Quick Wear Dream Qiqi

In the tenth year of Emperor Xianfeng's reign, the British and French allied forces invaded the capital.

A British soldier discovered a copper box in the ruins of the Old Summer Palace. The butterfly pattern on the lid of the box was faintly visible in the smoke.

He pried open the box, revealing a seal covered in verdigris. The female characters on the seal glowed strangely in the firelight.

"What is this?" His superior rolled over the seal with his riding boot, and the fluorescent powder stuck to the sole of his boot like crushed butterfly wings.

"It's like a Chinese amulet," the soldier said, stuffing the seal into his backpack. "I heard their women use butterflies to curse their enemies."

This butterfly seal then wandered the London antique market, where it was transformed by a watchmaker into a pocket watch ornament, used as a paperweight by a poet, and finally engraved with a Latin inscription by a collector. Yet, despite its many trials and tribulations, the female script character for "power" (權) on the seal remains clear, and the fluorescent powder never fades, as if awaiting a destined moment.

In 1876, Queen Victoria received a mysterious gift at Buckingham Palace - an oriental lacquer box inlaid with a butterfly seal.

When she was dressing herself in front of the mercury mirror in the box, a woman wearing Qing Dynasty official uniform suddenly appeared on the mirror.

"I am Xinrong," the woman in the mirror said, her voice carrying the vicissitudes of time and space. "I once fought for women's rights in another time and space."

Victoria raised an eyebrow. "I heard you run the country with butterflies? To me, butterflies are just decorations for the ball."

Meng Qiqi's image unfolded in the mirror, creating a holographic map with countless butterfly lights flashing on it. "These are women's trading ports distributed around the world. Using your steam engine technology, combined with my butterfly code. Look at this Madame Butterfly teahouse in London. The female customers use a clerk to keep accounts and your telegraph to transmit information."

The Queen looked at the dancing fluorescent butterflies in the mirror and thought of the women's edition of "The Biography of Queen Victoria" she had received.

The book juxtaposes her reign with the reforms of Meng Qiqi (Xinrong), calling them the "Butterfly Queens of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres."

In the 15th year of the Jiaqing reign, Yongqi's "Butterfly New Deal" encountered unprecedented challenges.

The conservative leader, Minister of Rites Ortai, joined forces with the Imperial Clan Court to impeach the first batch of female scholars admitted through the special imperial examination for "violating ancestral rules."

"Your Majesty, do you know?" Ortai displayed the forged secret letter in Nüshu in the court. "These women dared to say in their memorials, 'Men are Qian, women are Kun, and Qian and Kun should exist side by side!'"

Yongqi stared at the female handwriting on the secret letter and recognized it as a forgery by Meng Qiqi (Xinrong), a disciple in his later years.

He calmly took out a genuine butterfly seal, the inkpad revealing an anti-counterfeiting fluorescence in the sunlight. "Master Ortai, you know that the strokes of the authentic female script character '平立' are like the fluttering of two butterfly wings, while the fake is like a single wing, unable to fly."

Ortai broke out in a cold sweat. He didn't know that Yongqi had already added a "time stamp" to the Nüshu script - the Nüshu characters of each era would have subtle changes, like the annual rings on a butterfly's wings.

In 1900, during the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China, the butterfly seal fell into the hands of British sinologist James Legge.

In his laboratory at Oxford University, he used the latest spectrometer to analyze the composition of the phosphor and was surprised to find that it contained rare earth elements that were impossible to exist in the 18th century.

“This is no ordinary pigment,” he wrote in his journal. “It is more like the DNA of a civilization, waiting to be decoded.”

At the same time, in the "Natural Foot Society" in Shanghai, Qiu Jin was looking at the paper published by James Legge, and suddenly remembered the legend of "Butterfly Princess" that her grandmother told her when she was a child.

She bit her finger and wrote in the Women's Journal: "Xinrong's unfinished work should be continued with our blood."

In her later years, Queen Victoria often pondered a replica of the butterfly seal.

She ordered craftsmen to incorporate the butterfly pattern of the seal into her scepter, and planted orchids of the East in the garden of Windsor Castle. The center of each flower was shaped like the Chinese character "治" in Nüshu.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked Meng Qiqi in the mirror. "Are you afraid that a woman in power will overturn the world?"

"I'm afraid of being forgotten," Meng Qiqi's image became transparent. "I'm afraid that future generations will only remember the butterfly's beauty, but forget that it was once a weapon that broke through the cocoon."

The Queen suddenly removed the diamond butterfly from her crown and replaced it with a fluorescent butterfly made by Legge.

As she delivered a speech in Parliament about women's property rights, the butterflies above her head shimmered, like applause across time and space.

In the 18th year of Jiaqing's reign, Ortai and others planned to set fire to the archives of the Women's Commercial Tax Bureau.

When the fire was at its worst, Yongqi personally led the Imperial Guards to put out the fire and rescued the safe containing the butterfly seal from the fire.

His dragon robe was burned by the fire, but he still protected the seal tightly.

"Your Majesty, why do you have to do this?" Ortai knelt in the ashes. "Women interfering in politics will ultimately lead to the downfall of the country!"

Yongqi showed the intact women's account book in the safe. Every page was made of the fireproof paper invented by Meng Qiqi. "Do you think burning the files can erase the contributions of women? These figures have long been engraved in the hearts of the people of the world - last year, women accounted for 23% of the commercial tax, exceeding the grain transport."

In the firelight, Yongqi's shadow overlapped with Meng Qiqi's portrait.

He suddenly realized that the real resistance to reform has never been the blatant violence of the conservatives, but the invisible cocoon woven by thousands of years of ethics.

Wuchang, 1911

Amid the gunfire of the Wuxi Uprising, a woman named Shen xx discovered a butterfly seal in the Hankou Concession.

She used lemon juice to develop the seal and saw tiny female characters written on the edge of the seal—a secret message left by Meng Qiqi for future generations: "When the butterfly takes flight again, civilization will be reborn."

Shen xx took the seal with her to join the Women's Northern Expedition and used it as an emblem on the military flag.

At the founding ceremony of the Nanjing Provisional Government, she displayed the seal in public, and fluorescent powder cast a butterfly shadow on Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People flag.

"This is the seal of a woman who ruled the country a hundred years ago," she said, her voice rising above the salute. "Today, we will use it to stamp the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China!"

In 2023, Queen Victoria's scepter and Meng Qiqi's butterfly seal were exhibited side by side at the British Museum's "Butterfly Effect" special exhibition.

A Chinese curator said to the AR glasses: "These two cultural relics are separated by a hundred years, but they share the same code——"

Through the glasses, Meng Qiqi met the virtual image of Queen Victoria again.

This time they didn't say anything, they just folded a paper butterfly each.

Two butterflies passed through the barrier of time and space, and the moment their wings touched, they burst into a fluorescence that spanned thousands of years.

The curator wrote in the exhibition brochure: "Butterflies have never been ornaments, but rather carriers of the genes of civilization. When we learn to read the code on their wings, we can hear the sounds of all those flapping for freedom."

In the 25th year of the Jiaqing reign, Yongqi issued his final edict on his deathbed: "The special examination for women will never be abolished, and the tradition of women's calligraphy will never be interrupted."

He gave the butterfly seal to the emperor's daughter, Princess Gulun Rongshou. The princess's title was written in women's script, meaning "the butterfly flying forever."

Ultimately, Ortai and his ilk were unable to halt the march of history. At Yongqi's funeral, the procession included not only princes and ministers, but also female shopkeepers from Jiangnan, shepherds from the northern frontier, and female missionaries from the West. Each held a paper butterfly with the words "Thank you for breaking free from your cocoon" written on it in female script.

When the coffin was lowered into the mausoleum, a real butterfly landed on the tombstone. As its wings opened and closed, the fluorescent afterimages of the words "Qi" and "Yong" could be vaguely seen.

The tomb keeper said that it was the spirits of Meng Qiqi and Yongqi, transformed into butterflies, continuing to guard the ideals they pursued throughout their lives.