On March 19, the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the city of Beijing was destroyed and the emperor died for his country. On this day, the fate of countless people was completely rewritten.
Yao Xijun remembered that that morning, when her father Yao Lianyu was taken away by the Jin Yiwei, he only said one sentence: "If you want me to die, I have to die." She did not know at that time what it meant that she was sentenced to "charge into the Jiaofang Division" - until she understood that from now on, she was no longer the daughter of the Chief Soldier, but an object for the rich and powerful to enjoy.
This book uses the real history of the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties as the skeleton, and the fate of fictional characters as flesh and blood. Seven parts historical facts, three parts interpretation. Through the eyes of a woman, we can see the appearance of all living beings when the mountains and rivers are broken: some die generously, some live in an ignoble existence, some betray their friends for glory, and some remain loyal until death.
The story spans twenty years, from Beijing to Nanjing, from Hangzhou to Guangzhou, and from Xiamen to Taiwan. This woman thought she had caught love again and again, but was abandoned, resold, and trampled on again and again. She hated and complained, and in the end she was left alive.
This is not a happy-go-lucky story. This is a song of national subjugation, a woman's history of blood and tears, and an epitaph of an era.
