one of the best history fictions i have read before and this book represends a view that no matter who you are, it is unlikely you can change the course of history zeng has done a lot in his life but he was still unable to stoop Qing dynasty to fall and crumble and that is the end of the story, a rhetorical question asked by zeng himself at the end of his life, and a question asking everyone: since we cannot change anything, what is the meaning of our life? hope we have our own answers by the twilight