With help from a princess, Meng avoids punishment from the emperor when she reveals her real gender, finds her father, and marries her true love, a young intellectual man who was badly injured while saving people trapped in an icy river.

The book ends happily when the protagonist makes a living out of a ferry with her husband.

Readers can see in the novel influences of some Chinese classics that also center on women's fates: A Dream of Red Mansions, The Peony Pavilion (Mudan Ting), and The Emperor's Female Son-in-Law (Nyu Fuma). Yu says he wants to express "the beautiful strength of life that once appeared in history".

Yu says among all the characters, he loves Meng the most.

"The protagonist Meng He has not only a beautiful face but also a beautiful heart. She bravely endures whatever fate brings about to her, and takes responsibilities to help others," Yu says.

"There are all kinds of obstacles and difficulties in life, but there are also beautiful things and beautiful people ... I grew up in times of scarcity in the countryside, and met with lots of such kind of beautiful women in childhood."

The novel is also a metaphor, Yu says, through which he wants to note that the evolution of history is like a river, which sometimes gets frozen and blocked but brave people will dredge.

Representatives for the publisher tell China Daily they are confident the book will be a hit with readers, thanks to Yu's prominence and talent as a writer. Beijing Motie Book Co has distributed 150,000 copies.

On Dangdang.com, one of the most popular book shopping website in China, the book has gotten more than 800 comments, but some readers complain that the novel lacks any unexpected twists, although the writing is clear and imaginative.