Duan Xiaolou (ZhangFeng yi) and Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) are a pair of other disciples who grew up together. They are an actor and a actress, and they have always cooperated seamlessly, especially Farewell My Concubine, which is famous all over Beijing. Therefore, they agreed to co-star Farewell My Concubine for a lifetime. However, their understanding of the relationship between drama and life is essentially different. Duan Xiaolou knows that drama is not life, while Cheng Dieyi does not distinguish between people and drama.

Duan Xiaolou married Juxian (Gong Li), a famous prostitute, when he thought it was time to get married, which led Cheng Dieyi to think Juxian was a shameful third party and made Duan Xiaolou a traitor. Since then, the love-hate war between the three people around Farewell My Concubine has been escalating with the changes of the times, which eventually led to tragedy.

Behind the scenes

On the set, Leslie Cheung didn't have any extra requirements in life. Occasionally, he invited the crew and actors to have coffee with him if he finished work earlier.

Chen Kaige said that Leslie Cheung is an extremely hardworking person. Before filming of Farewell My Concubine, he lived in Beijing for six months and concentrated on studying drama.

In the film, Leslie Cheung plays a Peking Opera actress disguised as a woman. Leslie Cheung was so involved that body double, a Peking Opera actor prepared by Chen Kaige, was useless in the end.

Judging from the novel Farewell My Concubine, only two actors-teenagers and adults-were needed, but Chen Kaige felt that it was not enough, so he chose another group of young actors, and those children were all from drama schools.