Overview | History | Relationships | Abilities
In the twenty-eighth year of Taiming, under her courtesan pseudonym Jiangli, Chen Baishao was crowned Queen of Flowers and won the camelia crown at the House of Overflowing Splendor's Flower Viewing Festival. This event was part of the celebrations throughout Jinping that led up to the Grand Selection.1
The night of the Flower Viewing Festival, Chen Baishao won the crowd's favor through uniqueness and simplicity, rather than extreme beauty. Many of the performing courtesans wore thick layers of white paste makeup, their faces blurring together before the crowd of drunken revelers. Chen Baishao performed a new, never-before-heard song wearing colorless clothes and with her face unpainted, contrasting the gaudiness that surrounded her. She was accompanied by a single qin player, Xi Ping, who disguised himself as a courtesan and hid behind a cotton screen. Chen Baishao's voice was good, and Xi Ping was a very good accompanist, and the refreshing air of their performance won the crowd's goodwill. The stage was showered with gold and silver trinkets from admiring audience members after their song, and later that night, Chen Baishao was crowned the Queen of Flowers.1
After Chen Baishao was crowned, she made rounds of the audience, drinking toasts and singing encores per the whims of important clients she couldn't refuse. Then, as she prepared to bow and make her exit, an audience member yelled a demand to see her mysterious veiled accompanist again.1
Chen Baishao tried to politely refuse, explaining that her accompainist for the night was an outsider brought in temporarily due to her usual musician's injury, not a woman from the House of Overflowing Splendor, so it would be unsuitable for her to show her face in a pleasure house. The audience, largely noblemen that looked down on a courtesan "putting on airs" and daring to tell them "no," did not take well to this answer, and Chen Baishao struggled to placate the crowd.1
As Chen Baishao hesitated, Xi Ping disregarded her attempt to hide him and returned to the performance area in his courtesan disguise, inviting the audience to "look if they dared." This drew the crowd's attention away from Chen Baishao.1
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