The XVII century in the history of China was a turning point, rich in various events that largely determined the entire further course of the development of Chinese civilization. The most important of these events were: the crisis of the ruling Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the peasant war of Li Zicheng (1628-1646), the conquest of China by the Manchus and the establishment of the new Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). A great deal of research has been written about this period of history by such venerable sinologists as L. A. Berezny, A. A. Bokshchanin, B. G. Doronin, L. I. Duman, G. V. Efimov, V. P. Ilyushechkin, N. M. Kalyuzhnaya, A. G. Krymov, V. S. Myasnikov, O. E. Nepomnin, V. N. Nikiforov, and L. S. Kolesnikov. Simonovskaya, V. Ya. Sidikhmenov, E. P. Stuzhina, S. L. Tikhvinsky, N. I. Fomina, and others. D. M. Voskresensky, T. A. Malinovskaya, V. V. Malyavin, O. M. Fishman and others devoted their works to the culture and art of the 17th century. In this paper, we propose to look at this era "from the inside", through the eyes of a contemporary of the events, a scholar-historian and talented poet Wu Weiye 1, who called his works "poetic chronicle", since most of them are devoted to the events of those crucial years and the fate of the people around the poet. According to the famous British historian of the last century A. J. Toynbee, "there are many angles from which the human mind looks at the universe", and the view from another point of view is designed to "add its own pitcher of water to the great and ever-expanding river of knowledge, which is fed by water from countless similar jugs" [Toynbee, 1996, p. 21]. It should be noted here that Wu Weiye's contribution to the Chinese historiography of the 17th century is sufficiently studied in the works of B. G. Doronin (Doronin, 1982: 52-68). We offer here an image of the epoch created by the poet's artistic imagination, because, according to the apt observation of the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), 1 Wu Weiy ... Read more