For China, this is a memorable day. It is also a memorable day for seventeen Manchurian girls, all the daughters of ministers who have the right to wear red coral top beads. The whole city of Beijing knew that XianFeng was going to choose a concubine.
The seventeen girls and their parents were very emotional because if their daughter had been chosen. This would be a great honor for her, and for the father of this lucky girl it would mean the prestige of power. For the girl herself, it may mean happiness. Therefore, the seventeen girls named in the Holy Decree were increasingly agitated. Every girl was wondering if she would be created.
Only Lan Er did not suspect. She had faith; it had long been planted in the depths of her soul.
Why does she have this confidence? She told her father the reason, but didn't tell anyone else until decades had passed in an endless river of time.
She was a devout Buddhist, and as soon as she heard her name included in the first edict, she prayed to the bodhisattva to bless her with good luck. In the corner of her father's garden, there was an ancestral hall, and she lit incense, knelt down and prayed to her ancestors to bless her success and strengthen her ambition, which Ronglu would not have thought of, because she had personally told him that she loved him.
Here's the story she told her father: "Father, after I lit incense in front of the shrine, the smoke rising from the incense burner swirled upwards, swaying and forming the face of a man. I've never seen this face before, but in my heart I know who he is! This is a omen, Father! I will be the emperor's concubine!"
The father was confused, he had never really understood this child of his own. She was a dreamer, and her father didn't understand a dreamer. He himself was an emotionless, outgoing, self-explanatory man, as the faces of the many noisy people who often lived around his quarters showed.
Ever since Rong Lu knew that Lan Er's name was included in the first edict, he and Lan Er had seen each other several times. At one meeting, Lan Er stood on the rockery behind the gazebo, from where she could see the lively street outside her walls.
A team of men passed. Among the people riding the horse, there was a face that caught Lan Er's attention. She turned her face and asked Rong Lu, "Who is that man?"
Rong Lu felt pain and his mouth twitched slightly. But he still replied, "That is His Majesty the Xianfeng Emperor." ”
Lan Er squinted thoughtfully. When the great man and the queue that accompanied him passed, no one paid any attention to the two men on the rockery on the other side of the wall.
Lan Er whispered to herself, "This is the same face," she told herself. "This is exactly the face I saw in the clouds of smoke rising from the incense burner!"
A harbinger! Whether it is good luck or bad luck, only the years can tell us.
However, from this time on, Lan Er expressed indifference to Rong Lu's love affair, and Rong Lu's love for her was increasing day by day. When she alienated him and locked herself in the dream room with infinite ambition, he loved her even more wildly.
In this way, the great day gradually approached.
Seventeen girls from noble Manchurian families set out for the Forbidden City to be summoned by the Xianfeng Emperor and Empress Ci'an.
Seventeen excited little women staggered into the city with their amazingly high Manchurian boots, each longing to become Xianfeng's concubine. The clatter of high-heeled boots tapping the ground was intertwined with the whispers of excitement; the edict commanded them to arrive together at the same time.
Their costumes are colorful, and they are the best clothing that can be bought with money. They all wore high-profile lotus-style black headdresses for unmarried women, with pink flowers in the middle and lotus seeds strung with beads around them. The different locations won the love of seventeen girls.
Their trembling lips were lightly rouged, and their eyes shone with anticipation. What a great honor to be a concubine of the Emperor of China!
Lan Er was not the first to be summoned. This may be accidental or intentional. It is unwise to see the emperor late. But she was still late, and one or two steps slower may have changed the entire history of China.
