Title: Beauty's Scheme

Producer: Yu Zheng

Directors: Ng Kam-yuen, Leung Hin-chuen, Chan Kwok-wah

Starring: Ruby Lin, Yang Mi, Wang Likun, He Shengming, Chen Jianfeng, Luo Jin, Zhang Meng

First broadcast date: March 15, 2010

Broadcast platforms: Shanghai TV Drama Channel, Anhui, Shandong, Southeast, Henan, and Shenzhen.

Plot Summary:

In the early years of the Western Han dynasty, Dou Yifang, a singing girl from Chang’an, encountered Prince Liu Heng—persecuted by Empress Lü—on the eve of her wedding. She used her fiancé’s tiger talisman to help him escape the city, an act that led to the massacre of her entire family and her own enslavement in the palace. She then devised a scheme: she swapped the son born to Lady Wang with Empress Zhang Yan, Lü’s granddaughter. Impressed by her wit and resourcefulness, Lü dispatched her to the State of Dai under the guise of a marriage arrangement, tasking her with keeping watch over Liu Heng and his mother. To spare the people from further suffering and to earn Lü’s trust, Yifang proposed that Liu Heng secretly train troops under the pretext of building palaces, ensuring that everyone would regard her as a harbinger of misfortune. Only Liu Heng remained steadfast in his faith in her, eventually elevating her to empress. Together, the couple braved one trial after another, ultimately achieving a legacy that would endure for millennia.
And she, who was revered as a model for all women under heaven, found that with power came the gradual erosion of her emotions. She strove to win back her husband’s heart, prevented her sons from turning on one another, and, employing the uniquely feminine approach, defused crisis after crisis—ultimately laying the groundwork for the famed Wenjing Era in the history of the Western Han dynasty. Her name too was enshrined in the annals of history, celebrated by generations to come.