Abstract: "Southern Ming"(Nanming) is more than a mere dynastic concept. In the course of its evolution, due to the speaker's stance and purpose, the connotation of "concept" changed many times, and behind the changes were implied the atmosphere of the times, the social value orientation, and the spiritual orientation of the speaker. During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, facing the hardships of his family and the country, Tai Jingnong echoed the "Southern Ming fever" with the title "Zhang Cangshui, the National Hero". But Tai Jingnong's life experience, full of party disputes and betrayals, prompted him to redefine the concept of "Southern Ming" through frequent textual "surgeries". The conceptual evolution history from "Southern Ming" to "Late Ming" to "Demise of Ming" reflects Tai Jingnong's real-life experience of "divergent paths". It also reflects Tai Jingnong's identity anxiety as an intellectual and his fears about the reoccurrence of history. Therefore, the discovery and framing of the historical concept "Southern Ming" in literature from the perspective of conceptual history not only facilitates understanding the narrative choices and technique structures of the writers' creations, but also helps to shed light on the spiritual aspirations and ideological orientations of literati such as Tai Jingnong during the turbulent times.

Key words: Tai Jingnong, The Demise of the Ming, the Southern Ming, conceptual history