The Laughable Tales of the Idle Bureau

In Anping County, a place so obscure it's barely on the map, sits the least remarkable department of all: the Civil Mediation and Public Order Inspection Office, nicknamed the "Easy Job Office."

Its director, Lu Wenyuan, once studied under a vice minister of the Board of Punishments. Banished here over a single poem, he spends his days dozing at his desk. The deputy director, Shen Qingmei, comes from a military family and is skilled in martial arts, yet can only mediate quarrels between neighbors. The bookkeeper, Accountant Zhao, has spent twenty years taking the civil service exams. He's meticulous with money, but fond of petty gains. Constable Wang Dachui, the son of a local farmer, earns two qian a month and dreams of saving enough to get married. Su Xiaohe, a clever and quick-witted orphan who fled her home, works as a servant and secretly loves the director. Old Ma, the gatekeeper, is over sixty and serves as an "information hub" for people from every walk of life.

These "idlers" spend their days dealing with "trivial little matters."

But behind their everyday jokes and squabbles, an anonymous secret letter, a box of rouge marked with a date, three hundred thousand taels of tribute silver lost twenty years ago, and the wrongful conviction of a forgotten general are about to sweep this little Easy Job Office into the stormy struggle for the throne.