劉克莊(1187—1269),這位活躍於十三世紀上半葉的宋代文人,生活在一個籠罩着巨大戰爭陰影的時代。在其作品最早可繫年的嘉定元年(1208),南宋剛結束與金朝的戰爭,輕啓戰端的權相韓侂冑落了個函首送金的下場,宋金再次議和,因爲誰也沒有能力做進一步的征服。然而,宋和金都沒有意識到,一個更大的戰爭威脅正在悄然襲來。開禧二年(1206),成吉思汗在蒙古高原確立了自己無可動搖的地位之後,這一年正以世界征服者的姿態展開其 Liu Kezhuang (1187-1269), an scholar of the Song Dynasty active in the first half of the thirteenth century, lived in an era of shadows cast by the great war. In the first year of Jiading (1208) whose works could be dated at the earliest, the Southern Song Dynasty just ended the war with the Jin Dynasty, Nor is it capable of further conquest. However, both Song and Kim did not realize that a bigger threat of war was quietly coming. After the opening of the Jubilee Year (1206), Genghis Khan established itself as an unshakable position on the Mongolian Plateau.