My Creditor Won't Marry

During the Longchang era of the Great Zhou Dynasty, the realm seems peaceful, but beneath the surface, danger is brewing. The court introduces a new policy called “Women Must Return to the Clan,” decreeing that any woman with an adult male relative in her family may not register a household of her own, do business, or hold office. Countless women who have carved out their own success through talent and hard work are forced to hand their businesses back to their fathers, brothers, and husbands, becoming bargaining chips in family alliances.

The Su family, a Jiangnan dynasty of silk producers, is a textbook example of the new policy’s consequences. Master Su has no sons, only three daughters. Under pressure from the clan, he summons his eldest daughter, Su Mingjin, home from an overseas merchant ship and demands she “return” the maritime trade route she built to her cousin Su Minghui, a collateral relative of the Su family. Otherwise, the Su family will lose its right to produce silk, destroying three generations of family wealth.

That day, twenty-one-year-old Su Mingjin stands at the docks in Suzhou, the sea wind whipping her cloak. Behind her is a fleet of seventeen ocean-going ships. Before her is a moral ultimatum in the name of “the greater good of the family.”

She smiles and tells her father, “If the court says women can’t do business, then I’ll stop being a merchant. I’ll become a creditor instead.”