📜 History
The Ten Days of Yangzhou
In May 1645, Qing forces took Yangzhou; contemporary accounts describe a ten-day catastrophe. The Weeping Swan uses this history as emotional bedrock while filtering it through Journey to the West mythology.
Fang Zhiyou’s archetype draws on surviving literati witnesses: terror, hiding, and moral choices under impossible pressure. Yaoguai stand in for historical violence without erasing that violence’s human scale.
Return to the full lore hub for Lion Camel Kingdom and timeline, or the story overview for how the plot frames these events.