Xing Xing’s stepmother explains that the cave festival will be a much grander event than usual because Emperor Hung Wu has proclaimed that all festivals in China need to be similar in quality. The stepmother hopes that the local prince will attend and believes that the event represents a promising opportunity for her daughter to find a husband. She has a one-wheeled cart built to convey Wei Ping to the festival, allowing her daughter to arrive “as fresh and happy as any girl with bound feet who is carried by a servant” (124).

The stepmother expects Xing Xing to push the cart. Although Xing Xing longs to see the acrobats and dancers who’ll perform at the festival, she feels ashamed at the thought of being seen in her tattered clothing. Her stepmother gives her a beautiful yellow dress that she’s embroidered with a dragon. She tells Xing Xing to go to a spring outside the village and compose poetry that she can recite at the festival, instructing the girl to remain there until dinnertime.

Xing Xing goes to the spring beside the temple, which is surrounded by a garden where songbirds gather. She feels anxious and longs for her father, but she tries to reassure herself that the dress her stepmother gave her is proof that her life is changing for the better. She composes a poem inspired by the natural beauty around her.

Hours later, she visits Master Tang’s home because she wants to recite her poem to Mei Zi and receive her feedback. However, Master Tang explains that his wife is busy in the kitchen because Xing Xing’s stepmother gave all her neighbors large amounts of fish. Xing Xing hears “a high-pitched hum” and feels “strangely dissociated from her body” as she walks home with trepidation (133). When she puts on her old dress, the hem is wet. Her stepmother has prepared fish stew for dinner.

The next morning, Xing Xing goes to the pool, but there’s no response when she calls out, “Beautiful fish, mother fish, come to me” (136). She calls for the fish until her throat is hoarse. Then she inspects the pool’s edge and sees how her stepmother carefully washed away all signs of the violence she had perpetrated the day before. Xing Xing realizes the stepmother has killed and cooked the fish.

Overcome with grief, Xing Xing runs to a field and lies there until nightfall. She hears a voice in her ear and sees the figure of a man in the distance. Certain that her father’s spirit is encouraging her onward, she hurries home and confronts her stepmother. The girl asks if the woman wore her old dress to trick the carp and whether she used the cleaver to kill it. Her stepmother seizes her wrist and threatens, “Don’t ever say such wicked things in front of my daughter. Ever. Or you’ll be sorry you were born” (139). Xing Xing remains determined to uncover evidence of what her stepmother did, but she doesn’t want to hurt Wei Ping by revealing the truth.

The next morning, the stepmother claims Xing Xing is ill, gives her some medicinal tea, and calls Xing Xing’s accusations the night before feverish ravings that must never be repeated. The stepmother also promises that she’ll plan for her stepdaughter’s future once Wei Ping is married. Xing Xing resolves to act like “her old, obedient self” so that her stepmother will lower her guard, and she can find proof that the woman killed the carp (142). Her stepmother stops her from emptying the chamber pot onto the dung heap even though this is the stepmother’s least favorite chore, raising Xing Xing’s suspicions.

Xing Xing finds her fish’s bones in the dung heap, washes them in the pool, and brings them to the storeroom. She’s the only member of her family small enough to access this space, and she decides to make it a shrine to her mother. While looking for a resting place for the bones, she finds a letter and a pile of silk and feathers under a loose stone. Xing Xing hides the letter in her dress

When her stepmother asks what she was doing in the storeroom, Xing Xing says that she likes to go there when she’s sad. Wei Ping offers to play a game with her half-sister to cheer her up, but the stepmother dislikes the closeness that’s developed between the girls and tries to keep them apart. Later, Xing Xing reads the letter at the pool and discovers that her mother wrote it to her when she was ill and dying. The message explains that it was hidden with her mother’s finest dress, cloak, and pearls, which all belong to Xing Xing now. The letter invites her to do whatever she needs to do with this finery and concludes, “My spirit will always be with you” (149). The letter says Wu was meant to tell his daughter about the letter and her mother’s belongings on his deathbed.

On the day of the cave festival, Xing Xing pretends to be sick so that her stepmother and Wei Ping will attend the event without her. Once they leave, she bathes and dresses herself in her mother’s finery, which includes a green silk dress embroidered with gold thread, a cloak made of kingfisher feathers, and golden shoes. Xing Xing hasn’t had any shoes in over a year, and the gold shoes seem almost magical to her “as though anyone who wore them could walk through fear, through cruelty, and come out standing strong” (154). Voicing her gratitude to her mother’s spirit, she heads to the park where the festival is being held.

The park is filled with a lively crowd of spectators, musicians, jugglers, acrobats, magicians, storytellers, and actors. Several men praise Xing Xing’s beauty, but she ignores them. She plans to find a husband for herself without her stepmother’s involvement even though young people can be killed for arranging their own marriages. For now, she simply wants to enjoy the festivities. Xing Xing samples a wide range of delicacies from different regions, including tropical fruits. She imagines herself embarking on a voyage beyond her home province and “looking and tasting and smelling and hearing and feeling all that the world had to offer” (159). Her joy dissolves when she sees a man sell one of his wives.

Suddenly, Xing Xing realizes that Wei Ping and her stepmother are staring at her. The terrified girl runs from the park, losing one of her golden shoes in the process. She’s “stupefied with grief” at the loss and sobs in the storeroom when she returns home. She fears that her stepmother will return and kick her out of her home, but the woman doesn’t come. Xing Xing hides her mother’s finery, puts her old clothes back on, and falls asleep with her arms around one of the bare date trees outside the cave.

Wei Ping finds Xing Xing and tells her all about the festival, including the stir created by a beautiful young woman in gold shoes. At first, the stepmother thought the young woman was Xing Xing because her attire closely resembled finery owned by the girl’s late mother. However, the stepmother dismissed the idea, claiming that Xing Xing isn’t beautiful enough to be the mysterious maiden.

About a week after the festival, a go-between named Xiu Mei comes to the cave and tells the stepmother that the prince intends to marry the maiden with the gold shoes, who has been described as “the most beautiful woman in the empire” (167). The stepmother gives two coins to Xiu Mei to put herself and her daughter down on the list of local women to be interviewed.

Wei Ping is scandalized that her mother wants a chance to marry the prince despite her protestations that she would never remarry. Her mother attempts to argue that this would be the best way to ensure a bright future for Wei Ping, adding Xing Xing’s welfare only as an afterthought. Xing Xing accuses her stepmother of being disloyal to her father’s memory, and she declares that the spirits will add this to her “other offenses.” Speaking indirectly, she provides proof that her stepmother knew that the carp was the reincarnation of her mother and that the stepmother killed the fish. Realizing what has happened, Wei Ping bursts into tears.

Wei Ping sides with her stepmother over Xing Xing, but Xing Xing doesn’t blame her. At first, Xing Xing finds the prince’s plan “wickedly unfair” because she imagines that the shoe must fit many women, making the test a sham. However, when the prince personally comes to her family’s cave to try the shoe on all the women present, she learns that the golden shoe hasn’t fit anyone. Wei Ping and her mother both try the shoe on, but it doesn’t fit them.

When Xing Xing boldly speaks to the prince, her stepmother claims that she is mentally ill. Xing Xing goes into the storeroom and returns in the beautiful clothing that she wore to the festival. The prince is stunned speechless for a moment and then places both golden shoes on her feet. When he says that he wants Xing Xing to be his wife, she points out that they don’t even know one another’s names. The prince introduces himself as Zhu Cheng Yun and adds that he’s often called Loyal Zhu. When she tells him her name, he says that a “star is destined to be the brightness of [his] life” (182). Xing Xing tells the prince that her mother was reborn as a carp, and he expresses his hope that she’s become a dragon. Xing Xing tells him that she can read and write and that she doesn’t have bound feet or a dowry. He has no objections. Inspired by his tender, charming behavior toward her, Xing Xing takes the prince’s hand and leaves the cave.