As one of China’s most beloved, most well-read novels, you might think that 18th-century epic “The Dream of the Red Chamber” has no secrets left to divulge.

Recently, however, Chinese social media users have become obsessed with whether the story is full of hidden messages that can be interpreted as the author criticizing the imperial dynasty of his day, the Qing (1644–1911), and lamenting the fall of its predecessor, the Ming (1368–1644).

While this literary sleuthing started as a serious endeavour, it has since become a viral tongue-in-cheek meme known as “Ming elegy.”

“Meteor Garden,” a popular romantic TV show from the early 2000s, was actually a political allegory decrying the end of the Ming.

The once wildly popular Chinese TV drama “Return of the Pearl Princess”? That, too, has been read as a Ming elegy, as pearl, pronounced zhu in Chinese, is a homonym of the Ming emperors’ common surname.

Even The Beatles’ hit song “Hey Jude” was not immune to Ming-elegification, simply because its similarity to the name of the Ming dynasty emperor Zhu Di.

Though absurd and short-lived, this trend belies something far more serious and enduring: the shaking of the foundations of public history. The internet at our fingertips today is inundated with content with sensationalist titles like “You won’t find this in a history book” or “The Ancient Greek cultural hoax,” spread widely by opaque algorithms and easily excited group chats. More than keywords that drive traffic, these titles are warnings: telltale signs of silent conflicts that tear at China’s — and the world’s — consensus on history.

First, let’s define what we mean by “public historical culture.” By this, we mean all the ways historical knowledge, understanding, and awareness present themselves in the public sphere. In cities, nations, or the world at large, it exists in tangible forms like statues and other monuments, and in various expressive media such as writings, imagery, and so on.

At present, public historical culture is beset by conflicts.

One conflict is between inclusion and omission, demonstrated by videos promising to show you “what history books won’t.” That a certain textbook about a certain historical topic doesn’t include certain details need not have any nefarious reasons. A book has a finite number of pages, so decisions need to be made. Still, these decisions can spark endless public debate.

Another conflict is between truth and fabrication, exemplified by how corners of the Chinese internet are obsessed with what is known as Western Pseudohistory Theory — the theory that ancient Western societies such as the Greeks and the Romans were later fabrications.

A third is between historical and modern interpretations, where public perception of historical events shifts over time.

A fourth is between documentation and forgery, where deepfaked images and videos, such as ones supposedly documenting the Second World War, intermingle with genuine articles of history. The rise of AI has made this type of forgery both easier to make and easier to mistake for the real thing.

The final conflict is between cause and effect. For instance, many Western history textbooks feature two types of photos: scenes of the Nazi Holocaust and the ruins of Hiroshima after the first atomic bomb, included to encourage reflection on how scientific progress can lead to catastrophe. However, these narratives often gloss over Japan’s own atrocities. That Japan wasn’t the “victim” is a dispute about the memory of the Second World War that remains unresolved.

Why, then, is our understanding of public historical culture being shaken?

Because the storytellers are changing. In the past, the interpretation of history was the domain of professional historians, who based their claims on scholarship and authority. Nowadays, the nearly century-old prediction put forth by American historian Carl Becker — that every man is his own historian — is increasingly borne out.

Anyone can now document and publish their own experiences and accounts. Memoir and genealogy writing have become popular cottage industries. Historians have transformed from shapers of singular national narratives to storytellers with global perspectives, leading to inevitable conflict with counterparts from other nations over differences in historical understanding.

The storytelling arena is also changing. In the past, historians wrote primarily for their peers. Now, many are stepping from ivory towers into the spotlight. The pages of history have shifted from authoritative printed encyclopedias to Wikipedia-style, collaboratively edited online spaces, where everyone can add, subtract, and edit.

Because the product of storytelling is changing. The dense academic tomes of history’s past have splintered into images, novels, movies, video games, and rituals. What was once a solo dance of pure rationality has evolved into a duet between rational and emotional expression, complete with eye-catching titles and sentimental storytelling to attract readership.

Perhaps the most pivotal change of all is that the goal of storytelling is changing. More than famous Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) historian Sima Qian’s ideal to “explore interactions between heaven and man, to know changes from past to present, and to establish a unified scholarly perspective,” historical storytelling has evolved into a battleground where nations vie to control the narrative and impose their ideology. Compounded by the rise of AI, nations around the world are rushing to stake their claim on public historical culture, to define it on their terms.

Like rolling tides, these changes crash against the dam of traditional historical consensus. It is against this backdrop that we historians must respond with courage and wisdom, driving three sea changes in constructing public historical culture for a new era.

First, we must anchor our values in a shared future for all humanity, guiding current “pluralistic histories” toward a “collective singular history.”

Postmodernism and the notion of “every man is his own historian” have fractured history and encouraged countless narratives grounded in subjective sentiment, ultimately giving rise to the “pluralistic histories” we see today. These individual histories, however, cannot be fully understood without first comprehending the context in which they reside. Because of this, the construction of a consensus-based public history requires a “fusion of perspectives.”

During the Age of Enlightenment, the study of history emphasized a “fusion of historical and modern perspectives.” German historian Johann Gustav Droysen posited that understanding history requires stepping into our forebears’ shoes, tying past and present together with the thread of a universal human nature.

This is no longer sufficient. Contemporary history also requires “fusion between the internal and the external,” or as German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer put it, the merging of different perspectives based on shared values. Only by developing a shared empathy toward human history and our collective fate as a species can we come to comprehend the vicissitudes of our individual destinies.

The global memory of the First World War, evolving from a stark divide between the victors and the vanquished, to Nov. 11 becoming a shared Armistice Day in many nations, shows that it is possible to transcend singular perspectives and seek a shared memory of trauma and reconciliation. Our ultimate goal is to forge, in spatial terms, a universal standard of values oriented toward a global human community.

Second, we must shift our awareness of history from a monolithic timeline to a multilayer structure of time, in order to embrace different cultures’ diverse experiences of globalization.

We must dispel the myth of the “single-mode, single-path” theory of development. Each culture and nation develops in its own way. There was a time when many Chinese scholars believed in tracing the footsteps of Britain and America for our own process. Today, we know that not even the British and the Americans trod the same path, not to mention the paths of other nations all over the world. Each culture charts its own course. The wisdom of history lies in acknowledging and drawing from these diverse sources.

Third, our conceptualization of history must evolve from traditional, one-dimensional approaches to a coordinated, multifaceted framework, embracing creative methods available in the age of AI.

Key concepts in public historical culture crystallize reality, experience, expectation, and power dynamics; they are barometers of social change. To tackle the core task of defining these concepts, we must innovate.

We should leverage collaborative knowledge creation, actively guiding platforms like online encyclopedias to become new arenas for forging consensus. And we should utilize artificial intelligence, systematically collecting quality historical corpora to build specialized large language models, harnessing AI to serve the construction of truth and consensus.

Historical consensus does not arise on its own. Building the foundations for a public historical culture anchors a nation’s soul, facilitates cultural dialogue, and fosters a future of global peace. By walking this path of consensus together, we can transform history from a blade tearing at the fabric of our shared reality into a beacon that illuminates our future.

Translator: Gabriel Kwan; portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header image: Visuals from the public domain and VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone. The illustration in the center is from “Dream of the Red Chamber with Illustrations,” by Qing dynasty painter Gai Qi (1773–1828).)