Chapter 111: Recalling the Past - Part_1
The plays at Fuwang Teahouse had been performed for several acts, including "Nezha’s Uproar in the Sea," "Chang’e’s Journey to the Moon," and "Chenxiang’s Rescue of His Mother" and so on...
The performances were excellent, both in singing and acting, eliciting waves of applause from the audience. Lady Du sat in a private room upstairs, listening in a trance. The little children, witnessing the continuous pings and pangs on stage and the graceful dance performed with wide sleeves, watched with wide eyes and rapt attention.
Unknowingly, several lunar-hours had passed, the play had ended, and Lady Du, with a lingering sense of unfulfilled pleasure, left Fuwang Teahouse with the children.
Having stepped out of Fuwang Teahouse, she was still immersed in the plot of the plays, strolling absentmindedly along the street with the children...
The performance of "Chang’e’s Journey to the Moon" was extraordinarily good, and the opera actor’s dance was beautiful. The three-meter-long pink water sleeves were tossed lightly, flying and spinning on the stage, earning a chorus of praise!
Likely unaware, it couldn’t compare to when she used to dance with eight-meter-long water sleeves in her youth. She was stunningly beautiful then, and she performed a graceful dance at her grandfather Duke An’s birthday feast. The sight was truly breathtaking, but it was also the beginning of her nightmare.
She was a concubine-borne daughter of the Duke An’s Mansion, and her biological mother was one of the embroiderers in the mansion. Since she came of age, she had been arranged by her stepmother to learn singing and dancing from a Courtesan. In her childhood, she didn’t understand why her sisters were learning textile arts, "Women Taming" and "Women Rules", while she had to practice singing and dancing every day. Later, when she grew up, she was arranged by her family to perform a dance at her grandfather Duke An’s birthday feast. The performance caught the eye of the King of Guangling, who wanted to take her back to his mansion as a common concubine. She finally understood the demeaning intentions of her family.
A common concubine ranks even lower than a side consort. In the mansion of the King of Guangling, both the favored concubines - be it the humble maid or the brothel-born prostitute - were promoted to become common concubines. The number of common concubines in the Mansion of the King of Guangling was staggering.
It was then that she realized that she was merely an instrument carefully cultivated by her family over the years to curry favor with the powerful, while her happiness, future, and life weren’t taken into consideration at all.