"I Surrender" meme entry: Wings of the Phoenix
Wings of the Phoenix:
A historical drama, set in the Tang Dynasty.
The Wing family have been traders working the Silk Route for generations. They have holdings and investments across the known world and possibly into parts of the unknown world. Their main center of operations is in the Pearl River Delta, in the port city of Guangzhou.
The family's business is led by the mother of the family, Lien, who has been running things for years ever since inheriting the job from her mother in law. Her husband, Jinhai, is the eldest son of his generation and spends most of his time gallivanting across the seas bringing in goods and treasures from exotic far-off locales such as Java, India and Persia. Recently, as a sop to his approaching old age, he has begun sailing to ports closer to Guangzhou.
Eldest son Shan helps his mother with the books and is involved in a few shady deals of his own. He is very much the family homebody (meaning he prefers to stay within the bounds of the city). Youngest son Cheung is studying to take the civil service exams, at his mother's insistence. He himself would rather be doing, well, anything else really. The middle son of the family, Gan, is following in his father's wandering footsteps and serving as his second-in-command on his trading ship.
When the series opens, Gan has recently arrived back in port with his father's ship. And his father's body. Jinhai died in a distant port. Publicly, the story is given out that Jinhai's boisterous ways caught up with him, but Gan tells his mother and eldest brother a different story after introducing them to a fresh-faced young sailor who has accompanied him home with the body.
The fresh faced young sailor is, in the best tradition of adventure stories, a young woman in disguise. Lien takes one look at her and asks, conversationally, "Daughter or mistress?" before being told that the young woman, Khadija, is the former and that she knows why Jinhai was killed. See, she's got a map. A map that leads to a rumored faster trade route to a rich land to the West.
The action of the series comes from trying to gear up for an expedition while trying also to keep the map a secret from other traders, including a rival branch of the family. Also, the people who killed Jinhai have followed Gan home and are waiting for their chance to strike -- and may find a path to the family through Shen's shady dealings. Khadija may or may not be lying about her true status. And will Cheung pass or fail his exams? Where does the map lead? For the answers to these and many other questions, tune into the "Wings of the Phoenix" and find out!
A historical drama, set in the Tang Dynasty.
The Wing family have been traders working the Silk Route for generations. They have holdings and investments across the known world and possibly into parts of the unknown world. Their main center of operations is in the Pearl River Delta, in the port city of Guangzhou.
The family's business is led by the mother of the family, Lien, who has been running things for years ever since inheriting the job from her mother in law. Her husband, Jinhai, is the eldest son of his generation and spends most of his time gallivanting across the seas bringing in goods and treasures from exotic far-off locales such as Java, India and Persia. Recently, as a sop to his approaching old age, he has begun sailing to ports closer to Guangzhou.
Eldest son Shan helps his mother with the books and is involved in a few shady deals of his own. He is very much the family homebody (meaning he prefers to stay within the bounds of the city). Youngest son Cheung is studying to take the civil service exams, at his mother's insistence. He himself would rather be doing, well, anything else really. The middle son of the family, Gan, is following in his father's wandering footsteps and serving as his second-in-command on his trading ship.
When the series opens, Gan has recently arrived back in port with his father's ship. And his father's body. Jinhai died in a distant port. Publicly, the story is given out that Jinhai's boisterous ways caught up with him, but Gan tells his mother and eldest brother a different story after introducing them to a fresh-faced young sailor who has accompanied him home with the body.
The fresh faced young sailor is, in the best tradition of adventure stories, a young woman in disguise. Lien takes one look at her and asks, conversationally, "Daughter or mistress?" before being told that the young woman, Khadija, is the former and that she knows why Jinhai was killed. See, she's got a map. A map that leads to a rumored faster trade route to a rich land to the West.
The action of the series comes from trying to gear up for an expedition while trying also to keep the map a secret from other traders, including a rival branch of the family. Also, the people who killed Jinhai have followed Gan home and are waiting for their chance to strike -- and may find a path to the family through Shen's shady dealings. Khadija may or may not be lying about her true status. And will Cheung pass or fail his exams? Where does the map lead? For the answers to these and many other questions, tune into the "Wings of the Phoenix" and find out!