The Secret History of the Middle Kingdom(Volume One)

The Series:

With her immense size, complex culture and esoteric politics, China, or the Middle Kingdom as the Chinese call her, can be puzzling even for the natives. The famous Dao De Jing thus begins: "The way that can be told is not the eternal Way. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name." Trapped in China's haze-plagued cities, one has constantly to resort to the Principle of Uncertainty.

It is in this milieu of mystery that I start writing The Secret History of the Middle Kingdom, a 9-volumn science fantasy series that plans to merge truth with myth by reinterpreting China's long and tumultuous past as part and parcel of a cosmic struggle that "laid the foundations of the earth". After all, a literary name for China is Shen-Zhou, the Divine Land.

No prior knowledge of Chinese culture required, readers will join those women and men living in "interesting times" in righting their personal wrongs and standing up to massive evils, and know the eternal Way, say the eternal Name.

Volume One: "When I Laid the Foundations of the Earth..."

In an "unamended" timeline, Third Emperor of Great Qin, born 119 years later than Alexander of Macedon, makes the East and the West meet in a Hellenized China that in every way transcends her time.

However, Pasa, as his Majesty was christened at birth, would give all that away for an answer: Why did you order my death thirty years ago, Father?

Perhaps, as he lay dying, the First Emperor of Qin, who had unified the country and named her China, decided to go back on his pact with the Devil.

Now, as the Devil returns to demand its end of the deal and the whole world begins to fall apart, Pasa has no choice but to seek help from a 22-year-old fisher, whose rebel father once even took the Qin capital.

The prince and the peasant must come ever closer, uncover the lost past of Earth and Man, and undo the Divine Knot to create an alternate history that would become ours.
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