The Day the Daughter of a Slave Returned to the Capital, the Entire Court Knelt

“My grandmother spent her whole life in the Laundry Bureau. My mother spent her whole life longing to leave that courtyard. I stand here today because they spent their lives pushing me toward the light.”

My grandmother was a convict slave.

She scrubbed bloody clothes for ten years. Her fingers rotted and grew back, then rotted again.

My mother was the daughter of a convict slave.

At her husband’s home, they called her a curse who had killed her own child. She knelt before the ancestral hall for three days and three nights.

They all said women had no business reading books.

My mother said, “I’m going to make you fly.”

“My daughter will be Great Liang’s first woman to pass the imperial exams. Whoever dares stop her will meet their doom at my hands.”

And fly I did.

I took the imperial exams, entered the Hanlin Academy, and fought my way back to the capital.

When the ministers in court denounced me as the daughter of a lowborn slave, I threw down my broken memorial tablet.

“The realm does not belong to one person. It belongs to all its people. If women do not study, the realm loses half its wisdom. If women do not take their place in court, the realm loses half its strength!”