Brick carving

“Picking Up the Hairpin”: On the night of the Lantern Festival, Huo Xiaoyu and her maid, Huan Sha, went out to admire the lanterns. In a moment of carelessness, Xiaoyu lost her family’s treasured purple jade hairpin. The scholar Li Yi found the pin beneath a plum tree and, using it as a token of his suit, proposed to Xiaoyu. The two were overjoyed to become husband and wife.

“Don’t Hairpin”: Li Yi was dispatched to the frontier at Yumen Pass, and Xiao Yu saw him off to Baji Bridge, where she broke a willow branch as a token of parting—both heartbroken and reluctant to part. Freshly wed, they were now forced to endure a painful separation.

“Si Chai”: Grand Preceptor Lu, both envious of Li Yi’s arrogance and admiring his talent, resolved to make him his son-in-law. To that end, he devised every possible scheme to thwart their union, leaving Li Yi and Xiao Yu separated for three long years with no word of one another, their hearts aching in distant longing.


“Round Hairpin”: A noble kinsman in a yellow robe, moved by indignation on behalf of Huo Xiaoyu, seized an opportunity to spiritedly escort the imprisoned Li Yi to Xiaoyu’s home. There, their long-standing misunderstanding was finally cleared, and they reconciled as before, their bond restored and their lives once more united.