The Lament of Autumn episode guide & recaps

Catch-up: episodes 1–17 in brief

We started this guide mid-run, so the first 17 episodes are summarized here instead of one by one.

• The bet (1–3). In 1919, student Ye Pingjun takes a job at a hotel to pay for her mother's treatment and is caught up in an attempt on Yu Changxuan, the playboy fifth son of warlord Yu Zhongquan. A waitress, Feng Yao, planted the assassins' silver pen on her. Ye Pingjun bets Yu Changxuan she'll find the real culprit in ten days, and does; Feng Yao, whose family Yu's men had ruined, takes her own life.
• The game (4–7). Yu Changxuan uses Ye Pingjun to make Tao Ziyi, daughter of banker Tao Xili, jealous, while secretly working on a deal to seize an arms shipment and build his own troops. Ye Pingjun works at his Yuchun theater, writing scripts for the opera singer Lan Qing. He quietly takes on her mother's medical care.
• Jiang Xueting returns (8–13). Her childhood sweetheart Jiang Xueting comes home from abroad and joins the army. He steals files exposing the Yu family for passing off miners as fallen soldiers and gives them to newspaper editor Shang Hongwen. Yu Changxuan's feelings turn real and possessive.
• Fengtai (14–16). Yu Changxuan holds Jiang Xueting's life over her and keeps her at his Fengtai villa. She goes on hunger strike and nearly takes her own life. In episode 16 he lets her go and leaves for the front.
• The ambush (17). Jiang Xueting slides into despair and an affair with a Japanese woman, Yuko, while Yu Changxuan is ambushed by rival warlord Mou Linsen.

TVmao (电视猫) episode synopses