The Female Scholar in Red

This is the story of Pan Junyu, an extraordinary woman of the Ming dynasty who, for the sake of her family's mission, disguised herself as a man and passed the palace examinations as third-ranked scholar with her astonishing talent. From the Hanlin Academy to defending the borders in Liaodong, she eventually rose to become Grand Secretary, the highest official in the cabinet. Her marriage to Wang Jingshu began as an arrangement neither could refuse. On their wedding night, Pan Junyu claimed she needed to study and left, while three years of letters hid all the feelings they never put into words. From Suzhou to the capital, from distance to honesty, from the promise “I'll wait for the magnolia to bloom” to the vow “In life we share a bed, and in death we'll share a tomb,” the two women protected their love across the boundaries of gender, their bond symbolized by a pair of magnolia hairpins. Through forty years of hardship, they shared honor and disgrace in life, and were buried together in death, leaving behind a story of lifelong devotion that would be uncovered by archaeologists and shake generations to come. Theme: True love knows no gender