In the year 1642, a peasant uprising led to the deadliest man-made flood that completely inundated the city of Kaifeng. "From a population of 378,000," Professor Xu Xin, Nanjing University, noted, "only a few score thousand (60,000) survived." The Kaifeng Jewish population suffered significant drop as well. This tragically marked the end of the Golden Age for the Kaifeng Jewish community.

During this most disastrous event, Li Guang-dian, a Kaifeng Jew, was in charge of the defense of Kaifeng. Apart from one son, Li lost all of his family during this flood. He wrote this diary in 1643, capturing not only military deployment and strategies of both the rebels and the imperial army, but also the condition and suffering of the people within the city wall, the mobility of different social classes and the background of peasant uprisings at the end of the Ming Dynasty.