The Crow’s Banquet

Synopsis of The Raven Banquet

In late Qing-era Huizhou, scholar Zhang Jingxuan and his wife, Huang Wenxiu, scheme their way into taking over the family estate, only to both fall into the abyss of opium addiction. Their eldest son dies violently, their second son dies in infancy, and the family crumbles amid schemes and addiction. Desperate, Wenxiu hides the corrupt accounts left behind by her father-in-law, hoping to trade them for a chance to survive, but this draws her into an even deeper conspiracy. During her escape, she adopts an abandoned child, Zhang Chengsi, and forms an alliance for the end times with her disfigured eldest son and a concubine fallen into prostitution.

In a provincial capital embroidery shop, Wenxiu makes a place for herself with her needlework, only to become a pawn of the powerful once again. When the last source of warmth in her life, her adopted son, is taken from her, she sews the secret accounts into a wedding gown and ignites the flames of rebirth, burning alongside her enemies. Twenty years later, her son Zhang Chengsi rises to the rank of imperial censor. Carrying his mother's old scissors, he continues this revenge across two generations in the imperial court. In the end, all that remains of the century-old Zhang family is a heap of ashes, a pair of scissors, and the fable of a “Raven Banquet” that devoured flesh and blood.