Shanlou (山楼, “the mountain tower”) offers reflections on power from one who has lived too long in its shadow.
 

Once counted among ministers and scribes, eventually counsel lost its use and loyalty its place. From such remove, the pen finds a clearer edge. These essays are neither paeans to power nor murmurs of dissent. They follow the older custom of taking distance — not to escape the world, but to measure it with greater precision.
 

Written for no master and bound by no faction, they speak of China as both civilisation and predicament: a house of order forever remade by those who would preserve it.