The Three-Year-Old Takes Court, and the Officials Beg Her to Let Them Off

The imperial family had gone a hundred years without a daughter. As soon as three-and-a-half-year-old Xiao Zhao could walk, the emperor cherished her like the apple of his eye. But on the day of her first-grab ceremony, she ignored the gold seal and reached instead for an abacus, a fortune-telling lot tube, and a cinnabar brush. Then she spoke, making his favorite consort turn pale: “Your Highness, your pawn ticket just fell out of your sleeve!” Xiao Zhao has no magic. She can only read people's complexions, recognize medicinal herbs, examine account books, and see through human nature. She rides through the palace gates in a sedan chair, predicts harvests from the solar terms, picks auspicious days with the almanac, and uses copper coins as counting tokens. Officials who embezzle their salaries, titled ladies who mistreat their daughters born to concubines, and the empress dowager's relatives who trick her with fake antiques all take turns being exposed by Xiao Zhao in the Golden Throne Hall, until they're barely wearing their official robes. Whenever the civil and military officials see those tiger-head shoes, they immediately raise their court tablets to cover their faces. “Your Highness, could you take the day off?” Zhaozhao hugs her jar of sunflower seeds and gives her order in a childish voice: “No! Maternal uncle, hand over the fake accounts you've hidden under your sedan chair!”