The Porcelain Hairpin Chronicles

Xie Lingyi, an illegitimate daughter of the declining Xie clan, was the least valued young lady in the capital until she turned fourteen. Seven years ago, Shen Yanqing, a poor scholar, was lodging at the Xie residence. The Xie family’s legitimate son humiliated him in public, and Madam Xie drove him out by dousing him with a bowl of sour porridge. Seven years later, Shen Yanqing swept the imperial examinations, placing first in all three rounds. With a single impeachment, he brought down the Xie clan root and branch. The men were beheaded, and the women were enslaved. Xie Lingyi was sent to the entertainments bureau and renamed “A Man.” She danced to stay alive. At a banquet on the night of the Flower Festival, Shen Yanqing publicly lifted her veil and mocked her: “Do you still remember that bowl of sour porridge?” He took her as his concubine, yet every night he ordered her to kneel and copy the Xie Family Rules. Xie Lingyi ground the shards of that broken bowl into a sharp hairpin and hid it in her hair every day, waiting only for the moment she could pierce his throat. But before she could draw the pin, she coughed up blood and died. Among her belongings, Shen Yanqing found that his name was engraved on the end of the porcelain hairpin. It had been her own epitaph. He knelt in the ruins of the Xie residence, clutching the hairpin, for three days. Snow piled on his head, and from then on, no one dared utter the word “Xie.”