Royal Nirvana

The prince is twenty when the story opens. He has just finished three years of mourning for his mother and still has not been capped. The capping ceremony, guan li (冠礼, "the coming-of-age rite for a young nobleman"), is no formality: for an heir, being capped means being allowed into government. The emperor keeps postponing it, while his eldest son, the Prince of Qi (齐王), born to a concubine, is already capped and married.

Lu Wenxi (陆文昔), an official's daughter, crosses the prince's path in a scandal over the civil-service examinations. When disaster falls on her father and brother, she enters his household disguised as a palace official. From there the story runs as a chain of "cases", each a contest of wits.

The dynasty is invented, so no history homework is needed, though everything you see points to the Song (960–1279). The novel's author supplied the footnote: objects, costume, art and customs follow the Song, while statutes, institutions and ritual follow the early Ming.

It is adapted from a web novel serialised on Jinjiang Literature City (晋江文学城) by Xue Man Liang Yuan (雪满梁园), who also wrote the screenplay.

The title comes from an old story in the Shishuo Xinyu (世说新语, "A New Account of the Tales of the World"). The poet-official Lu Ji (陆机), about to be executed in 303, asks whether he will ever again hear the cranes cry at Huating (华亭), his home. "The cry of the cranes at Huating" became shorthand for regret too late, for a life that politics swallowed.

On paper the show opened well, scoring 7.7 on Douban. Yet critics noted a gap between how good people said it was and how many watched. Joy of Life (庆余年) arrived two weeks later and took over the conversation.

The broadcast version was cut from 72 episodes to 60. The missing material reached Youku in 2020 as a separate 12-episode side story, Bie Yun Jian (别云间).