Song Style

Song Style is a long-form alternate-history novel by the web author Jienian. It was serialized on Qidian from May 28, 2006, to January 18, 2008, running to about 474 chapters and 2.43 million Chinese characters. A simplified-Chinese print edition was published by Zhuhai Publishing House in June 2008 in two volumes, Clouds Rise and Keeping Faith. The protagonist, Wang Jinghui, is a modern army medic who, during a military exercise, is unexpectedly transported with his medical kit and a pistol to the Zhipping era of the Northern Song. He first establishes his authority by shooting a tiger with the pistol, then resolves the problem of his identity with a story about having studied in the deep mountains. He goes on to sell the glassware he carried with him to Liao merchants at a high price, earning his first fortune, and sets about improving glassmaking techniques. Once established, he returns to his old trade, opening a clinic for common people in Bianjing; a successful surgery makes his name, and he gradually promotes honeycomb coal briquettes, improves movable-type printing, and founds a printing shop, rising to fame in the Eastern Capital as a capable man through medicine, business acumen, and literary reputation. At an auction he happens to meet Zhao Xu, the Prince of Ying, not yet emperor, and Princess Zhao Qianyu of Shu, and his fate takes a new turn. From pushing for a city epidemic-prevention system amid the Puyi controversy to taking part in the many debates over the Xining Reforms, he moves between court and provinces alongside Wang Anshi, Sima Guang, Su Shi, and others, using technological innovation to pry open institutional change and trying to find another way forward for the Song. The author deliberately avoids making the protagonist a king or overlord, writing him instead as an influencer of history; the book ultimately arrives at a Northern Song rewritten by the butterfly effect.