"Embroidery Workshop"
Location: Southern Song Dynasty, Lin'an Mansion (now Hangzhou)
At the end of the most lively Imperial Street in Lin'an City, there is an inconspicuous alley, and at the end of the alley is the "Wanzhao Embroidery Workshop". Different from other embroidery workshops, the embroiderers here are all desperate women - those who were abandoned, those who lost their husbands, those who escaped from marriage, and those who redeemed themselves from Goulan.
Ning Wantang, the owner of the workshop, was once the most senior embroidery lady in the palace. However, she was convicted of testifying for a falsely accused palace maid. Her left wrist was injured and she could no longer hold the embroidery needle firmly. After leaving the palace, she opened this embroidery workshop and set the rules: only accept women, only teach craftsmanship, and do not ask about the past.
On the surface, the embroidery workshop is engaged in embroidery business, but secretly, it is a network of mutual help among the lower-class women in Lin'an City.
The flower seller at the alley was responsible for delivering messages, the female drugstore shopkeeper took care of injuries and illnesses, and the wives of porters on the pier were the source of information. In which alley there is a woman who has been domestically abused, sold, or bullied, the news will be spread back to the embroidery workshop along this line. Shen Wantang did not report to the official - the official would not care about women's affairs. She will lead her sisters and use her own methods to rescue that person.
Either arrange to leave Lin'an and start a new life, or hide in an embroidery workshop to learn skills to make a living, or quietly let the abuser reap the consequences.
In the autumn of this year, a young woman covered with scars was carried to the entrance of the embroidery workshop, holding a half-embroidered phoenix with peonies in her arms. She said that she was the embroiderer in the palace of Concubine Qin at that time. The concubine was banned and ordered her to bring out the embroidery for help.
Ning Wantang looked down at his crippled left hand, and then at the eternal light in the woman's eyes.
She opened the door.
Theme: In an era when ethics and ethics were the strictest, how did women use needles, tears and blood to weave a piece of sky.
