I’m More Than Just a Beauty

Wang Jing, a 26-year-old master's graduate selected for a government post, is assigned to the remote town of Qingxi. On the night she reports for duty, she is harassed by the deputy town mayor and met with coldness and a warning from the town Party secretary. In her father's notes, she discovers the words "There are problems with the poverty-relief funds." Her father died in an "accident" a year earlier while investigating the case. Determined to uncover the truth for him, Wang Jing starts at the town discipline inspection commission and takes on corrupt officials in a battle of wits.

She isn't facing just one person, but a vast web stretching from the township to the provincial capital: the town Party secretary, a standing committee member of the county Party committee, a deputy mayor, the director of the provincial poverty-relief office, and a vice chairman of the provincial political consultative conference. They protect one another, each link connected to the next. Some use their authority to pressure her, some try to buy her with money, some tempt her with sex, and some threaten the lives of her family. Wang Jing escapes every crisis: she uses recordings to turn the tables on sexual harassment, evidence to counter false accusations, turns the tables on traps by playing along, and patiently waits for her opponents to expose their weaknesses.

With the covert protection of Han Ming, a veteran of the provincial discipline inspection commission, she takes down corrupt officials one by one and moves ever closer to the truth. From the township to the county discipline inspection commission, from the county Party committee office to deputy county mayor, then county mayor and deputy director of the provincial poverty-relief office, she spends ten years completing the journey her father could not. In the end, all five key corrupt officials are arrested, more than 800 million yuan is recovered, and thousands of kilometers of roads are built.

A farmer's old kerosene lantern always sits on Wang Jing's desk. It has never been lit, but it illuminates every stretch of darkness she has walked through.