"Chen Shimei!"
"These are the memorial tablets of your father and mother. Will you not even own the bond you owe your own parents?!"
"You madwoman! Again and again you would have this princess acknowledge kin who have no claim at all. Sheer nonsense! Throw her out at once!"
"Lord Bao! This humble woman accuses him of the Five Great Crimes: deceiving his sovereign, failing the bond he owes his parents, setting aside his wife to marry again, disowning the wife who shared his poverty, and abandoning his kin and his children!"
The first episode of Justice Bao told how disaster struck Qin Xianglian's hometown, both her parents-in-law died, and she took the children to the capital to seek her husband, only to find that Chen Shimei had come out as the Number One Scholar and married the princess—which was pretty absurd, really, a Number One Scholar as imperial son-in-law.
Chen Shimei would not acknowledge the wife who had shared his poverty. He would not acknowledge the children either, and he even knocked his parents' memorial tablets to the ground.
Qin Xianglian knew neither the place nor anyone in it. By chance she stopped Chancellor Wang's sedan to lodge her complaint. Chancellor Wang helped her find Chen Shimei, who still refused to acknowledge her, and so he pointed her toward Kaifeng Prefecture.
And so she beat the drum and cried injustice. Bao Zheng opened court and enumerated Chen Shimei's Five Great Crimes!
And then that was all!
These days every province was developing its television industry. Local viewers could usually get only two stations, one from their own province and CCTV. As the authoritative national broadcaster, CCTV was the first to extend the population it covered.
Households that could more or less afford a television could all receive CCTV. Failing that, they could at least watch local stations rebroadcasting CCTV's programs.
When the first episode of Justice Bao snapped off, the provinces might have let it pass, but in Beijing it stirred up a hornet's nest. It was the New Year. The leaders were on holiday too, and who on holiday doesn't glance at the television?
While Chen Qi and Yang Jie spent the New Year safe and sound at home, other people were the ones catching it.
"Ring-ring!"
"Ring-ring!"
"Aiya!"
On the morning of the first day of the lunar new year, the telephone at home rang yet again—she had lost count of how many times. Ruan Ruolin clutched at her heart. She was nearly having an attack.
She was CCTV's deputy station chief and director of the Television Drama Center. A telephone installed at home was itself a mark of status; by the same token, anyone who could telephone her stood even higher.
"Hello?"
She answered with a bitter, worried look, and sure enough she heard: "Xiao Ruan, that Justice Bao of yours is very well made! The actor for Bao Zheng was well chosen—broad face, large ears, real presence. Gongsun Ce is spare and refined too, Chen Shimei rakish and handsome, Qin Xianglian especially good... I wanted to ask, will it still air today?"
"Yes!"
"How many episodes?"
"One a day, six in all!"
"I'm not interfering in your work. I'm only offering a small opinion as a viewer. One episode is too few. Over the New Year we really ought to let the masses enjoy themselves and watch the whole thing in one sitting, don't you think?"
"Uh—we will give your opinion careful consideration!"
"Good, then. A New Year's greeting to you. I won't disturb you any further!"
Doo-doo-doo! The other end hung up.
Fortunately Ruan Ruolin was getting on in years. On the first day of the new year she did not have to go out paying calls; she waited for relatives and juniors to come pay their respects to her. Otherwise she truly would not have dared leave. A while later the phone rang again. She picked it up and heard:
"Hello, Xiao Ruan!"
Time after time, until Ruan Ruolin could bear it no longer. She simply telephoned the CCTV station chief. "Leaders on every side are responding with great enthusiasm. The general feeling is that there isn't enough to watch. Two episodes a day—or else you can go explain it to them!"
"Then it will all be finished by the third day of the new year. What do we air after that?"
"Rerun it!"
"..."
The other end was helpless too, and could only say, "All right. Starting today, two episodes a day. Oh, and since the response is this good, why not shoot a few more episodes and let Bao Zheng try a few more cases? Can you get that organized?"
"There are difficulties. Yang Jie has already taken the assignment for Journey to the West, and the screenwriter Chen Qi is not someone from the television system."
"You sound them out first. We'll talk when that's done!"
Ruan Ruolin hung up and sighed. Why had she gone and chosen the Spring Festival slot, of all times? Where was she supposed to find anyone? Over the New Year, was she to go to people's homes and talk work?
…………
While she fretted, the viewers were delighted.
From the first day of the lunar new year, Justice Bao aired two episodes back to back.
Qin Xianglian had sued Chen Shimei only because she wanted her husband back. But when she heard Bao Zheng say that if the crime were established, the law called for beheading, she drew back. Of her own accord she dropped the suit, refused the silver Bao Zheng offered her, and went to settle in a town on the outskirts of Kaifeng Prefecture.
Hardship followed hardship. First she was nearly assaulted by a scoundrel of an innkeeper—the innkeeper played by Zhang Tielin.
Fortunately Zhan Zhao, who was there investigating a case, came to her rescue. Wang Qun was good-looking. The Zhan Zhao he played could not compare with He Jiajin, but he was adequate, and his martial skills were good. Zhan Zhao saved her and returned to Kaifeng Prefecture to report. What he had been investigating was precisely another case woven into the story: the one in which six corpses were pieced together into a seventh!
This plot was mainly there to show Bao Zheng's extraordinary intelligence, judging cases as if by divine insight.
Because, to be honest, the original Justice Bao showed more of his upright, unbending side. One could not see that he had anything special when it came to trying cases. The original had been made in more than two hundred episodes, and the later stretches went completely off the rails. Even demons and monsters came out, and it turned straight into fantasy.
Meanwhile Qin Xianglian was hunted by an assassin sent by Chen Shimei, then falsely accused by the local magistrate, and rescued by Zhan Zhao once again.
This time her resolve to press the charge was firm.
"Princess, I have already given my husband up to you. What more do you want?"
"Silence!"
In the great hall, the princess played by Zhou Jie was radiant and lovely, noble from head to foot, and she bore down on Qin Xianglian. "The imperial son-in-law was mine to begin with. What need was there for you to give him up? What a joke! Do not imagine this is the end of it. There is one matter that must be settled today!"
"From this day on, you are no longer a daughter-in-law of the Chen family, and these two children are forbidden the surname Chen! Only the children of the imperial son-in-law and myself may bear the surname Chen!"
The princess brought the Empress Dowager out. Bao Zheng had been ready to endure it, but the princess went looking for her own ruin, and he could bear no more. He was determined to behead Chen Shimei. The Empress Dowager came out again to stop him. "Bao Zheng! If you dare put the imperial son-in-law to the chopper, I will strip you of your career!"
"That is bullying past all bearing!!!"
"This princess is too hateful. I want her dead!"
"Even Bao Zheng gave way, and Qin Xianglian doesn't even want her husband anymore. How can she still throw her power around and keep the children from even being entered in the family genealogy!"
At that moment, the ten million households across the country that owned a television broke into open curses, burning with righteous anger, and then, strung tight with suspense, nearly every one of them stared at that Black-faced Bao on the screen.
The court seemed to freeze. Only the tight drumbeats of the score worked all the harder on the viewers.
They saw Bao Zheng raise both hands, lift the black gauze cap from his head, and look at the Empress Dowager without a shred of fear. Wang Chao, Ma Han, Zhang Long, and Zhao Hu stood in a row as well, and as one they removed their official caps.
"Bao Zheng will stake this black gauze cap, and still see the imperial son-in-law punished!"
"Bring out the imperial sword of authority!"
The Empress Dowager still tried to struggle. "The imperial sword of authority was bestowed by the imperial house, and the imperial house may take it back!"
"Empress Dowager, do you not know that a sovereign's word is no jest!"
At these words the Empress Dowager took a step back. All her force was gone. She sank dejectedly into her seat, and only the princess's sobbing cries remained.
"Oh? This part is well written!"
"It lifts the whole thing to another level at a stroke!"
Quite a few people clapped in approval, and explained it to those without the learning. "The imperial sword of authority was bestowed by the emperor himself. How could he break faith with a minister? The Empress Dowager may dote on the princess, but set beside the emperor the princess amounts to nothing. She is of the imperial house, and must uphold the prestige of the imperial house all the more."
The princess knelt on the ground, weeping and crying out.
Qin Xianglian knelt as well, all in mourning clothes, tears in her eyes, piteous and lovely.
Chen Shimei, in a prisoner's clothes, knelt on the ground too, his hair in disorder, his face ashen. With that cry of "Open—the chopper—!"
he was forced down onto the dragon-head chopper.
"Good!!"
In that moment a whole family, neighbors included, crowded into one room, and who knew how many people clapped and cheered.
The opera The Case of the Beheading of Chen Shimei had been sung for a very long time, but who had ever seen it worked up into a television drama this shamelessly melodramatic—pah, this brilliant?
In these years ordinary people identified fiercely with what they watched on film and television. When Water Margin aired in the 1990s, there were even people who, seeing Song Jiang accept the amnesty, smashed their televisions in a rage...
Chapter 264