What I wouldn't give for some good

streetstall kebabs, Maomao look up

at the overcast sky and Sighed. She live

in a world that was at once a place of

Unparalleled, sparkling beauty and

noxious, foul, suffocating cage. Three

month's already. Hope my old man's eating

Properly.

It seem just the other day she had gone

into the woods to gather herbs, and there had

met three kidnappers,' Let us call them

Villagers One, Two and Three. They were

after woman for the royale palace, and in

a word, they offered the world's most

forceful and unpleasant marriage proposal.

Now it wasn't that she wouldn't be paid,

and with a couple year's work, there was that

glimmer of hope that she might able to come

back to her town.

There were worse ways to earn a living-if

one went to the royal city of one's own volition.

But Maomao, who was making her way just fine

as an apothecary, thank you very much, saw it

solely as so much trouble.

...What did the kidnappers do with the nubile...

...young women they captured?...

Sometimes they sold the girls to the eunuchs,

putting the proceed toward a night of drinking

for themselves.

Sometimes they passed the young ladies off

as their own daughters. To Maomao, it was a

moot questions, for whatever the reason, she

found herself caught up in their schemes, Else,

she would never in her life have wish to have

anything to do with the hougong, the "rear place": the residence of the imperial woman.

The place was so thick with the odors of

make up and perfume as to turn the stomach,

and even more full of the thin, force smiles of the court ladies in their beautiful dresses. In here time as an apothecary, Maomao had come

to believe that there was no toxin so terrifying

as a woman's smile. That one rule held true

whether in the halls of the most ornate place

or the squalid chambers of the cheapest

pleasure house.

Maomao hefted ths laundry basket at her feet

...and headed through the building....

Unlike the dazzling front facade, the dreary

central couryard housed flagstone-faved

washing areas, where the court servant's,

people who were neither quite man nor quite

woman, did laundry by the arm load. Men, in

principle, were not allowed in the rear palace.

The only men who could enter were either members and bloodrelations of the most noble

family in the country-or former men who had lost very important part of themselves.

Naturally, all the men Maomao was looking at right now were the latter. It was twisted, she thought, but admittedly it was a logical things

to do.

She set down her basket in spotted another one sitting in the building just nearby. Not dirty

clothes, but clean laundry that had dried in the sun. She glance at the wooden tag dangling

from the handle; It bore an illustration of a leaf

along with a Number.

Not all of the palace women were literate.

...It wasn't that surprising: some of them had been brought here by force, after all....

And though the rudiments of etiquette were

beaten into them Before they arrive, letters

were not.

It would be probably lucky, Maomao

reflected, if half the girls that got snatched

from the countryside turn out to know how to

read. It was, one might say, a hazard of the rear palace growing too populous.

Quality was being sacrifice for quantity.

Although it in no way equaled the

"Flower Garden" of the former emperor, the

consort and ladies-in-waiting together numbered two thousand people, while with

the eunuch that number came to three

thousand. A vast place indeed.

Maomao was a serving girl, a post so lowly

she didn't even have an official rank.

What more could she expect, as a girl who had no one to back her at court, who had arrived

by way of kidnappers to fill out the palace staff?

If she had perhaps possessed a body as shapely as a peony, or skin as pale as the full moon, she might at least have aspired to the status of one of the lower concubines,

But Maomao Possessed only ruddy, Freckled skin and limbs with all the elegance of withered branches.

...I need to just get this Job done....

Maomao picked up the basket with it's tag

depicting a plum flower and the number 17,

and trundled off as quickly as she could manage.

She wanted to get back to her room

before the frowning sky began to weep.

The owner of the laundry in the basket was

one of the low-ranked consorts.

Her room was rather more lavish than those accorded to the

other low consorts-in fact, it was downright

ostentatious.

The occupant, Maomao surmised, must be the daughter of some affluent noble family.

...When a Woman was assigned a palace...

Rank, she was also permitted her own ladies-in

waiting.

A minor consort, however, could have two ladies at most, which was why Maomao, a serving girl with no mistress of her own on which to attend, was carting a woman's laundry like this.

A low consort was permitted personal rooms in the rear palace precincts, but they were inevitably on the fringes of the grounds, where the Imperial eye fall upon her. If she should,

even so, receive a summon to spend the

night with His Majesty, she would be granted new rooms, while a second such night meant

she had truly found a place in the world.

As for those who ultimately never excited thr

Emperor's interest, after a certain age a consort

( assuming her family didn't wield particular influence) could expect to see herself demoted,

or even granted as a wife to see member of the bureaucracy.

Whether that was a blessing or a curse depended on whom she was granted to, but the

fate the women feared most was being

bestowed upon one of the eunuchs.

...Maomao knock discreetly on the door....

A servant opened it and snapped," Just leave it

There." Within, a consort redolent of the sweetest perfume was sipping some alcohol

From a cup.

She must have been much admired for her beauty in those halcyon days before she had

arrived at the palace, but when she got here

she discovered she had known as much about

the outside world as a frog who has spent her life in a well.