This book takes Jinling City in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty as the background, and uses the rise and fall of the Shen Mansion, a prominent family in the south of the Yangtze River, and the fate of the Qinhuai statues as the context, to unfold a tragic song of family and country and the love between children in troubled times.
The work begins with the romance and prosperity of Qinhuai in the last years of Chongzhen. As a scholarly family in Jinling, the Shen Mansion not only hides the embroidery brushes, poems and paintings of the boudoir's daughter, but also carries the dignity and integrity of the family. As the Qing army entered the Pass and the Ming Dynasty overthrew, the war in the north swept south of the Yangtze River, and the stability of Jinling was torn apart by the flames of war: the Hongguang Dynasty was short-lived and decadent, the court was divided by factions, and the powerful either surrendered or fled; the Shen Mansion fell apart, the patriarch died for his country, his legitimate daughter threw himself into the river, and his legitimate son died fighting against the Qing Dynasty. Running to escape in troubled times, from a boudoir family to a drifter in the wind and rain; the famous Qinhuai prostitutes - Li Xiangjun's integrity, Liu Rushi's awe-inspiring character, and Dong Xiaowan's wandering, reflect the struggle and perseverance of women in the torrent of the times in the troubled times.
Purpose: The whole book takes "prosperity to ashes" as its core. It not only describes the demise of aristocratic families, the change of dynasties, but also the choices of individuals between life and death, integrity, and separation. The fate of the people in the Shen Mansion and the children of Qin Huai is a microcosm of the entire troubled times, describing the separation of flesh and blood, the persistence of integrity when the family and country are broken, and the endless regret after the prosperity is gone. The work uses delicate brushstrokes to outline the vicissitudes of the times and the joys and sorrows of the characters, intertwining the romance of Qinhuai and the cruelty of the war-torn times, and finally settling into an apocalyptic elegy about integrity, survival and memory.