Blog 5

Winners rule the world both its present and its future. We are absorbing the marrow of our heroes’ spirit, learning and passing down our ancestors’ legacy. The world praises for their courage, acclaim for their faith, compliment on their noble thoughts because we acknowledge their historical achievements based on the unshakable history they have written. So how about the losers? What is their history? We seldom pay the equal attention to the losers as we pay to the winners.

Even though winners are irreversible and history reveals truth, we can still learn a more objective aspect of both the winners and the losers from the history written by losers. Li Yu, as is known to all Chinese, is the last emperor of Southern Tang Kingdom from 961 to 975. Song Dynasty armies invaded afterward and held Li Yu captive. Southern Tang collapsed as a consequence of Li Yu’s lack of dedication to his country. He was given over to in his interest: art and poem, preferring these to governance of the country, leaving all affairs to the ministers. These are what the Song’ s history tells us, a typical evil emperor like all the kings who destroy their own countries, caring nothing about his people and his country. However, one who has read the biography of Li Yu must know how unwilling he was to carry on the name of Emperor, forsaking his dream of becoming an artist and involving in policy which he has zero passion in it. His God-given talent of writing poems and drawing has been totally overwhelmed by the chose he was compelled to make. He wrote about how grievous when he lost his country, however, since Li Yu had no potential of ruling a country, Southern Tang fell beyond his control. Li Yu was just born in wrong time, being compelled to choose wrong future of his own. If Li Yu were the one to write this period of history, there would be more sympathy coming out from the readers rather than accuses like the present.

Exaggerating their significance to omit their rivals’ merits, winners tend to present self-serving statements to show how holy they are and how deteriorated their enemies are. Definitely nothing needs to be blamed since we all have the tendency to show the best of ourselves. However, this kind of exaggeration clouds some part of the real history and rivals' nobilities just fade away without notice. That will be really a pity since we will lose opportunities to learn from them.