It was a relief to finally finish reading the book "The Age of Hunger".
This name attracts me. Since it is a flourishing age, how can there be hunger? Isn't this a contradiction? After reading the last page, I knew why. The reason is inequality. As an old Chinese saying goes, "Inequality is the enemy of scarcity." Whenever the gap between the rich and the poor becomes too wide, there is social instability. As a whole, the Kang-Qian Period was prosperous; But from the perspective of individual farmers, most of them are poor. The whole society presents the structure pyramid shape, the rich continue to be rich, the poor continue to be poor, the rich and poor classes are inimical. As a whole, society is fragmented.
Remember the word "Indization" that we learned earlier. India is also a highly hierarchical country with a wide gap between rich and poor. It seems the world is moving towards a widening gap between rich and poor.
The book was written by Zhang Hongjie and, in my opinion, is mainly about Qianlong.