When Su Wanqing first danced on the stage of Zuixian Tower, the wooden planks beneath her feet still carried the chill of early spring. She wore a patched pink silk skirt, with a cheap silk flower pinned in her hair, yet her waist swayed like a willow branch in the wind, tracing delicate ripples to the tune of the two-stringed fiddle. The crowd below was boisterous, and copper coins clattered into the bamboo basket at her feet—that was the meager hope of survival for her and her blind grandmother.
Back then, she was called A-wan. She knew nothing of brocades and delicacies; she only knew that after dancing this "Bending Willow," she could exchange it for half a peck of rice. Sweat soaked her bangs, yet her smile was sweet, her eyes as bright as stars in a cold night. She understood nothing of the turns of fate; she only felt that the man sitting in the second-floor private room that day looked at her with a gaze like velvet clinging to her skin—warm and heavy.
That man was Shen Xiuyuan, the Junior Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel. He had taken a fancy to the light in her eyes while she danced—a vibrancy unseen among the layers of powder and rouge. Three days later, a small sedan chair was carried into the side gate of Shen Mansion, and A-wan became Concubine Su.
Chapter 119