This is a historical romance novel set in the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty. The novel revolves around Yang Dinglai, a talented man from Shanyang in Huainan Prefecture, Huainan. He was born in a family of five generations of Jinshi scholars. He was the most popular girl in high school when he was young. However, by chance, he met Cha, the daughter of an imperial doctor. The two had similar interests and secretly fell in love.
However, the Cha family was forcibly married to the powerful minister Pan Qing, and Yang Dinglai was framed by Pan Qing and was involved in the unjust case of stealing private property from an official's family.
The novel takes "abandoning officialdom" as the main line, and profoundly shows Yang Dinglai's difficult choice between the glory of his family, his fame in the imperial examination, and his deep-rooted love. In order to protect his true feelings, he did not hesitate to fight against power, and was even willing to end the glorious tradition of five generations of Jinshi in his family.
The work combines historical reality and artistic creation. It not only contains the darkness of the imperial examination and officialdom, but also has a touching description of love. Through highly symbolic scenes such as "tearing off official robes" and "dropping a gold plaque", it expresses an individual's decisive courage to resist the oppression of ethics and pursue freedom and true love. This is a chapter-style masterpiece full of dramatic tension and humanistic care.
