Jiang Zhao and Chu Wan traveled through the world where women were respected. One was building roads and doing business, the other was taking the imperial examination and becoming an official. They wanted to bring the fire of modern civilization into this land where women were respected. Jiang Zhao bombed the Nanxi Waterway and set his sights on the Yingchou Ridge leading to Yizhou, but he was almost killed in the dumb cannon explosion, leaving a permanent scar on his forehead. Chu Wan started from the border county magistrate and worked his way up to the civil service department. He revised the performance appraisal rules inch by inch with the spirit of "being clumsy" so that border officials would no longer be buried.
But the real turning point comes after they get married. The queen granted marriage, and Chu Wan married Shen Qingwu, the son of the prime minister, and Jiang Zhao married Zhou Yanzhi, the son of the minister. On the wedding night, one of the two men said, "I won't be a burden to you" and the other said, "I won't drag you down for a long time." But when Shen Qingwu secretly took the male civil service examination and Zhou Yanzhi spent three months drawing a complete map of Hongzhou's mountains and rivers, they were shocked to realize that the men of Hongzhou were trapped in the same cage of fate as they were.
So Chu Wan made a secret: the man became an official. The court was in turmoil, and the conservatives scolded her for undermining the country, but the queen kept the secret secret-not dismissing it, but waiting for an opportunity.
From road construction to restructuring, from merchants entering officialdom to men becoming official officials, two modern women spent twenty years raising the foundation of Hongzhou Kingdom inch by inch. And it all started with the lake in Qinghe Town.
