The Golden Hairpin

By Qinghan CeCe (f.)

Translated by Alex Woodend

(2015, translated 2018)

(Historical Romance Novel)

Ms. Quinghan is a writer of popular historical court romances. The Golden Hairpin, her first book to be translated into English, features Huang Zixia, a girl who, at seventeen, has already established herself as an extraordinary detective. When she realizes she is the prime suspect in the murder of her entire family, she flees the region to seek powerful allies in the city of Kui, where the court is in turmoil over a kidnapping and a series of murders. The Golden Hairpin is representative of the genre of historical dramas popular on Chinese television. The writing appears to be very heavy-handed and wooden, perhaps due to a poor translation. Though the detective work of Huang Zixia is clever, we learn very little about the interior life of the young woman apart from what may be a budding romance between her and her employer, the Prince!

“Why would the girl be so shortsighted? It must have been for passion.” The storyteller smacked his lips and pressed on. “It’s said that her husband had been arranged since childhood, but after she grew up, she found another sweetheart. So when her grandmother and uncle came to discuss her marriage, she personally served them poisoned sheep’s-hoof soup. Governor Huang; his wife; Huang Yan, her brother; and even her grandmother and uncle were all poisoned to death. Only she escaped, disappeared. Officers found out she went to the apothecary a few days earlier to buy arsenic—they’ve got written records—and they found the arsenic in her room. Her heart was taken, but her parents forced her to marry someone else, so she poisoned her family and ran off with her lover!” (3)