Beautiful Begonia

Zhuang Shuqin has been motherless since six. Seeing that her father gets drunk all day, Shuqin matches him and the newly-widowed Yang Huinong, and loves her daughter Panzhu as sister. However, Panzhu rejects Marquis Jiang Yaoting’s courtship for she intends to marry Yuen Liwen to whom Shuqin has been engaged since childhood. Shuqin, being drugged by Huinong, spits blood at the wedding night and is detested by Liwen’s father. Thus, Panzhu succeeds in replacing Shuqin as the bride.
After Huinong’s father offends the Dowager and is deprived of his status, both the two families undergo a living hardship. Unable to bear the poverty, Panzhu dumps her husband and son and goes back to the Marquis. However, she stabs him to death accidentally in his sadistic act and then becomes a prostitute during escape. And for the sake of curing the seriously ill Jiwen, Liwen’s son, Shuqin prostitutes herself under the name of Red Begonia.

Fifteen years later, Jiwen wins the first place in the imperial examination. Shocked by both his natural mother and foster mother being prostitutes, Jiwen finds it difficult to reunite with them. However, Shuqin’s self-sacrifice of killing herself moves everyone. At last, Huinong and Panzhu choose to live in seclusion in a nunnery and Liwen pleads with Shuqin to reunite with him.