During the Grand Selection season of the twenty-eighth year of Taiming, the famed courtesan Jiangli won the camelia crown at the Flower Viewing Festival. Most contestants that year wore thick layers of white makeup, as was fashionable, but Jiangli performed with an unpainted face and plain clothes, singing a new song and accompanied by only a single talented qin player who hid behind a screen. She was not the most beautiful of the women there, but her simple elegance set her apart from her peers and won her the audience's goodwill. She was showered with gifts at the end of her song, then crowned the Queen of Flowers.1
Jiangli's performance and subsequent win were attended by The Marquis of Yongning, there due to insistent pressure from his peers.1
After she was crowned, Jiangli made a round of the audience to show her thanks. Some of her higher-ranking clients entreated her to make toasts and sing an a capella encore, which she had comply with. When she finally finished and moved to make her exit, someone in the crowd demanded to have a real look at her musician. This musician had performeded while veiled and hidden behind a cotton screen, and this mystery, combined with her talent with the qin, had intrigued the men of the crowd.1
Jiangli tried to refuse the crowd, telling them that her musician was an outsider brought in temporarily due to her previous 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 noblemen in the crowd did not take well to refusal, looking down at Jiangli for daring to tell them "no" as a lowly courtesan, and Jiangli froze before them, uncertain.1
Before this conflict could escalate further, the musician, Xi Ping dressed up as a courtesan, descended to the stage area of his own accord. He dressed in the "fashionable" style, with a sheer veil over a full face of thick white makeup and a poorly-fitted set of women's clothes. He announced himself in a false high-pitched voice as he walked downstairs with his qin, telling the audience to look all they liked, if they dared. He made his own round of the room as Jiangli had, his smiles revealing lip rouge that had smeared onto his teeth.1
The Marquis of Yongning, unimpressed with the performers and this strange musician's appearance, got up to leave the House of Overflowing Splendor just as Xi Ping finished his rounds and moved to exit. Both parties, paying little attention to the other, tried to leave at the same time and were forced to look each other in the face as they met. This encounter almost immediately sent Xi Ping sprinting away and out the door with a look of alarm, leaving the Marquis baffled in his wake. Then the Marquis realized why Jiangli's strange musician had looked so familiar to him up close; "she" was Xi Ping, and Xi Ping was his son.1
The Marquis nearly collapsed in anger, clutching his chest, and could barely choke out the words as he shouted for his servants to chase down the fiendish Xi Ping. This shout revealed the mysterious musician's true identity to the rest of the brothel's patrons, and the crowd gawked collectively as the young Viscount ran away.1