Dai Zhaoan

A Chinese prostitute weds, studies painting, and becomes a renowned artist and professor in Paris.

During the Chinese-Japanese war, an archaelogist finds the treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, attracting the attention of the Kuomintang, the Japanese and the Green Dragon gang.

A murder investigation in Donghai City uncovers a larger conspiracy.

The protagonists are mainly Huirong, Zhaobai, and Jikan, who have studied business management in the USA and have returned to their hometown, Shanghai. Huirong and Zhaobai are engaged, and although three of them are close friends, problems arise when they find out that their opinions clash on the matter of what the objective for building a new China should be and what direction it should take.

Set in the 1930s, “Fortress Besieged” follows the misadventures of Fang Hung-chien, a bumbling everyman who wastes his time studying abroad, and secures a fake degree when learning he has run out of money and must return home to China. Fang was the son of a country gentleman. A marriage had been arranged for him while at university, but the intended wife died before he could see her.