COLLECTION · Series · 2011

螳螂

Original title

In the winter of 1948, the Chinese Civil War had reached its final, fever-pitched stage. The Nationalists were collapsing on all fronts, and Communist rule over all of China had become an irresistible tide. Before their impending defeat, the Nationalist government plotted to seize a collection of national treasures and ship them to Taiwan. This mission, codenamed "Zhongshan No. 1," ultimately fell to Dai Wei, the Presidential Office's foreign affairs secretary. Dai Wei was ravishingly beautiful and aristocratic, hailed by Chiang Kai-shek as "the most beautiful woman of the East," yet she also bore an exceedingly complex identity. To prevent the treasures from being lost, the Communist side instructed the underground operative "Swallow"—Chen Lihong, a major in the action division of the Nationalist Bureau of Investigation and Statistics' Nanjing station—to join forces with her comrades to stop the Nationalist operation. During this period, various factions intervened one after another, and the mysterious assassin "Mantis" made the situation even more baffling and perilous. Everyone's loves and hatreds were inextricably entangled with those chaotic times.