At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Shen Muyan, a poor girl from Suzhou, was sold into a flower boat. Later, she became the concubine of the number one scholar and accompanied her husband on a diplomatic mission to Europe. During the Gengzi Revolution, she was hailed as the "heroine who saved the country" because she knew German and was able to deal with the coalition forces and the people. She married three times and became widowed three times in her life. In her later years, she lived in the back alleys of Beijing. On a snowy night, at the age of seventy-three, she passed away holding an ancient German coin in her hand. The legend is eventually forgotten, only the river is still flowing.
