Lin Wei, a modern graduate student in history, accidentally touches an ancient jade pendant in a museum while researching records of a Republic-era dragon-and-phoenix jade pendant. When she opens her eyes, she has become A Yu, an apprentice on West Street in a Jiangnan town in 1925, the very minor character swept up in conflict from the old drama West Street Woman, which she once watched.
The damp flagstones of West Street conceal the flames of revenge burning in the heart of Su Wan, a pleasure-house courtesan. Behind Shen Muyan’s gentle gaze in the grand mansions of East Street lies his resentment toward the barriers between social classes. And Lin Wei knows that in the tangled affair surrounding the jade, the dragon-and-phoenix pendant is not merely an antique, but a national treasure about to fall into foreign hands.
Armed with modern knowledge of jade appraisal and her memories of history, she refuses to let fate dictate her life as A Yu. She helps her family’s shop expose a counterfeit-jade scam, teaches Su Wan to use bookkeeping to preserve evidence of her enemy’s crimes, and steers Shen Muyan away from the old path of jade merchants turning on one another, while secretly making plans to protect the pendant.
But the secret of her transmigration follows her like a shadow, and the turmoil of the Republic era is far worse than the historical records suggest. When the scent of rouge from the pleasure house mingles with gunpowder, and Shen Muyan’s confession collides with the reality that “she does not belong to this era,” Lin Wei finally understands: to preserve the everyday warmth of West Street and protect the splendor of the national treasure, she must first let A Yu become her own guiding light in this chaotic age.
This time, the story of West Street Woman is about more than romance. It is also about the dazzling courage and sense of responsibility revealed when the jade is shattered.
