At the spring banquet hosted by the Cui family, the Chun Tai opera troupe was ordered to close the performance with a long aria. The deputy troupe leader, Yu Caigu, fastened half a gilded mask to the face of Yu Tinglan, who had spent six years as a substitute singer and had only been allowed to sing eleven times. She made Yu Tinglan take A-Tang's nameplate onstage and hide her left face in the pillar's shadow. Yu Tinglan sang the nine-turn aria to a hall full of tossed coins and cheers, everyone calling her A-Tang. For the first time, she was being celebrated, yet she knew these hands of hers were only hands that sang for someone else. After the performance, Yu Caigu said the troupe owed the music guild's contract association fifty gold pieces. If they didn't redeem the contract in thirty-six days, all eight of them, including their voices, would belong to the association's registry. The two strings of reward money had already been used to pay off the troupe's debts in advance.
