Lin Xiao, a university history student, opens her eyes after saving a child who ran into the road and finds herself transmigrated into six-year-old Puyi in 1912: deposed and confined to the Forbidden City.
Seeing that the palace still worships the “Old Buddha,” Lin Xiao is furious. She hated that woman most in her history classes, so even dead, the old tyrant deserves a hard time! And so the Forbidden City's style takes a sudden turn:
She holds Cixi a “cyber memorial service,” with eunuchs singing funeral dirges and palace maids offering wildflowers.
She invents “royal culture shirts” and makes the eunuchs wear the words “The Old Buddha Lives Forever.”
She forms an “Imperial Kitchen Review Team,” turning court rules into stand-up comedy.
Consort Dowager Jin trembles with rage. “Your Majesty, what are you doing?”
Lin Xiao looks completely innocent. “Showing filial devotion. Even the ancestors would be moved to tears.”
From the Forbidden City's “absurd teenager” to a mysterious auditor at a school in the Republic of China;
from a “covert agent” in the Tianjin concessions to a puppet emperor in the Manchukuo Imperial Palace;
from 1912 to 1989, a modern soul lives through 77 years of twentieth-century China.
She spends half her life navigating rival forces, uses her wits to protect the people she loves, and counters the absurdity of the era with humor.
She cannot change history, but she becomes a Puyi who never existed in the history books.
