“Gossip? I’m a professional.”
Zhao Guagua, a history graduate student, woke up to find he had transmigrated to Bianjing, the Northern Song capital. He had no golden finger, no System cheat, just an unreliable “gossip System.” If he wanted to survive, he had to scour the city for rumors.
So he was the one eavesdropping in teahouses, staking out the yamen gates, and chatting nonsense with people in the bathhouse.
From Su Dongpo’s secret recipes to Li Qingzhao’s remarriage scandal; from Bao Zheng’s clever plan to put a stone on trial to Emperor Huizong having a meltdown after being called a “foolish ruler” to his face: everything the official histories wouldn’t dare write and the unofficial ones couldn’t fully uncover, he dug up down to the last detail.
But Zhao Guagua gradually realized that the most fascinating gossip in Bianjing was often hidden among the little people the history books considered beneath notice. The last cartload of charcoal belonging to a charcoal seller, a few words spoken in a dream by an old city guard, a love poem hidden in a fan by a brothel girl...
“Hold on, let’s have a bite of gossip first.”
A Song dynasty gossip collection that will have you laughing your head off: 500 chapters of everyday people and juicy rumors from ancient times, offering a whole new way to explore Along the River During the Qingming Festival. It turns out people in the Song dynasty loved watching the commotion even more than we do.
