In the 22nd year of the founding of the People's Republic of China, ten-year-old Xu Yuanjun entered the East Palace as a princess. Her sleeves were embroidered with lotus flowers painted by her mother, Princess Rongcheng. She thought this was the beginning of "Winning the One Who Loves Her Heart", but she didn't know that within this red wall, virtue is a shackle, pampering is a blade, and heirs are original sins.
From Empress Dowager Gu who was worried because she had no children, to Wanyan's noble concubine who was in danger because she had a son; from Zheng Zhiting who invited her favor with poetry but died in childbirth, to Yin Huiwan who climbed to the top with the vow of "a couple for life" but was trapped in the cold palace - the harem of the Jiache Dynasty was a arena for imperial power and a heart-burning furnace for thousands of women.
When the historian wrote in "Records of Jiache" that "the harem was solemn and the concubines adhered to women's virtues", the diaries of the palace maids in the dry well of Yeting, the blood-lettered oaths on the walls of the cold palace, and the parrots in front of the burial mausoleum all told the same truth: the so-called wise kings and virtuous queens were just gorgeous curtains woven by the system. Behind the curtain were the bones, blood and souls of thousands of women who were devoured.
Concept: An elegy for group portraits of women under the feudal system. Both inside and outside the red wall are trapped animals.