Beauty Red Chronicle

Author: (Ming) Meng Chengshun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: A talented and ambitious young scholar named Shen Chun fails in the imperial examination and becomes melancholic. Seeking solace, he travels and visits his uncle Wang Wenrui's house. There, he meets his beautiful cousin Jiaojiang, and his desire for official success fades. The two compose poems and verses, their hearts gradually drawn to each other. They share a night of warmth in a needlework pavilion, swear an alliance by the hearth, and secretly pledge to be life partners. Later, Shen's family arranges a match with the Wang family, but the uncle refuses, citing "the imperial court's laws prohibiting marriage between close relatives." Forced to part, Shen and Jiaojiang go their separate ways.
Years later, Shen passes the examination and becomes an official. Impressed by his "remarkable success at a young age and limitless future prospects," the Wang family proposes a marriage. As they dream of a bright future, a son of the Western Sichuan Military Commissioner, who has long admired Jiaojiang's beauty, sends men to force the marriage. Fearing the commissioner's power, Jiaojiang's father reluctantly agrees, leading to the lovers being cruelly separated. In the end, they both take their own lives to fulfill their vow of "sharing the same room in life and the same grave in death." After their deaths, their families bury them side by side by the Zhuojin River, where a pair of mandarin ducks are said to stay together by their graves from then on.