Peony in love

Shame to say, but this is the first English book I have ever finished in four days. We were on a beautiful island called Phu Quoc. It was really nice and quiet, almost too quiet for me. I'm not a beach person,I can't really swim. Thankfully I brought this book with me, I spent most of the time reading this book.

It's a story about a girl named Peony who was well educated from a rich family in Hangzhou. The story sets at the beginning of Qing dynasty when girls and women started to get good education, write poems and even publish their work.

Peony loved the opera "The peony pavilion", she dreamed to meet a lover even though she had been betrothed. She met a handsome young poet by accident, they shared the same passion about the opera and fell in love. The love was so strong that she got lovesick, she spent most of her time on commenting the opera and died just before her wedding. She became a lonely ghost, only then she found out that her fiancé was the young poet she was in love with.

Her love wasn't dying with her body, she stayed and watched her husband getting married, she put all her love in the sister wife's body, and continued to finish the comment she was working on.The sister wife died during the child birth.She educated and trained another girl to match her husband.This young girl was brilliant and sensible.She found the comments that both wives have been working on and finally finished it. The book was published under these three wives' names. This was the first comment book ever been published in Chinese history.

It's a true story(except the ghost part). I was really fascinated by the author's writing, it's not just a breath taking love story, the exciting changes happened during that period of history were beautifully wove into the story.

One of my students recommended the book to me after I introduced Hangzhou in the class. This is the best feedback I got. By teaching you learn so much from students.