In the winter of 1924, nine-year-old Xiao Douzi enters the Guan family theater troupe to learn opera after her prostitute mother cuts off the deformed finger on her right hand. The only person in the troupe who sympathized with Guan Douzi was his senior brother, Xiao Shi Tou. Ten years later, under the harsh and cruel guidance of Master Guan, the two brothers quickly improved their acting skills, and Douzi took the stage name Cheng Dieyi (played by Leslie Cheung) to play the Dan role, while Little Stone took the stage name Duan Xiaolou (played by Zhang Fengyi) to play the Sheng role. The two co-starred in "Farewell My Concubine", which was well received in the capital, and the two brothers also became very popular. They agreed to perform Farewell My Concubine for the rest of their lives.

Duan Xiaolou marries the prostitute Juxian (played by Gong Li), and Dieyi, who is attached to his brother, comes to his brother's place with a heavy heart and gives Xiaolou the valuable sword he traded with his brother in exchange for humiliation, and decides not to co-star with Xiaolou in "Farewell My Concubine" any more. At Master Guan's beck and call, the elder brother and sister work together again.

After the end of the war, the two were forced to sing for a group of undisciplined and unqualified soldiers of the National Army. Duan Xiaolou clashed with the soldiers, and in the confusion, Juxian suffered a miscarriage, while some soldiers later arrested Dieyi for the crime of being a traitor. Duan Xiaolou tries his best to rescue Dieyi by begging Yuan Shiqing (Ge You), a bureaucrat who used to toy with Dieyi. Juxian asks Dieyi to lie and beg for her release, and shows Dieyi a note that Xiaolou will no longer sing with her. So Dieyi remains unyielding in court, but is rescued by a high ranking KMT official for her skills.

After the liberation, the two men's skills were not taken seriously, and Cheng Dieyi, who tasted opium by mistake, had a poor voice, broke his voice in a performance, and was determined to get clean, and finally regained his strength after being tortured by his addiction with the help of Duan Xiaolou's husband and wife, but he was framed by Xiao Si, a child who had been kindly adopted by him, who pushed to take his place in Yu Ji's position with Duan Xiaolou's performances, and who went on strike despite the consequences, and who was persuaded to perform by Juxian, for the sake of the general situation. Duan Xiaolou was forced to take his place as Yu Ji and perform with Duan Xiaolou. Dieyi was heartbroken and has since broken off relations with Duan Xiaolou.

Duan Xiaolou was framed by Xiao Si during the Cultural Revolution and forced to frame Dieyi. Duan Xiaolou refused to do so and was dragged to the street, where Dieyi suddenly appeared, dressed in the costume of Yu Ji, willing to be humiliated with Duan Xiaolou.

Thinking that Duan Xiaolou only cares about Juxian, and seeing that Juxian, whom he resents, is now taking pity on him and helping him, he vents all of his anger on Juxian and reveals that Juxian used to be a whore, and Duan Xiaolou is forced to make a clean break with Juxian and says that he has never loved her, and that Juxian has hanged himself in desperation.

After the downfall of the Gang of Four, the two brothers performed Farewell My Concubine for the last time on the stage after 22 years of separation, Yu Ji sang the last line and cut her own throat with the sword he gave to the king, which was full of his feelings and fantasies, and Dieyi ended her career in the arms of Xiaolou, her brother, as well as this splendid tragedy. The story of the death of Dieyi is a tragedy, and it's a tragedy that will end.

Expanded:

As a flagship work of Chinese cinema and a film that enjoys world-class accolades, "Farewell My Concubine" combines both epic style and cultural connotation, and in the context of the profound art of Peking Opera, it is an extremely tense demonstration of how human beings in the midst of role Farewell My Concubine is an epic and culturally rich film that, against the backdrop of the deep-rooted art of Peking Opera, dramatizes with great tension the many facets and richness of human beings in the midst of mismatched roles and disasters. The film was not only artistically recognized by the international film community, but also a distribution success, with the film selling well in France, the United States and other Western countries, as well as in Eastern Europe and Africa.

As one of the most artistically accomplished films in Chinese cinema, Farewell My Concubine combines art and literature with spectacle, retaining the director's creative vision while taking good care of the audience's aesthetic sensibilities, making it a near-perfect classic film . The movie depicts the art of Peking Opera, one of the deepest cultural deposits in China, as well as the lives of Peking Opera artists, and delicately demonstrates the thinking and understanding of traditional culture, human existence and human nature.

"Farewell My Concubine" passionately recounts a story that stretches over half a century. The movie not only has a deep sense of history, but also a delicate male bonding and epic pattern, which shows the sadness and joy of small people mixed with the development of China's history in the past half a century in an intertwined way.

"Farewell My Concubine" is one of the most iconic works in the history of Chinese cinema, and it brought Zhang Guorong a lofty international reputation. Farewell My Concubine" is about the half-century-long relationship between two Peking Opera artists, but it is also about the Chinese people's thinking and understanding of the human condition and human nature.

The transformation of the times and the twists and turns of the characters' destinies are closely linked to each other, social and ethnicity are closely linked to each other, and faith and reality are closely linked to each other. Chen Kaige said that he wanted to shoot a story about "infatuation and betrayal", and so he shot a story about a "real Yu Ji and a fake King! So he made a story of "real Yu Ji, fake king". The misalignment of human nature and the catastrophe have brought about a multi-faceted and rich dramaturgy for the movie. Together with Zhang Guorong's near-perfect interpretation of Cheng Dieyi, it can be said that in terms of both film and performance, Farewell My Concubine is one of the peaks in China's centuries-old movie history.

When Chen Kaige attended the film festival in 1988, Xu Feng took the initiative to ask him to meet with him, and took Li Bihua's novel to see him, and then said that he could not make such a movie without Chen Kaige. Li Bihua original novel in the old version of the ending is Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou a number of years later in Hong Kong bathroom to meet, are not wearing clothes, frank and honest, looking back to the past, feeling very much, and then out of the door, each go their own way. Chen Kaige told Li Bihua that the ending had to be changed. Farewell My Concubine" is intended to illustrate the theme of human nature - obsession and betrayal, before the creation of the two screenwriters, Chen Kaige emphasized that the characters should not be ideologized, the character who should be, you let him be who he is.