Notes on Watching Cranes

[Main story complete. Taking a few days off before posting the bonus chapters.] [Coming soon: The Lady Buddha and Letters to a Rose. Please add them to your reading list.] [Blurb] Deng Ying in history was convicted and died by lingchi, the slow slicing execution. Even after his death, Grand Secretary Yang Lun personally inscribed the words “Pure and Clean” for him. Yang Wan, who lives in the twenty-first century, has spent ten years studying Deng Ying, poring over every detail of his life. Ten years of scholarship and ten years of blood and tears. Deng Ying matters more to her than her boyfriend. Then, at an academic conference, she unexpectedly travels back six hundred years, to a time when Deng Ying is still a prisoner awaiting execution. Yang Wan's eyes light up. “Where else could I find firsthand material like this?” Deng Ying: “Why does this woman always carry around a little notebook covered in English?” Yang Wan: At first, I didn't want to empathize with this feudal era at all. I only wanted to watch Deng Ying live out his tragic life. Later, all I wanted was to save him, using everything I've learned and everything I understand about this dynasty. Deng Ying: Yang Wan lives for me. She said those words twice: once on the night before I was punished, and once in the imperial prison in the early Jinghe era. A modern-minded academic woman who transmigrates + X + a man from the Eastern Depot A story about an academic who tries her hardest not to empathize with the Ming Dynasty and tries to teach the director of the imperial secret police to let things go, only to find in the end that she can't let go herself. [HE. A happy, happy HE, the sort of bizarrely harmonious HE.] I can do this! An alternate-history Ming Dynasty. I made up the male lead; no such person existed in history. If I had to say what inspired him, it was a legend about the construction of the imperial palace. Theme: Stand on your own and strive forward.