The Bridge of Life and Death

In the winter of the fourteenth year of the Republic, Huaiyu, Dandan and Zhigao, children of the performers of Tianqiao in Beiping, wander by chance into the dwelling of a washed-up old eunuch. A black cat scatters the fate sticks in the old man's hand, and he can no longer tell which stick belongs to which child, leaving only a prophecy: of you three, one will live a life worse than death, one will die a death better than life, and one will die first and live again. The muddled prophecy hangs over the three lives like a bridge suspended in midair. Zhigao stays in Beiping and learns his craft steadily in an opera troupe, rising from extra to star martial actor at the Guanghe Theater, and ends by marrying and raising a family in an ordinary, earthy happiness. Huaiyu, determined to make it big, leaves Tianqiao for Shanghai and moves between the opera stage and the film world; his fame grows, but he is schemed against in the world of fame and profit, loses his sight, and retires to the shores of West Lake. Dandan follows Huaiyu to Shanghai, and in trying to win back her love is caught up in jealousy and intrigue that destroy her and drag others down with her. Li Bihua sets the two poles of her novel between the opera training schools of Tianqiao in Beiping and the film sets and dance halls of Shanghai's foreign concessions, writing of the hard drill and hidden rules of the opera world as well as the dark dealings and warmth of human feeling in the old entertainment industry. Images of the black cat, the fate sticks, the bridge and food recur, drawing out a sense of fate and of the past as a dream. It is her vivid portrait of the manners and emotions of Republican-era Beijing and Shanghai—gorgeous, caustic and startling to read.