farewell my concubine summary

Once the curtain goes up they have to perform the play from beginning to end. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and will endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history. "Farewell my Concubine" is exceptionally accurate in portraying the monumental changes that were sweeping China at the time. Dieyi falls in love with Xiaolou just as the character in the play does, and he hopes they can be together. . Plot Summary. We’d love your help. Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. This book was slow to warm up and I almost abandoned it, but because it was made into a movie, I wanted to know why. A book less about the beijing opera but more about how the history of china affects the daily lives of millions of Chinese people, and their culture. The story begins in 1920s China where a prostitute begs the master of a Beijing opera training school to take her son as student. However, their act and, ultimately, their friendship is tested by changes China endures over the next few decades, in particular the Japanese invasion and occupation, the communist takeover and Mao's Cultural Revolution.

It was released in Hong Kong in 1993, and in this film, there are several famous Chinese actors and actress, such as Leslie Cheung, Fengyi Zhang, and Li Gong. Prostitute Yanhong sees no other alternative than leaving her shy son Douzi behind at a training school for Chinese opera. Or an opera,” Lilian Lee writes in her 1992 novel of hopeless love set against the backdrop China’s 20th century struggles. I will never understand what makes a dictator want to totally destroy culture--but the entire indoctriNATION system was unfathomable in its cruelty with the Red Guard (literally, children) going house to house looking for any reason to break things and demean and beat the tenants--insane! I also like any book that can teach me a little history through the story rather than vice versa. “Farewell My Concubine”, based on the book of the same name by Hong Kong novelist Lilian Lee, tells an epic love story spanning half a century, from the 1920s to … Next comes the layer of the opera, which in the famous production, Farewell my Concubine, mirrors the film’s character’s reality. 20th Century Chinese history is, as Lee points-out, the story of several hundred millions of people dragged from the middle ages to the 21st Century in the space of eighty years purely on the basis of the motives of powerful individuals in a society where the citizen must fight for the right to individuality - and even this slim hope was denied under the Maoist regime and the Gang of Four. i tried to remember the detail of the film, but it shortly failed me with the sad, short tone of the entire novel. Fandango FANALERT® Sign up for a FANALERT® and be the first to know when tickets and other exclusives are available in your area.

It's sorry to see how much is lost during the translation, those lines that portray the dilemma, those punctuations, those poetic and drama like wordings. he is confused, suffering as he never gets what he really wanted. I'll probably check out the movie and maybe some of the author's other books. As with all original sources, this is more flushed out, subtler, and more enjoyable in many ways than the movie. As they grow they keep performing together which strengthens their bond. The story involves the Peking opera where a vicious Master Guan directs, who rules over his troupe with an iron fist, often mistreating them, and even beating them nearly to death. The story involves the Peking opera where a vicious Douzi finds himself and Shitou becoming very close, perhaps due to their constant intimacy on stage, since Douzi often plays women on stage, while Shitou usually plays men.

Having taken lots of courses on 'gender' in my Latin American lit classes, this was a really interesting take on the roles of all-male theater. Where the film "Farewell My Concubine" was lush, rich, nuanced, brightly colored, emotional, layered, and beautiful, the book was flat, affectless, emotionally distant, uninspiring. .

Seems like a good way to learn more about China Having taken lots of courses on 'gender' in my Latin American lit classes, this was a really interesting take on the roles of all-male theater.