Bloodshed at Cuihua Tower

Setting: The Shanghai French Concession, 1917–1927

In the early years of the Republic, there was a lane in the Shanghai French Concession called Rouge Lane. It was so narrow that only two sedan chairs could pass each other sideways. Tall red buildings stood close together on either side, their red lanterns swaying in the wind like the bleary eyes of drunkards.

The Drunken Blossom House stood in this lane.

This is a story about three women:

Liu Ruyan, daughter of a scholarly family in Suzhou, was sold into a brothel after her family fell on hard times. She guarded her father’s Zhongni-style guqin and lived among the powder and rouge like an orchid with a pure heart. It wasn’t until she met Jiang Yunfan, a revolutionary, that she learned there was another way to live: refusing to accept your fate.

Bai Yulan, the daughter of poor farmers in northern Jiangsu, was sold at fourteen and spent eight years fighting her way through the mire. She was determined to save enough money to buy her freedom, believing that leaving the brothel would mean turning her life around. But when she finally got her hands on that gold bar, she realized she could no longer tell right from wrong.

Auntie Jin was sold into a brothel at sixteen, saved enough to buy her freedom at twenty-six, and took over the Drunken Blossom House at thirty-six. She spent her life wavering between profit and conscience. Then one night, a lover from twenty years ago walked through the door, and she remembered that she, too, had once been called A Feng.

And then there was Hongling, the little girl whose eyes shone like a wildcat’s in the hills. Until the day she died, she was trying to learn how to read three characters: jasmine.

Over ten years, warlords clashed, the May Fourth Movement unfolded, the May Thirtieth Massacre took place, and the Northern Expedition swept through the country. The tides of a great age surged past, carrying the fates of ordinary people along with them. Some died for their beliefs, some sank into desire, and some, after losing everything, finally found their own