The book's main thread is "cleansing the realm and recasting the nine tripods," with the narrative unfolding on multiple levels—southwestern governance, court intrigue, and the ultimate historical design. The author invents a "Biography of Wang Chong in the History of Song" within the story, casting the man of "restorative merit beyond any subject's reach" in a biography that lends the interwoven fictional and historical portrait of the Song era a retrospective air. The work relies less on brute force and more on meticulous plotting and insight into human nature to drive the plot; its research is solid, and its depiction of Song institutions, local governance, and border affairs is one of its hallmarks. The book is modest in length and relatively measured in pace, belonging to the Northern Song subgenre that emphasizes deduction and practical affairs.