Fluentide True Crime · Season 1
Ten Years at the Temple Door
In 1935, a woman walked into a Buddhist temple in Tianjin with a pistol under her coat and a stack of poems in her bag.
She had been waiting ten years.
A true story. Told in English, with Chinese woven into every sentence.
By the end of the season, you'll know 150 of the most common Chinese words — without studying.
Tap any Chinese character to hear it and see the meaning.
Start Episode 1The Temple Door · 6 minEpisodes
The Act and the Question
The Father
4.Soldiers and Telegrams
For ten years, a folded telegram was how she knew him.
5.The Campaign of 1925
The battle that did not go the way he expected.
6.What Sun Did
The beheading, and the head that kept going north.
7.The News Came Home
A telegram reaches Shazigang. A daughter asks which platform.
Ten Years of Revenge
8.A New Name
The characters she chose meant sword raised.
9.Learning to Shoot
A daughter of a military family learns a handgun in secret.
10.Leaving Home
She marries. She has two sons. She does not forget.
11.The Second Notebook
Eight years of rumors, dead ends, and handwritten notes.
12.The Man's Other Name
The man who ordered the beheading takes a Buddhist name.
13.The Room on the Lane
She finds him kneeling every morning in the same hall.
The Temple
14.The Prayer Hall
Thirty mornings in the back of the prayer hall.
15.The Month of Watching
She memorizes the pace of his prayer beads.
16.This Morning
She leaves the house before dawn and does not come back.
17.Inside the Hall
The chanting had already begun.
18.Three Shots
On a line she had been using to count, she reached into her coat.
19.The Pamphlet
She handed a stranger the pages she had been writing for ten years.
Aftermath
20.The Lawyer
The police ask who she is. Her pages have already told them.
21.The Front Page
Overnight, the whole country is reading her name.
22.Filial Piety on Trial
A trial about whether filial piety is a defense.
23.The Verdict
Guilty of premeditated murder. Ten years.
24.The Pardon
Eleven months later, Chiang Kai-shek issues a personal pardon.
25.The Forty-Three Years
1979. Beijing. An old woman dies.