The Song dynasty was more advanced than you could imagine. Bottled water already existed, and it was sold by a female merchant. Shen Qinglan, an orphan cursed with a “broken palm,” is driven out of her family home with her three younger siblings in the coldest winter Bianjing has ever known. People laugh that she’s doomed to a hard life, but she has a “divine tongue” capable of tasting the waters of the world. From selling her first ladle of spring water on a street corner to founding the Xiecheng water business; from being crushed almost to ruin by the powerful to joining hands with her husband, Chen Yuanzhou, to bring down the mighty Fan family in a business war spanning more than a decade. She not only builds a commercial empire from nothing, but also spends over a decade supporting the painter Zhang Zeduan as he creates Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Witness how a great businesswoman uses water as her ink to paint the legendary story of her own making in this glorious age.
