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Historical person
1624–1681
Chen Yuanyuan was a celebrated singer, poet and courtesan of the late Ming who later became associated with the general Wu Sangui.
Her life became bound to the political mythology of 1644, when Wu Sangui opened Shanhai Pass to Qing forces after the fall of Beijing. Later literature often made her beauty a symbol of dynastic catastrophe, while her actual career reflects the insecurity and restricted choices faced by women in elite entertainment culture. In Alice Poon’s historical fiction, this person is represented within the Ming–Qing transition or the founding of the Qing dynasty.
Series
Set during the early reign of the Kangxi Emperor, The Deer and the Cauldron follows Wei Xiaobao—called Trinket in John Minford’s English translation—from a Yangzhou brothel into the Forbidden City. Illiterate, irreverent and almost entirely without conventional martial virtue, he survives through mimicry, bribery, luck and an instinct…
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Standalone books
