COLLECTION · Series · 2001

贞女‧烈女‧豪放女

Original title

Women in different eras have been treated very differently, but one thing has never changed: women are forever trapped by love. This was true a hundred years ago, and it is still true today. To be a woman—is it original sin, fate, or being the instigator of love and hate? In the late Qing Dynasty, the Ji and Tong families of Qinghe Town became embroiled in old and new grievances over the matter of a chastity arch erected in honor of a widow. A young and beautiful girl, Fang Jin, was forced by her parents' command into marriage with the Tong family, to keep company with a bridegroom nine years her junior. Before long, the young bridegroom died in an accident, and Fang Jin was then forced by Tong Shanqun, the Tong clan patriarch, to remain a widow and preserve her chastity, in the hope of obtaining a chastity arch that would bring glory to the family ancestors. Through her distinctive perspective, the drama depicts the open and covert struggles within the Tong household—among the first and second branches, sisters-in-law, aunts and nieces, masters and servants—and tells of the emotional entanglements and different fates of several couples. Yet oppressed human nature is bound to erupt. With the help of Gao Litian, Shan Fu'an, and others, Fang Jin breaks through the various shackles of feudal morality and comes together with the man she loves. The Tong family widow, Second Mistress He Qizhen, also, after enduring many twists and turns, finds her own path in life. The drama focuses on portraying three widows of strikingly different temperaments: Fang Jin, kind, pure, and yet bound by feudal morality; Tong Qing, bold, uninhibited, and wildly free-spirited; and He Qizhen, gentle, frail, and yet calculating.