Summary
Silk fans snap shut like guillotines when Prince T’Su Wong Shih, heir to a Jiangnan jade fortune, first sees Quan Yin pruning wisteria in his uncle’s orchard; the gardener’s daughter becomes the secret pulse beneath his embroidered robes. Banished to California by Confucian snobbery, the boy-crowned prince swears across the Pacific that love will outrun dynastic decree. Three years later, in a fog-choked San Francisco warehouse, the same vow is auctioned by the pound: Quan Yin, trafficked, trembling, is hawked between crates of ginger and opium. Wong Shih, pockets as empty as a monk’s bowl, barters his freedom for a three-year indenture, signing his name in soot on a scrap of newspaper. Nights he polishes brass in saloons, days he gambles lottery tickets like prayer slips until fate spits out a five-thousand-dollar miracle. Before the ink dries on her manumission, a scar-faced tong boss kidnaps the receipt, brandishing it like a war banner. The prince trades his scholar’s silk for dockworker rags, stalks Chinatown’s lanterned alleys, and in a finale that smells of gunpowder and jasmine, reclaims his lotus with nothing but fists sharpened by exile.
Synopsis
The Chinese prince T'Su Wong Shih loves Quan Yin, the daughter of a gardener, but his uncle wants him to marry a girl of his own class. Leaving to study in the United States, the young man promises his beloved that they two will be together soon. Having finished university, one day T'Su Wong Shih visits the market of San Francisco, and at an auction of slaves, he finds Quan Yin auctioned. To save her, he agrees to pay a price of five thousand dollars but, not possessing the full amount, he makes a deal with the auctioneer for a three-year extension in which he must work to raise the money needed to rescue the girl. T'Su Wong Shih has no great success until he manages to win a large sum in a lottery. However, Quan Yin is now in danger because a Chinese gangster wants to have it and, to do that, goes to threaten the auctioneer who is forced to comply. T'Su Wong Shih is then engaged in a struggle to liberate his beloved: he defeats the gangster, rescues Quan Yin and claims her as his wife.
