Great Tang: I’ll Raise Princess Jinyang, Little Sizi

One afternoon, a tiny girl from ancient times, dressed in a pink ruqun with her hair in two buns, timidly crawled out of a trunk. “Where am I? I’m scared.” “Don’t cry, little sis. Have a cookie.” From then on, two two-year-old girls shared a secret hideaway spanning a thousand years. Nuonuo generously shared strawberry cake, Wangzai milk, tinplate frogs, and cartoons. The little princess returned the favor with lavish peony pastries, a golden phoenix handkerchief, and even a fist-sized luminous pearl from the Western Regions. “My name is Mingda. Big Sis calls me Sizi.” At first, Su Zhe thought his daughter had simply acquired an imaginary friend. That was until one day, when he gazed at a room piled high with mountains of first-class national cultural relics, along with a gold lock engraved with the royal emblem of the Great Tang, and fell completely silent. Meanwhile, the palace of the Great Tang was in complete disarray. Empress Zhangsun looked at her daughter’s increasingly rosy cheeks and the fever medicine that had appeared out of nowhere, full of bewilderment. Li Shimin, the emperor of the ages, stared in astonishment at the solar-powered night-light and chocolate cookies his daughter had brought back, so shocked he could barely hold his memorials. “Sizi, which immortal master from beyond the world bestowed these divine treasures upon you?” The little princess puffed out her chest, looking immensely proud. “Big Sis gave them to me, and Nuonuo’s daddy cooks really yummy food.” This is a cozy, healing slice-of-life story about a modern, hands-on dad who uses his superb cooking and endless supply of modern goods to spoil two little girls rotten.