From the day Qin subdued the six kingdoms until now, some two thousand years.

Two thousand years—nothing more than two thousand harvests of wheat.

Two thousand years—nothing more than thirty human lifetimes, laid end to end.

Two thousand years. How many dynasties have risen and fallen, and how many cries of “ten thousand years”?

A thousand years ago, Li Bai raised his cup to the moon.

Three centuries later, Su Shi gazed at that very same moon.

The feathered fan and silken cap have turned to dust and smoke, yet the clear wind still returns to Chibi.

The jade with its chipped edge hides somewhere still. It watches the bricks of the city walls weather into frost; it watches the First Emperor’s black robes turn to earth.

What emperors once craved, eternal life, was nothing but wheat ripening and fading, wind rising and falling, all the same.

The story begins: So, this is the world.

The story ends: So, this is life.