Madam Tao Zhu: A Widowed Mother Defies the Chaos of the Spring and Autumn Period

In the final years of the Spring and Autumn period, turmoil sweeps through Dingtao.

Shen Qingyan loses her beloved husband. All he leaves her is a handwritten copy of Fan Li's Tao Zhu Guide to Commerce, while her clan watches her like a hawk, hoping to force her into another marriage and carve up her estate.

A lone widow with no one to rely on, she refuses to bow her head and let others control her.

After three years of mourning, she grasps the true principles of commerce. She asserts herself in the ancestral hall and vows never to depend on anyone. Alone, she pushes a handcart and sets up a stall, starting out as a street peddler of grains. With her knack for selling dear as if it were dirt and buying cheap as if it were precious, she carves out a path to survival in the cracks of the marketplace.

She saves Xiao Shu, a wounded soldier who fled the battlefield, and gains a fiercely loyal protector for life;

She takes in Wen Zhiyu, a down-and-out scholar, and gains a brilliant adviser with a wealth of knowledge;

She befriends Fan Shen, a stubborn farmer, and gains a partner to manage a thousand acres of farmland;

She shelters Gu Lingchuan, a famous performer fallen on hard times, and builds a network of intelligence in the shadows.

She gathers people through good deeds, amasses wealth and gives it away, following Tao Zhu Gong's principle of gathering and dispersing wealth three times:

As soon as she becomes prosperous, she shares her profits with her neighbors. At the height of her success, she builds charity homes and schools. In her later years, she gives away her entire fortune to raise orphans caught in the turmoil.

She bears children and raises orphans, foils schemes and fights the powerful. With the supposedly frail shoulders of a woman, she carries a commercial empire and protects the people of her region.

The world says women cannot make their way in troubled times. Yet as a widowed mother, she commands trade routes, calms the people, and brings relief to a chaotic age. In the end, she is honored as Tao Zhu Niang and hailed alongside the Sage of Commerce, Fan Li, as one of the Two Tao figures of the Spring and Autumn period.

Never say a woman cannot save the world. One Shen Qingyan can uphold heaven and earth and defy an age of chaos.