[YWW.ME] 2025.09.23 Palace Maid's Memoirs - Liu Qiqi

Set against the backdrop of the late Qing Dynasty court and inspired by the book *Memoirs of a Palace Maid*, this story portrays the lives of ordinary people. The vermilion palace walls confined countless dawns and dusks, yet they could not contain the hearts of these ordinary individuals. They were the vague "waiting" figures in history books, but the protagonists of their own lives. They would secretly count the years until they left the palace by the charcoal fire on winter nights; they would swallow their grievances amidst the scolding of their masters, only to turn and pass a secretly hidden pastry to their companions. The palace walls isolated them from the world's hustle and bustle, but they could not sever the ordinary joys and sorrows. Some, in the shadows of the corner towers, used burnt charcoal pencils to draw the moon of their hometown on the walls; others, on snowy mornings, secretly built an unformed snowman, leaving their footprints along the way. These unrecorded fragments are hidden in the cracks of the glazed tiles and settled in the marks of the golden bricks.