Tiaoxiao Ling

Tan Lingyin, daughter of a wealthy merchant, runs away from an arranged marriage and makes a living writing storybooks under the pen name "Miaomiao Sheng." Taking Tang Tianyuan—the newly named tanhua and son of the Grand Secretary—as her model, she turns the hero into a gallant man-about-town, and the storybook's popularity makes Tang Tianyuan the object of every young lady's pursuit. Beset on all sides, Tang Tianyuan tracks her to Tongling County to settle accounts with "Miaomiao Sheng," only to receive a secret imperial order appointing him magistrate of Tongling, charged with covertly investigating an illegal gold-mining operation and the murder of the previous magistrate. It is at this moment that the money-loving Tan Lingyin applies for the post of the county office's legal secretary. Tang Tianyuan keeps her at his side, ostensibly to suppress and take revenge on her, in reality to keep her under watch. So unfolds the pairing of a cold, proud, inscrutable magistrate and a wildly imaginative, money-mad female secretary: bickering and pranking each other while joining forces to solve cases, from a woman's corpse in the wild hills to perilous mines, with misunderstandings and rapport alternating until affection quietly takes root amid the daily chaos. The book is built on a light frame of suspense and fleshed out with banter and farce, brisk in style and never ponderous.