Everyday Life in Bianjing

A recommendation for my friend Nan Luxingli's upcoming novel, The Tyrant's Pretend White Moonlight: The tyrant and his white moonlight have all kinds of tricks.

Blurb: People say the ancients were feudal, that women had to remain faithful to one husband for life and never leave the inner quarters. If someone saw their arm, they had to kill themselves.

It wasn't until Lu Runrun transmigrated to the Northern Song that she realized this was all a stereotype.

In the Northern Song, it was perfectly common for widows to remarry. Prime ministers and high officials pursued wealthy widows, and more than one woman married an emperor as her second husband. In bustling Bianjing, women often worked for a living, and wealthy families considered it fashionable to hire cooks.

As it happens, Lu Runrun's mother is a widow and an exceptionally skilled cook. She visits wealthy households to prepare banquets and earns a handsome income.

Her late father also left her a large house beside Zhou Bridge in Bianjing, the equivalent of a courtyard home in a modern city center.

Lu Runrun goes with her mother to prepare banquets in the homes of the rich, helping out and occasionally eating the prettiest cherry fritters from the feast while listening to the maids gossip.

She plans to inherit her mother's skills. She can work as a cook if she wants, or rent out a few rooms if she doesn't. Life is wonderful, even if she has to deal with annoying relatives who often turn up to sponge off them.

Then one day, her mother pulls her aside, looking grave.

“I'm going to remarry.”

Well, that's her mother's choice, and Lu Runrun supports it. But she needs to check the man's character first.

“He's a Clerk of the Secretariat for Military Affairs, an official of the ninth rank. He's a bit poor and loves to eat, but at least he has an official position.

“You know, I'm marrying him so I can find you a father.”

Lu Runrun is baffled. What does she have to do with this?

But her mother is decisive. She not only marries quickly, she also uses her new husband's official status to arrange for a young candidate from out of town to be chosen as Lu Runrun's husband right after the imperial examinations.

The young scholar has passed the palace examination and become an imperial student, but he isn't one of the highly acclaimed top three, nor has he been sent out to serve as an official and make money. He can't even afford a little house against Bianjing's city walls.

Lu Runrun puts little effort into this meeting. Every successful candidate she's met has looked down on everyone else, and she doesn't want to suffer by throwing herself at one.

Until they meet...

The handsome young scholar's ears turn red the moment he sees her. He's usually eloquent when answering the emperor's questions before the throne, but now he stammers and doesn't know how to greet her softly enough not to startle her.

Lu Runrun takes one look at him. He's tall, handsome, and refined. With a face like that, she wouldn't mind letting him move into her home...

*

Although Li Jin sometimes charms Lu Runrun into a daze, she's still the backbone of the household. She loves ordering Li Jin around, and everyone knows how formidable she is.

For example, once Li Jin attends a banquet with his friends and they draw bamboo slips for a drinking game.

Li Jin draws one engraved with: “One cup for fearing one's wife, three if you deny it.”

Everyone laughs, saying the slip has uncanny insight, since it picked the man at the banquet who's most afraid of his wife!

Li Jin makes no attempt to hide it. He calmly drains a cup and says with a smile, “I do fear my wife, and I am proud of it.”

A clever, perceptive, petty heroine × a level-headed, eloquent male lead with a bright future

Notes:

1. This story is set in an alternate world that combines elements of the Northern and Southern Song dynasties. It isn't strictly historically accurate, though I'll try to keep things plausible.

2. The scene in the blurb isn't actually the leads' first meeting, which is why the male lead's reaction is unusual for him. Who wouldn't get shy and feel their heart race when they suddenly run into their crush? See the main story for details!

3. Runrun is the heroine's modern name as well as the childhood nickname she uses after transmigrating. In the Song dynasty, families often gave girls reduplicated childhood names, then gave them a more formal name before marriage. For example, Empress Dowager Gao's childhood name was Taotao, and Lu You's daughter was called Nunu. The heroine was born in a leap month in spring, so her childhood name is Lu Runrun, while her formal name is Lu Wei. Wei means lush and flourishing vegetation. (Please don't say I put no thought into the heroine's name! I thought about it for a long time!)

A recommendation for a completed novel of the same type, Everyday Life in Bianjing: How a Commoner Girl Finds a Fine Husband from a Great Family

A recommendation for author Gu's ongoing novel, The Family Journal of Lin Zhaoniang

Blurb: When the Jin troops march south, large numbers of Song princes and nobles flee south to escape the disaster, making Fujian particularly prosperous.

To better fit into local life, the royal clans marry into local gentry families, blending together and forming new powers.

Lin Zhaoniang is a daughter of a distant branch of a distant branch of the prestigious Lin family of Jianning Prefecture in Fujian. Her family owns only a little over twenty acres of poor farmland outside Pingqing County. They barely make ends meet under the protection of their clan.

Her father and elder brother repeatedly fail the civil service examinations, and her younger brother is old enough to start school. To pay his tuition, she and her mother have to work by lamplight every day, weaving cloth to earn money.

Then one day, a senior clan relative serving as an official in Fujian sends a letter proposing a match for Lin Zhaoniang. Her prospective husband is a prince: refined, handsome, and a man of impeccable character.

Her family is overjoyed. Her parents quickly set aside a few acres of land and send her to Fujian to prepare for the wedding.

Everyone in the county says she's lucky, and Lin Zhaoniang is delighted too, until the eve of the wedding procession, when she learns there's a catch: the man is a sickly invalid who may not live long.

The betrothal papers have already been exchanged, and there's no turning back.

Her parents regret it too late and come to her in tears.

Lin Zhaoniang comforts them. “Whatever he's like, I'll make a good life for myself.”

She's already prepared to become a widow and meet a husband who is gaunt and close to death.

But married life turns out to be nothing like she imagined.

Her senior clan relative hadn't lied. Her husband is frail, but he is indeed handsome and virtuous, and he treats her with great respect.

But born into the imperial family, he's meticulous about everything. He wears nothing but fine silks and can't get by without delicacies. His sharp temper often turns the whole household upside down, and the two of them rarely see eye to eye.

A reserved, resilient daughter of a fallen branch of a prestigious family × a frail, fastidious prince with no official duties

Theme: Keep hope in your heart, even in desperate circumstances