Culture Beat: Unique historical book series released

Feng Minfei Photo: Courtesy of New World Press

A new book series from writer Feng Minfei has been released at the Beijing Book Fair by the New World Press. Four Seasons of History, or Lishi Siji, is a series that Feng worked on for years. This set of books has a unique perspective, from which it tells and analyzes the historical causes from the very key parts of the creation, prosperity, crisis, and the end of each dynasty in Chinese history. The writer summarizes these interesting contents in accordance with the four seasons, hence it is divided into four volumes accordingly, namely the "Spring Volume," "Summer Volume," "Autumn Volume" and "Winter Volume." 

The Spring Volume shows the vigorous scenes of the founding of each dynasty and analyzes the innovative elements behind them. The Summer Volume depicts illustrious pictures of each dynasty's prosperity and governance, and lists the powerful measures adopted in governance. The Autumn Volume explores the stage of decline of the dynasty and unearths the core factors behind it. And the Winter Volume outlines the situation at the end of the dynasty and provides a summary and analysis of the reasons behind it.

Feng mentioned that history needs to be constantly reorganized, and reading historical books also required skill, which gave him the idea to create these set of books.