Crimson Tang

Crimson Tang is a long alternate-history novel by the web author Jiuzhou Liuyun. Serialized on Zongheng Chinese since 2015, it runs to about 1.474 million Chinese characters and 560 chapters in eight volumes, with volume titles including "Song of the Pass and River" and "Qingping Melody." The story is set in the final years of the Tang dynasty's Tianbao era—on the surface still a "golden age," the prosperity of the Kaiyuan era lingering and the songs of rainbow-feathered robes not yet stilled, yet beacon fires are already smoldering in secret at the frontier, and hearts waver between court and province. The protagonist, Li Kuo, comes from a declining noble family; as a youth in Chang'an he witnesses every sign of the state's decay, and finally throws down the brush to join the army in anger. Clad in black armor, drawing his bow and loosing arrows straight, he rises step by step from the fires of the frontier into a general capable of holding his own. With "war drums at Yuyang shake the spring dream of rainbow feathers" as its turning image, the novel follows Li Kuo as, with the Central Plains in turmoil, he resolutely marches north, sword drawn and horse at the ready, to guard a tottering Great Tang. The work intertwines personal growth with the fate of the nation, offering both the clash of arms of frontier campaigns and the probing and courtship among powerful ministers at court—for example, the powerful minister Yang Zhao (that is, Yang Guozhong) sees Li Kuo as "no fish to be kept in a pond" and tests him repeatedly, deliberately investing early; figures such as Jia Chang, deeply favored by the emperor, also appear. The overall style is concise, grand in momentum yet attentive to detail; many readers compare it to Jiutu's Sui-Tang trilogy, and the author, for insisting on "writing to convey the Way" and lodging the meaning of national salvation within popular narrative, has been jokingly dubbed "Zongheng's Jiutu" by readers.