The House of Overflowing Splendor, often referred to simply as Overflowing Splendor, was a high-class brothel in Tai Sui by Priest. It was the most well-renowned "pleasure house" the city of Jinping, serving as Jiangli's place of employment and the host of the legendary Flower Viewing Festival.
The House of Overflowing Splendor was in Jinping, the capital of Southern Wan. It sat on the lower-class east bank of the Lingyang river, far to the southeast of Prince Zhuang Manor.1
The House of Overflowing Splendor was a small building.1
It had a mechanized stage for its courtesans to perform music on. Guests sometimes threw gifts and trinkets onto the stage to tip performers, and a steam-powered mechanism could lower and raise parts of the stage where these gifts were thrown. This allowed items to be recovered immediately without sending someone in front of the audience to pick them up. When a courtesan was very popular and showered with too many ornaments, rapid use of this mechanism could produce excess steam that filled up the building like a steamer.1
There was a staircase to the upper floors that let out in the main stage area1
The House of Overflowing Splendor was Jinping's most highly-reputed brothel. It was generally seen as dainty and refined.1
Every ten years, as part of the festivities of the Grand Selection, the House of Overflowing Splendor put on its Flower Viewing Festival. This was an event during which the Overflowing Splendor's courtesans performed music and competed to be crowned the "Queen of Flowers," an honor marked by the awarding of the Camelia Crown. This competition, along with the women that performed in it, was legendary in contemporary Great Wan.1
The Flower Viewing Festival was, for its attendees, an occasion for drinking and revelry. It was common for patrons to throw gifts, including valuable silver and gold, onto the stage at the end of performances by courtesans they liked, and they would sometimes call for the winning woman to drink a toast with them or sing an encore. However, as the Flower Viewing Festival was often attended by many men of high rank and nobility, the crowd was generally prevented from growing too rowdy.1
Private room "Flower Viewing Invitations" were incredibly valuable and hard to come by, all the dandies of the city scrambling to secure one, and attendance of any kind was reserved for the high-class. The event was so renowned that a person lucky enough to overhear a snatch of the Queen of Flowers's performance from the outside might brag about it for half their lifetime.1
Given the nature of the Overflowing Splendor's business, there was some expectation that the competing courtesans would offer their services to patrons following the pageant.1
In order of appearance. * indicates a chapter in which The House of Overflowing Splendor is discussed but does not appear physically.